CIS continuously conducts research on technologies and best practices for cloud computing applications. Innovative projects are developed to demonstrate how informed decisions can be made using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, and blockchain techniques. Two educational games have been developed for students to learn about the applications of different types of machine learning and blockchain.
1) Supply chain game for learning three types of machine learning
Background
In this supply chain, the demand of products from O2O stores and direct customers. Supplying products involves various parties in the supply chain, such as O2O stores, e-fulfilment centres, and distribution centres. To make informed decisions, these parties can utilise decision analytics methods with three types of machine learning algorithms, namely supervised learning, reinforcement learning and unsupervised learning .
Overview of supply chain parties
- The O2O store utilises time series forecasting models and supervised learning algorithms to make demand forecasting decisions.
- The e-fulfilment centre employs inventory control policies and reinforcement learning algorithms to make inventory ordering decisions.
- The distribution centre uses unsupervised learning algorithms to cluster self-pickup vehicles.
2) BlockTrainHK: An online learning game for experiencing blockchain concepts
To spread knowledge of blockchain technology, an online educational game for learning blockchain concepts named ‘BlockTrainHK’ is designed and developed from the React Native framework. Users from multi-disciplinary backgrounds can experience the block mining process, where the whole journey of building the blockchain and other advanced concepts, including immutability, Merkle tree, and zero knowledge proof, can be revealed, such that technical barriers of learning blockchain can be overcome.