The Importance of Quality Testing and AI Platforms

QAC EmTech
QAC Emerging Technologies Quality Assurance

This monthly newsletter will focus on QAC’s activities regarding R&D, Connected Vehicles, Cognitive Autonomous Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Blockchain Quality Assurance Services

FOCUSED ON THE FUTURE

Leading the way

Welcome to the eighteenth edition of the EmTech newsletter. In this edition, we will review some key points of a recent webinar on Test Automation for CognitiveSystems (AI). This content will provide insight around the importance of quality testing regarding AI platforms and deliver some great examples of xCog and other solutions.

Welcome to our 18th edition of our EmTech Quality Assurance Newsletter

Keeping you informed

Our emerging technologies quality assurance workstreams

R&D and Grant Projects

Research and development of new technologies that position QAC to become a world leader in quality assurance services.

Connected Vehicles

Testing and Quality Assurance services exclusively developed to provide integration testing services for highly connected vehicles.

Cognitive Autonomous Systems

Fully automation of testing and quality Assurance services exclusively developed for Cognitive Autonomous Systems

Cybersecurity, IoT, AI, and Blockchain

Focus on developing new technologies that utilizes AI to address QA challenges on Cybersecurity, IoT, and Blockchain domains

Test Automation for Cognitive Systems

On May 25, 2021, QA consultants hosted an exciting webinar entitled, “The Rise in Test Automation for Cognitive Systems (AI)”. The webinar focused on the benefits of test automation for driving software and the introduction of QA Consultants’ testing accelerator, xCog. This webinar was sponsored by Applitools and took place on the RedRex platform. The following is a brief summary of the webinar.

Daniel Levy

Senior Director of Product Marketing at Applitools explained why today’s automated testing is broken. Dan explained various problems that exist in different steps of automated testing such as slow test creation, brittle automated tests, cross-browser, etc.

Jenn Bonine

CEO of RedRex (AI systems) spoke about current problems within the distance and digital world (such as Privacy, Trust, Security, etc.). Jenn explained how to address these issues using RedRex, which is an AI-based virtual platform, and walked through different use cases including the webinar itself. The RedRex platform allows companies and/or individuals to create digital buildings, floors, rooms, and walls in a way that reimagines remote collaboration. Using virtual buildings bridges the gap between physical and virtual spaces. Once the building is created, virtual floors are shared and private rooms can be added for each department in the organization. Rooms can be owned by an individual, like a personal office, or they can be shared, like a conference room. This new platform takes meetings to the next level with customized rooms in a virtual building.

What now?

Start with articulating and assessing a business risk to plan for an appropriate level of testing effort when facing applications with various risk levels. Testing AIIA requires the right roles for the right testing types. A proper test strategy requires proper collaboration with other testing team members (e.g., Data Engineer, Data Science, Testing SME, Developers)

Leverage existing well-established testing practices

Focus on new AIIA testing practices (Benchmark Test, Testing in production, etc.)

Make sure strong test reporting and documentation are available. Good reporting can help prove current regulation compliance, e.g., Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (the “AI Regulation”)

Choose the right testing approach to test the right types of AI

Pressure vendors for ML (Machine Learning) and Ops testing for test automation in data-model-SW pipelines

Vivek Burhanpurkar

Co-Founder & COO of Cyberworks Robotics was one of QAConsultants’ first clients to use the xCog solution. Cyberworks Robotics has developed a universal vehicle agnostic AI autonomous navigation technology platform for third-party types of equipment.

Their technology mitigates labor shortages and reduces costs by replacing the driver of any type of equipment that is pushed and steered in commercial buildings and farms. Such examples, of the products that utilize Cyberworks Robotics’ technology, include Two-Tractors / AGV, Floor / UV Cleaners, and wheelchairs.

Cyberworks Robotics teamed up with QA Consultants to test their autonomous singlepassenger vehicle. The tests focused on mobility requirements for physically impaired travelers at major airports around the world. CyberworksRobotics used QA Consultants’ xCog testing capabilities to speed up their testing process.

Steve Sutherland

CEO at CrossWing Robotics discussed the existing challenges for testing robots in various scenarios. Particularly, Steve spoke about AI learning and “what AI would do in new situations?” CrossWing Robotics specializes in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, including developing an automated disinfection robot for public and private spaces. Their current solution, Cleanbot is an autonomous agent which can navigate in indoor environments. The robot contains a few actuated UV panels that are used to efficiently disinfect environments. Trellis is another great solution Steve discussed.

Trellis is a micro-rail transit system that sustainably moves volumes of people, goods, services, and waste within cities and beyond. The main challenge was how to test the system with a number of scenarios to be considered. Like Cyberworks Robotics, the autonomous navigation stack of their disinfecting indoor robots was tested using the xCog solution. These tests were generated using a model-based approach that automatically generated hundreds of thousands of automated test cases against an AI codebase. This functional model of the System Under Test (SUT) covered various testing scenarios. The test cases were automatically executed in a physics-based simulation to evaluate the functionality of the AI system. Steve attested that QA Consultants was key to discovering critical defects early in their development cycle.

Toni Jardini

Director, Technology and Test Automation Practice at QA Consultants

Spencer Reuben

Senior Manager of the Emerging Technologies at QA Consultants

QA consultants demonstrated the benefits and advantages of the xCog solution for testing cognitive systems. Both Cyberworks and Crosswing can testify that QA Consultants’ model-based testing approach generated thousands of automated test scenarios. As such, test scenarios performed in a simulated environment led to lower testing costs. Through rapid execution of thousands of different test scenarios, the xCog solution lowered the time to the market significantly, followed safety guidelines, and ensured the AI system was thoroughly tested.

STAY TUNED

Coming next month

To learn more please visit our EmTech page at https://qacstaging.wpengine.com/solutions-and-services/emerging-technologies. More topics to come soon! Stay tuned to our next newsletter.