Active Vibration Control of a Cricket Bat using Piezoelectric-based Smart Materials Technology. Improvement of sporting equipment performance of late has largely ignored the game of cricket. Using the combined disciplines of advanced materials and control technologies, it is anticipated that the traditional cricket bat can be vastly improved while keeping to bat modification guidelines as specified in the rules of the game. This project involves the dynamic study of the bat using established e ....Active Vibration Control of a Cricket Bat using Piezoelectric-based Smart Materials Technology. Improvement of sporting equipment performance of late has largely ignored the game of cricket. Using the combined disciplines of advanced materials and control technologies, it is anticipated that the traditional cricket bat can be vastly improved while keeping to bat modification guidelines as specified in the rules of the game. This project involves the dynamic study of the bat using established experimental techniques. Once the various regions of high strain rates are determined, smart materials technologies will be used to reduce the transient vibrations transmitted to the batsman. The effect of this monitoring and control is to increase the comfort level and hence, effectiveness of the batsman.Read moreRead less
New Model Predictive Control Design Methods. Automatic computer control is fundamental to sustaining a wide range of manufacturing, mineral processing, chemical processing, and other industries vital to the Australian economy. Furthermore, the efficiency, profitability, and environmental impact of these operations is directly linked to the quality of this computer control. In many situations, even a few percent improvement in automatic control delivers dividends measured in many millions of doll ....New Model Predictive Control Design Methods. Automatic computer control is fundamental to sustaining a wide range of manufacturing, mineral processing, chemical processing, and other industries vital to the Australian economy. Furthermore, the efficiency, profitability, and environmental impact of these operations is directly linked to the quality of this computer control. In many situations, even a few percent improvement in automatic control delivers dividends measured in many millions of dollars. This project will develop design tools allowing for more sophisticated, high performance control to be more widely employed. This will deliver the potential for economic and environmental benefits and energy savings to be achieved across a range of industries.Read moreRead less
Electronic Auditory Pathway. We will develop electronic building blocks to investigate biological signal processing. In particular, we will investigate the auditory pathway and develop the most accurate electronic model of the biological cochlea and auditory nerve. These will be followed by electronic circuits that model the processing of sensory signals in the brain. Processing signals with neural spikes offers distinct advantages over current analogue and digital signal processing techniques i ....Electronic Auditory Pathway. We will develop electronic building blocks to investigate biological signal processing. In particular, we will investigate the auditory pathway and develop the most accurate electronic model of the biological cochlea and auditory nerve. These will be followed by electronic circuits that model the processing of sensory signals in the brain. Processing signals with neural spikes offers distinct advantages over current analogue and digital signal processing techniques in terms of noise, energy consumption and extraction of temporal information. We will implement the first spike-based models of pitch and timbre perception, and a neural model of speech recognition in noisy environments.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
Optimisation-based analysis and synthesis of sparse systems in signal processing and communication. This project will make onceptual advances in the areas of signal processing and communication. A major benefit of this project will be its direct applications to digital industry - perhaps the major electrical industry of our era. The project will also aim to build a world class research activity at the University of New South Wales to focus attention on low-cost signal processing and communicatio ....Optimisation-based analysis and synthesis of sparse systems in signal processing and communication. This project will make onceptual advances in the areas of signal processing and communication. A major benefit of this project will be its direct applications to digital industry - perhaps the major electrical industry of our era. The project will also aim to build a world class research activity at the University of New South Wales to focus attention on low-cost signal processing and communication, increase capacity for contract research, enhance nternational collaboration with leading researchers in the area, and produce quality PhD graduates in the field of signal processing and communication.Read moreRead less
Robust Positioning Based on Ultra-Tight Integration of GPS, Pseudolites and Inertial Sensors. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been becoming an increasingly important part of the world-wide geo-spatial information infrastructure. However, the availability and reliability of GPS positioning are still major challenging issues. This project proposes a new concept of robust positioning based on the ultra-tight integration of GPS, pseudolites and inertial sensor. The expected outcomes include: ....Robust Positioning Based on Ultra-Tight Integration of GPS, Pseudolites and Inertial Sensors. The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been becoming an increasingly important part of the world-wide geo-spatial information infrastructure. However, the availability and reliability of GPS positioning are still major challenging issues. This project proposes a new concept of robust positioning based on the ultra-tight integration of GPS, pseudolites and inertial sensor. The expected outcomes include: 1) a novel sensor integration approach, 2) innovative smart antenna design, 3) efficient algorithms and quality control procedures for signal acquisition and tracking, which can effectively suppress interferences and enhance the weak signal tracking.Read moreRead less
Automated Diagnosis of Faults in Rotating Machinery using Adaptive Network Based Fuzzy Inference. The long-term integrity of engineering assets depends on the quality of their maintenance which runs into billions of dollars per year in Australia. This project aims to develop a new fundamental automated technique for the detection and diagnosis of machinery faults. The innovation lies in the ability of this technique to not depend on knowledge of fault components in the discrete wavelet packet ....Automated Diagnosis of Faults in Rotating Machinery using Adaptive Network Based Fuzzy Inference. The long-term integrity of engineering assets depends on the quality of their maintenance which runs into billions of dollars per year in Australia. This project aims to develop a new fundamental automated technique for the detection and diagnosis of machinery faults. The innovation lies in the ability of this technique to not depend on knowledge of fault components in the discrete wavelet packet analysis. All other work conducted to date depends on knowledge of these components and their location. The results of this work will vastly improve the costly manually based diagnostics procedures in the maintenance of plant and industrial assets.Read moreRead less
Efficient signal processing using short word-length techniques. It is expected that the research will lead to significant reductions in cost and computational overheads for signal processing systems in general. These cost/speed enhancements have implications for radar, communications, audio, speech, video, aerospace, defence and biomedical engineering. In the last few decades, developments in enhancing the speed of processing signals has been clearly seen to impinge greatly on the lives of all c ....Efficient signal processing using short word-length techniques. It is expected that the research will lead to significant reductions in cost and computational overheads for signal processing systems in general. These cost/speed enhancements have implications for radar, communications, audio, speech, video, aerospace, defence and biomedical engineering. In the last few decades, developments in enhancing the speed of processing signals has been clearly seen to impinge greatly on the lives of all citizens and so positive outcomes from the research can be expected to translate into increased quality of life for the whole country.Read moreRead less
Highly nonlinear all-optical switches using chalcogenide photonic crystal. Business productivity and economic prosperity are increasingly correlated with the speed of a country's Internet connections and computer infrastructure. Australia will benefit from dramatic improvements to communications technology arising from this research, through access to improved services and through the creation of enterprises formed to commercialise our novel technology. The benefits from the eventual development ....Highly nonlinear all-optical switches using chalcogenide photonic crystal. Business productivity and economic prosperity are increasingly correlated with the speed of a country's Internet connections and computer infrastructure. Australia will benefit from dramatic improvements to communications technology arising from this research, through access to improved services and through the creation of enterprises formed to commercialise our novel technology. The benefits from the eventual development of ultrahigh speed networks include better rural and regional connectivity, improved business productivity and the emergence of new high-bandwidth services, such as telemedicine and flexible learning.Read moreRead less
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