Development of globally optimal solutions to simultaneous localisation and mapping for robot navigation. Building robots that can operate on their own is one of the potentially transformational technologies of this century. This project will develop algorithms that are well understood and robust to allow the deployment of robots in environments populated with people and in search and rescue operations where global positioning system is not available.
Robotics for zero-tillage agriculture. This project will develop small agricultural robots to increase broad-acre crop production and reduce environmental impact. These robots will have advanced navigation capability, will cooperate to cover large areas and resupply themselves, while causing less soil damage and applying herbicide more intelligently.
Learning and planning with qualitative models. This project will give a robot the ability to learn how to interact with its environment, using common sense reasoning to guide trial-and-error learning. The outcome will be a robot that is able to quickly adapt to new and changing environments, such as those which might be encountered in applications like robots for urban search and rescue.
Consumer-centric Adaptive Quality-assured Cloud Services Brokerage. This project aims to create a consumer-centric brokerage solution for managing cloud service provision. This aims to ensure consumers can receive cloud services that best satisfy their quality requirements in the most cost-effective manner in the presence of constant changes in performance and cost of cloud services available from different cloud providers. The intended outcome is a novel cloud brokerage framework and the associ ....Consumer-centric Adaptive Quality-assured Cloud Services Brokerage. This project aims to create a consumer-centric brokerage solution for managing cloud service provision. This aims to ensure consumers can receive cloud services that best satisfy their quality requirements in the most cost-effective manner in the presence of constant changes in performance and cost of cloud services available from different cloud providers. The intended outcome is a novel cloud brokerage framework and the associated mechanisms for proactive identification, prevention and mediation of cloud service-level agreement violation in the best interest of the cloud users. The findings of the project will support enterprises across Australian economy in shifting from traditional IT systems to the ubiquitous cloud computing that has already been recognised as a core enabling IT technology in addressing the societal challenge of lifting productivity and economic growth in a rapidly changing world economy.Read moreRead less
Supervised autonomy for AUVs using limited bandwidth communication channels. This project aims to improve the feedback link between robotic platforms and an operator, to increase the effectiveness of underwater survey operations. During surveys, some level of adaptation is required to allow underwater robots to respond to the data they are collecting. It is often difficult to reliably program an autonomous system to identify salient data, particularly when the mission involves searching for part ....Supervised autonomy for AUVs using limited bandwidth communication channels. This project aims to improve the feedback link between robotic platforms and an operator, to increase the effectiveness of underwater survey operations. During surveys, some level of adaptation is required to allow underwater robots to respond to the data they are collecting. It is often difficult to reliably program an autonomous system to identify salient data, particularly when the mission involves searching for particular features whose sensor signatures may be difficult to determine a priori. In contrast, humans are generally good at quickly identifying important data or determining when a mission is not achieving its goals. The project aims to develop novel acoustic communication schemes that will allow communication between the human operator and the underwater robot, exploiting developments in machine learning, network and communication theory.Read moreRead less
Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of ....Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition. Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of visual navigational cues, as well as the opportunity to study the brains of the tethered ants as they solve the real-world challenge of finding home. This may reveal how simple brains efficiently solve navigational tasks, which may inform both cognitive biology and bio-inspired computation.Read moreRead less
Inferring driver behaviours, intent and risk in complex traffic scenarios. This project intends to develop methods to evaluate risk during driving. The next generation of vehicles will be fitted with sophisticated perception and egocentric information. This will be combined with inter-vehicle communication enabling cooperative safety, used in conjunction with intelligent infrastructure. This technology is expected to be mandated in the United States starting from 2017. This project plans to deve ....Inferring driver behaviours, intent and risk in complex traffic scenarios. This project intends to develop methods to evaluate risk during driving. The next generation of vehicles will be fitted with sophisticated perception and egocentric information. This will be combined with inter-vehicle communication enabling cooperative safety, used in conjunction with intelligent infrastructure. This technology is expected to be mandated in the United States starting from 2017. This project plans to develop unsupervised learning algorithms to infer high-level driver behaviours, intent and contextual information to automatically evaluate levels of risk under complex driving scenarios. It plans to validate the results using naturalistic driving datasets taken in large-scale deployments around the world. This innovation may improve automotive safety and facilitate the deployment of autonomous vehicles.Read moreRead less
Robust Intelligence: Rational Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty. This project seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice with an innovative framework for rational decision-making under risk and uncertainty. Intelligent agents exercise profound and growing impact in business and society. However, significant problems arise in intelligent agent deployment as their theoretical underpinnings do not ensure rational decision-making in complex real-world settings. The project aims to ....Robust Intelligence: Rational Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty. This project seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice with an innovative framework for rational decision-making under risk and uncertainty. Intelligent agents exercise profound and growing impact in business and society. However, significant problems arise in intelligent agent deployment as their theoretical underpinnings do not ensure rational decision-making in complex real-world settings. The project aims to open the door to transformational technologies that may drive new entrepreneurial opportunities in agent-based global services.Read moreRead less
Active Segmentation for Cooperative Mobile Robots in Outdoor Environments. The objective of this project is to develop a principled understanding of how to improve the segmentation of three-dimensional range data in a cooperative manner by judiciously choosing future sensor viewpoints of a team of mobile robots. The viewpoint of the robot affects both the density of three-dimensional data points and the areas that are unobservable due to occlusions. Project outcomes will open up a whole new appr ....Active Segmentation for Cooperative Mobile Robots in Outdoor Environments. The objective of this project is to develop a principled understanding of how to improve the segmentation of three-dimensional range data in a cooperative manner by judiciously choosing future sensor viewpoints of a team of mobile robots. The viewpoint of the robot affects both the density of three-dimensional data points and the areas that are unobservable due to occlusions. Project outcomes will open up a whole new approach to the process of autonomously gathering information about objects in outdoor environments, will synergise with existing classification and motion planning methods, and will support Australia's continued role as a leader in field robotics research.Read moreRead less
Adaptive cyber-physical technologies with attention driven commonsense behaviours. Designing intelligent cyber-physical systems for open, complex and changing environments presents enormous scientific challenges. This project will develop an innovative framework, methods and tools that provide cyber-physical technologies with attention based commonsense capabilities for adapting to new, unexpected and unforeseen situations.