Swarm construction: ant-inspired processes for teams of building robots. Construction and manufacturing can be dangerous, wasteful industries—prime candidates for automation by teams of mobile robot builders. However, our understanding of how to program robots for teamwork is limited. This project aims to understand how colonies of weaver ants build complex nest structures, using novel 3D-imaging and ant tracking techniques. The anticipated outcomes of the project are i) a framework for how indi ....Swarm construction: ant-inspired processes for teams of building robots. Construction and manufacturing can be dangerous, wasteful industries—prime candidates for automation by teams of mobile robot builders. However, our understanding of how to program robots for teamwork is limited. This project aims to understand how colonies of weaver ants build complex nest structures, using novel 3D-imaging and ant tracking techniques. The anticipated outcomes of the project are i) a framework for how individual-level behaviour drives structure-level outcomes, applicable to many complex systems, and ii) novel software and hardware for robot swarms that can 3D-print structures using ant inspired teamwork strategies. Benefits of the project include new construction technologies that are safer, greener, cheaper and faster.Read moreRead less
Improving the performance of Australian social insurance schemes. Applying methods from computational social science, this project aims to develop a novel, multi-level modeling framework to assist transport injury, workplace injury and disability insurance schemes consistently achieve and maintain standards of high performance as recognised by international benchmarks. By creating a virtual laboratory for policy-makers and scheme managers, it expects to generate a comprehensive understanding of ....Improving the performance of Australian social insurance schemes. Applying methods from computational social science, this project aims to develop a novel, multi-level modeling framework to assist transport injury, workplace injury and disability insurance schemes consistently achieve and maintain standards of high performance as recognised by international benchmarks. By creating a virtual laboratory for policy-makers and scheme managers, it expects to generate a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms driving insurance scheme performance, enabling comparison of anticipated outcomes in response to legislative changes, policy changes and management decisions. The project aims to help schemes avoid human and financial failure, benefitting people with injuries and disabilities while reducing scheme costs.Read moreRead less
Interactions of Human and Machine Intelligence in Modern Economic Systems. Much of modern economic systems are driven by machine-machine and machine-human interactions that happens rapidly at large scale. But such interactions are often opaque and can have negative or catastrophic consequences, such as market plunges with no apparent economic reasons in financial trading, content recommendations that promote extremism, algorithms in gig economy leading to worker exploitation and wasted resources ....Interactions of Human and Machine Intelligence in Modern Economic Systems. Much of modern economic systems are driven by machine-machine and machine-human interactions that happens rapidly at large scale. But such interactions are often opaque and can have negative or catastrophic consequences, such as market plunges with no apparent economic reasons in financial trading, content recommendations that promote extremism, algorithms in gig economy leading to worker exploitation and wasted resources. This project aims for new theoretical results and algorithms at the intersection computational economics, game theory, and dynamical systems, that establish conditions under which the economic systems are stable, propose mechanisms that make the interactions more fair, transparent and aligned with human values.Read moreRead less
Autonomous Discovery of Green Inhibitors. The project aims to develop autonomous material design by integrating evolutionary algorithms and robotic experimentation. The project expects to pioneer a new method of materials discovery that could cut discovery times to 20% of traditional methods. Its expected to have significance through its discovery of new classes of corrosion inhibitors that are safe to both humans and the environment. The expected outcomes of this project will be a rapid disc ....Autonomous Discovery of Green Inhibitors. The project aims to develop autonomous material design by integrating evolutionary algorithms and robotic experimentation. The project expects to pioneer a new method of materials discovery that could cut discovery times to 20% of traditional methods. Its expected to have significance through its discovery of new classes of corrosion inhibitors that are safe to both humans and the environment. The expected outcomes of this project will be a rapid discovery methodology that can be used across materials science and new classes of safe corrosion inhibitors. This should provide significant benefits to workplace n safety and the environmental impact of the coatings industry while also increasing the rapid of innovation of new materials.Read moreRead less
