New robotic arm at University of Alberta to help students better understand artificial intelligence

Students at the University of Alberta are getting hands-on experience with artificial intelligence with a new robotic arm. Donated to the university's department of computing science by Kindred AI, a Canadian-based artificial intelligence company, the use of the robotic arm in the classroom helps students get a sense of reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning is a branch of artificial intelligence, says Rapum Mahmood, assistant professor at the U of A and former Kindred AI research lead. "In reinforcement learning, we study by letting the agent interact with the environment, so that it can take the right set of actions," said Mahmood. Usually, the study is done through computer simulations and board games but in real-world applications, a robotic arm is used.