Beamforming with acoustic vector sensors for audio user interfaces. We aim to create new Audio User Interfaces (AUIs) for the automatic separation and annotation of audio from complex sound scenes using acoustic vector sensor beamforming technology. Specifically, we will develop: speech AUIs for noisy, multi-talker, reverberant environments; and sound transcription AUIs for the deaf. Ultimately, users will be able to walk into a room, hold conversations and leave with a searchable, automatically ....Beamforming with acoustic vector sensors for audio user interfaces. We aim to create new Audio User Interfaces (AUIs) for the automatic separation and annotation of audio from complex sound scenes using acoustic vector sensor beamforming technology. Specifically, we will develop: speech AUIs for noisy, multi-talker, reverberant environments; and sound transcription AUIs for the deaf. Ultimately, users will be able to walk into a room, hold conversations and leave with a searchable, automatically-generated transcript of the audio events, tagged with metadata. The application of these technologies will create new possibilities for recording audio in the music, radio, TV industries, and future home based audio communication systems.Read moreRead less
Mathematical Foundations of Distributed Radar. Conventional military threats to Australia are large or fast moving objects such as ships and aircraft and conventional radar systems are designed to handle such threats. Recent global political shifts have changed the threats to include objects that are small and slowly moving, such as people, small vehicles and boats. Advances in radar hardware make feasible small, low-powered, devices with inherently reduced performance in comparison to deployed ....Mathematical Foundations of Distributed Radar. Conventional military threats to Australia are large or fast moving objects such as ships and aircraft and conventional radar systems are designed to handle such threats. Recent global political shifts have changed the threats to include objects that are small and slowly moving, such as people, small vehicles and boats. Advances in radar hardware make feasible small, low-powered, devices with inherently reduced performance in comparison to deployed systems. Methods for information integration over a dispersed system of such small devices, design of suitable waveform suites and clever local signal processing algorithms will be developed to achieve the performance improvements the hardware offers, to handle the new threats.Read moreRead less
Algorithms for change detection based on finite sample system identification theory. Detection of abrupt changes has many important applications. One particular application that will be investigated is leak detection in irrigation channels. As agriculture accounts for about 80% of Australia's water usage, the timely detection of leaks means that corrective actions can be taken early which will lead to large water savings and significant environmental benefits. The developed methods can be design ....Algorithms for change detection based on finite sample system identification theory. Detection of abrupt changes has many important applications. One particular application that will be investigated is leak detection in irrigation channels. As agriculture accounts for about 80% of Australia's water usage, the timely detection of leaks means that corrective actions can be taken early which will lead to large water savings and significant environmental benefits. The developed methods can be designed with any false alarm rate. This is important since frequent false alarms lead to wasted resources and operators will stop using the system. The technology once developed can be transferred to many other application areas such as urban water supplies, pipelines for oil and gas, and the process and manufacturing industries.Read moreRead less
Developing a Smart Monitoring System for Leakage Currents from Insulators on Wooden Poles. Numerous wooden poles are used for electricity power transmission in urban and rural areas of Australia. Insulators suspended on poles are subject to contamination and moisture that cause partial discharge currents to flow through the wooden poles, resulting in pole fires leading to loss of power to customers and possible bush fires. This project aims at studying the characteristics of leakage currents fr ....Developing a Smart Monitoring System for Leakage Currents from Insulators on Wooden Poles. Numerous wooden poles are used for electricity power transmission in urban and rural areas of Australia. Insulators suspended on poles are subject to contamination and moisture that cause partial discharge currents to flow through the wooden poles, resulting in pole fires leading to loss of power to customers and possible bush fires. This project aims at studying the characteristics of leakage currents from insulators on wooden poles in Australian conditions and developing a smart monitoring system to detect and prevent pole fires caused by leakage currents. The outcomes will reduce the risk of pole fires, hence improving public safety, reliability of power supply and sustainability of the Australian power industry.Read moreRead less
Control, estimation and nanopositioning for high-throughput probe-storage. Probe-storage is a new technology for storing digital information as tiny indentations on a storage medium. It offers the highest data storage density compared with alternative technologies. This project aims to develop methods and the underpinning theory to realise a new probe-storage memory that is much faster and can store data at much higher rates.