Computational Mechanisms of Online Attention Markets. The internet has operated as an major exchange of information and attention for the past few decades, yet surprisingly little is known about how individual choices and collective attention interact, let alone about how different parties can influence or control it. This project aims to uncover the mathematical underpinnings between individual actions and collective trends in online attention market, design computational methods for estimating ....Computational Mechanisms of Online Attention Markets. The internet has operated as an major exchange of information and attention for the past few decades, yet surprisingly little is known about how individual choices and collective attention interact, let alone about how different parties can influence or control it. This project aims to uncover the mathematical underpinnings between individual actions and collective trends in online attention market, design computational methods for estimating and influencing attention allocation, and enable applications where content consumers, producers, hosting platforms and regulatory bodies are each empowered with their share of influence in the attention market.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
Industrial Transformation Training Centres - Grant ID: IC230100001
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$5,000,000.00
Summary
ARC Training Centre for Automated Vehicles in Rural and Remote Regions. The Centre will build skills and capability to test and deploy safe, socially acceptable, automated vehicles (AV) for rural, regional and remote Australian public roads, where manufacturing, agriculture, mining and defence industries face significant challenges of driver shortages, rising costs, long distances, rough roads, and environmental impacts. The centre will unite technology providers, regulators, government and end ....ARC Training Centre for Automated Vehicles in Rural and Remote Regions. The Centre will build skills and capability to test and deploy safe, socially acceptable, automated vehicles (AV) for rural, regional and remote Australian public roads, where manufacturing, agriculture, mining and defence industries face significant challenges of driver shortages, rising costs, long distances, rough roads, and environmental impacts. The centre will unite technology providers, regulators, government and end users with world-leading interdisciplinary researchers to create new human-AV systems, datasets, frameworks, case studies, platforms, and a vastly upskilled workforce. This will reduce transport costs, increase capacity, boost supply chain efficiency and resilience, improve road safety, and elevate Australian capability.Read moreRead less
A human-centric eXplainable Automated Vehicle. The aim is to create a computational model to address the inability of Automated Vehicles (AV), powered by Artificial intelligence, to self explain their behaviours. This project applies novel multidisciplinary methodologies in a real-world self-driving setting to formalise the essence of driving explanations. It explores the when, why and how a driver is seeking an explanation and what type of automated explanation is truly human-interpretable. Exp ....A human-centric eXplainable Automated Vehicle. The aim is to create a computational model to address the inability of Automated Vehicles (AV), powered by Artificial intelligence, to self explain their behaviours. This project applies novel multidisciplinary methodologies in a real-world self-driving setting to formalise the essence of driving explanations. It explores the when, why and how a driver is seeking an explanation and what type of automated explanation is truly human-interpretable. Expected outcomes include the discovery of an acceptable, transparent and ethical explanation system that helps humans to understand the AVs decision making. This field will continue to rise in prominence and produce much-needed work to improve the widespread adoption of AVs.Read moreRead less
Action selection in insects: how a microbrain knows what to do. Identifying what to do demands integrating sensory information with our current physiological state and memory of past experience to select the best possible action. This is the action selection problem. Our project aims to discover how tiny insect brains solve this fundamental problem. The project combines neural recordings from animals exploring virtual reality, behavioural analyses and computational modelling. The expected outco ....Action selection in insects: how a microbrain knows what to do. Identifying what to do demands integrating sensory information with our current physiological state and memory of past experience to select the best possible action. This is the action selection problem. Our project aims to discover how tiny insect brains solve this fundamental problem. The project combines neural recordings from animals exploring virtual reality, behavioural analyses and computational modelling. The expected outcome is a new understanding of the brain as an effective behavioural control system. This will benefit systems and comparative neuroscience. Our findings may also inspire solutions for robotic systems that must operate autonomously in remote and challenging environments such as disaster relief or exploration.Read moreRead less
Intelligent Robotics for Pharmaceutical Formulation Development. This project aims to transform the labour and time-intensive process of drug formulation development by optimising the process workflow, through collaboration between biochemists and the proposed intelligent and scalable robotic system. This project expects to enable the robot to leverage the expert knowledge of the biochemists while automating rote tasks. The expected outcome of this project is an intelligent robot that can collab ....Intelligent Robotics for Pharmaceutical Formulation Development. This project aims to transform the labour and time-intensive process of drug formulation development by optimising the process workflow, through collaboration between biochemists and the proposed intelligent and scalable robotic system. This project expects to enable the robot to leverage the expert knowledge of the biochemists while automating rote tasks. The expected outcome of this project is an intelligent robot that can collaborate with human coworkers to accelerate drug formulation. This should provide significant benefits by lowering drug costs and the development time of new drugs. Read moreRead less