Month: November 2022

Welcome to Nisar Channa, our latest PhD researcher at QUT working in the Human-Robot Workforce program.

He received his Master of Science (Management) degree from Sukkur IBA University, Pakistan in 2019. After completing his graduate studies, he worked as Lecturer of Business Administration at Sukkur IBA University.

His research interests lie primarily in the areas of technology and human resource management, industry 4.0, and organizational behaviour. He has research publications in top tier academic journals and presented his research work in reputed international conferences.

 

 

Australian Cobotics Centre and CSIRO’s Data61 researchers ran a workshop at OzCHI on 29th November. The workshop, held at The Australian National University in Canberra was attended by 19 people from across Australia.

Entitled, “Empowering People in Human-Robot Collaboration: Bringing Together and Synthesising Perspectives”, the workshop brought together academic researchers and industry practitioners representing multiple disciplines of Human-Computer Interaction, Robotics and Engineering, Design and Architecture, Ethics, Psychology, Social Sciences, and Artificial Intelligence. They aimed to identify crucial future research directions for advancing HRC, and discuss emerging concepts and design decisions by incorporating these multidisciplinary perspectives.

OzCHI is the annual non-profit conference for the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) and Australia’s leading forum for the latest in HCI research and practice.

 

Associate PhD researcher, Ruba Al-zqebah from UTS, visited B & R Enclosures last week to conduct some observations as part of her research around process optimisation.

This project aims to create a digital model and simulate the process flow for a portion of the B&R Factory to find production improvements. This will support B&R’s ongoing efforts to identify and quantify delays and rework time costs on their high mix of products. The model and framework will support decision making in production planning and scheduling to achieve higher productivity.

Data will be collected on the facility layout and processing times through observation of production. A discrete event simulation will be constructed that matches the layout and processing for the collected data. The simulation model will then be used to optimise scheduling and layout for a wide variety of products and to virtually test improvement/change ideas.

In the long term, this work could be a guide for the future research in field of production planning and scheduling which can develop the traditional scheduling to the digital scheduling with faster and better quality.

Centre Director, Prof Jonathan Roberts and InfraBuild’s Industry 4.0 Lead, Andrew Thomas were recently interviewed by Industry Update about the Shorts Project.

InfraBuild’s problem was that off-the-shelf solutions to automate the detection and removal of ‘shorts’ couldn’t deal with the variety of bars produced by the steel manufacturer.

ACC’s team of engineers and researchers from Queensland University of Technology and University of Technology, Sydney, worked with InfraBuild’s team at the steel mill to design and test a handful of possible solutions over six months.

This involved building a life-sized, working version of InfraBuild’s conveyor system and using an industrial robot to pick up and move steel bars.  InfraBuild wanted the solution to fit into existing operations rather than requiring extensive changes to plant, equipment or processes. A cobot meant a straight-forward implementation and the option to switch back to manual if, for some reason, the cobot failed.

Read the article: https://www.industryupdate.com.au/article/%E2%80%98shorts%E2%80%99-project-steel-manufacturer-collaborates-cobot-design

Industry Update was established in 1995 by its publisher, Scott Filby, with the sole aim of producing Australia’s most comprehensive, response driven manufacturing publication.

Now, more than 21 years on, Industry Update is market leader and continues to focus on understanding the needs of the manufacturing industry and delivering results for advertisers and readers.

 

Some of our Centre’s researchers presented at the Centre for Biomedical Technologies 2022 Conference.

The presentations focused on the Centre’s Translation Projects. These projects are separate to the #PhD projects and aim to provide solutions that incorporate new or existing research for our industry partners at various stages across the Centre’s life.

Centre Director Jonathan Roberts spoke about the Shorts project which we are working on with our industry partner, InfraBuild. The project has just completed the first phase. More here: https://lnkd.in/gchy5wyg

Research Program Lead, Markus Rittenbruch spoke about the project the team (Stine Johansen, Jared Donovan, Anjali Tumkur Jaiprakash, Marc Carmichael) are working on with Cook Medical APAC. The project involves an exploration of the use of #cobots in the stent manufacture process. Read more about the project here: https://lnkd.in/guJyZwex

The Innovative Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC) is coming to a close at the end of the year and to celebrate, they held a project showcase to highlight the successful outcomes of over 40 collaborative manufacturing R&D projects they have funded over the years.

Our researchers, Mats Isaksson and Jared Donovan were in attendance to celebrate the IMCRC’s achievements and showcase the outcomes of the projects they led through the IMCRC.

? Jared Donovan from QUT (Queensland University of Technology) led the “Design Robotics for mass custom

isation manufacturing” project which was a collaboration between UAP | Urban Art Projects, QUT (Queensland University of Technology) and RMIT University. The project used innovative robotic vision systems and software user-interfaces to reduce the integration time between design and custom manufacturing. The team integrated the systems with industrial robots and improved the manufacture of high-value, complex products in time and cost.

The project also won the CRC Association’s 2020 Award for Excellence and led to the formation of our industry partner, ARM Hub (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing).
Other Australian Cobotics Centre researchers involved in the project included: Glenda Caldwell, Jonathan Roberts, Cori Stewart and many more!

? Mats Isaksson from Swinburne University of Technology led the Tradiebot project which was an industry collaboration with Tradiebot , supported by AMA Group. The project used 3D printing technologies in conjunction with novel polymer material solutions to enable a low cost rapid repair service for automotive plastic trim and assembly components.

In plastic repairs for automotive collision repair services, the ability to rapidly manufacture an integrated replacement part directly on the damaged component will reduce repair cost, time, waste and environmental impact.

Read more about the projects:
? Design Robotics: https://lnkd.in/ghzGcu6D
? Tradiebot: https://lnkd.in/gavUsx5m

Congratulations to QUT’s Design Robotics team for winning The Australian Financial Review‘s Higher Education Award in the Industry Engagement category.

The IMCRC project, led by Australian Cobotics Centre program co-lead, Jared Donovan and included Glenda Caldwell, Cori Stewart, Jonathan Roberts and more.

The project was a collaboration between UAP | Urban Art Projects,  QUT (Queensland University of Technology) and RMIT University. With the support of IMCRC, UAP invested in robotic vision systems and developed smart user-interfaces that enabled them to manufacture bespoke artwork and architecture pieces here in Australia.

Read more about the research collaboration here: https://lnkd.in/gaDp_Ys2

Read the article here: 20221104 – AFR – Design Robotics Award article

Welcome to our newest PhD researcher from UTS Robotics Institute, Nadimul Haque.

Nadimul is supervised by Teresa Vidal Calleja and leads a research project based in the Biomimic Cobots program with industry partner, InfraBuild.

His PhD project will work towards enabling human-robot interaction with mobile collaborative robots equipped with multiple on-board sensors. The project will address together the multi-sensory robotic perception, navigation and situational awareness problems of the mobile base, and will develop a framework to achieve collaborative tasks with the operators and the cobot actions while moving.

Read more: https://lnkd.in/gnGtqbN3