Towards a block-cipher circuit resistant to multiple side channel attacks. This project aims to design, implement and verify the first ever fully comprehensive countermeasure against simultaneous attacks on devices performing a cryptographic task, such as a smart card or a mobile phone used for an electronic payment, through a variety of side channels. Side channel attacks aim to obtain unauthorized access to secret cryptographic keys used by such devices, by collecting and statistically process ....Towards a block-cipher circuit resistant to multiple side channel attacks. This project aims to design, implement and verify the first ever fully comprehensive countermeasure against simultaneous attacks on devices performing a cryptographic task, such as a smart card or a mobile phone used for an electronic payment, through a variety of side channels. Side channel attacks aim to obtain unauthorized access to secret cryptographic keys used by such devices, by collecting and statistically processing measurements of by-products of the physical operation of these devices, such as the consumed power or electromagnetic radiation. Rapid proliferation of personal devices used for electronic payments or containing sensitive data makes such a comprehensive countermeasure urgently needed.Read moreRead less
Encoding and Communicating Navigable Soundfields. While sound recording is commonplace, it is not currently practical to completely record a sound space such that the experience can be reproduced at a chosen 'listening point'. This is a significant restriction for audio applications in the entertainment, surveillance and virtual/mixed reality areas. The project will research novel and practical solutions to this problem and offers a significant conceptual advance in the transmission of complex a ....Encoding and Communicating Navigable Soundfields. While sound recording is commonplace, it is not currently practical to completely record a sound space such that the experience can be reproduced at a chosen 'listening point'. This is a significant restriction for audio applications in the entertainment, surveillance and virtual/mixed reality areas. The project will research novel and practical solutions to this problem and offers a significant conceptual advance in the transmission of complex audio scenes. This project will build fundamental new technology and IP for Australia in the digital media and audio space, one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy.Read moreRead less
Synthetic Aperture Radio Holography for High Resolution Remote Sensing. This project aims to develop fundamental theory and enabling technology for a novel radio remote sensing system using a breakthrough synthetic aperture radio holography concept. Such a system would leapfrog current capabilities to produce high-resolution, day-and-night and weather-independent 3-D images for many applications (eg geoscience and climate change research, environmental and agricultural monitoring, defence and se ....Synthetic Aperture Radio Holography for High Resolution Remote Sensing. This project aims to develop fundamental theory and enabling technology for a novel radio remote sensing system using a breakthrough synthetic aperture radio holography concept. Such a system would leapfrog current capabilities to produce high-resolution, day-and-night and weather-independent 3-D images for many applications (eg geoscience and climate change research, environmental and agricultural monitoring, defence and security-related target detection, and planetary exploration). Expected project outcomes include advanced sensing and data processing knowledge and a prototype demonstrating the developed analogue and digital hardware.Read moreRead less
Bio-inspired Sniffer chips. This project will combine recent advances in neuroscience of olfaction, together with novel microelectronic fabrication technologies, to develop a miniature electronic nose microsystem with superior selectivity, stability, sensitivity and response time. Applications include national security, environment monitoring or medical diagnosis.
Robust learning of dynamic systems. Robots and other autonomous machines use models of the real world to predict the result of their actions and make decisions, but existing methods used for machine-learning are unreliable in many cases and can be easily fooled. This project aims to make machine-learning of dynamic system models reliable, accurate, and secure. The outcomes of this project will be new models and algorithms that ensure safety and increase accuracy of models learned from data. This ....Robust learning of dynamic systems. Robots and other autonomous machines use models of the real world to predict the result of their actions and make decisions, but existing methods used for machine-learning are unreliable in many cases and can be easily fooled. This project aims to make machine-learning of dynamic system models reliable, accurate, and secure. The outcomes of this project will be new models and algorithms that ensure safety and increase accuracy of models learned from data. This project will benefit robotics, control engineering, infrastructure automation, and other fields that demand the capability to model physical systems from limited data. It will also improve cybersecurity by making learning algorithms resilient to deliberate attacks with false data.Read moreRead less