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We’re pleased to share that A/Prof Jared Donovan, Chief Investigator in the Australian Cobotics Centre, was recently featured in Episode 2 of the Voices in Design for Health podcast, hosted by Dr Marianella Chamorro‑Koc from QUT.
In this episode, Jared discusses robotics, movement, and what it means to design technologies that feel embodied — offering an insightful look at how design, human experience and robotics intersect.
Our UTS based Quality Assurance & Compliance team recently co‑delivered the No-Code Quality Assurance workshop developed by our Swinburne for the 2025 symposium.
The workshop, led by A/Prof Gavin Paul and Dr Katia Bourahmoune, was part of the Hokkaido University Learning Satellite program, and included a group of PhD robotics students from Hokkaido University and across Sydney.
In just 90 minutes, participants built and deployed a no‑code vision quality assurance workflow—from training a classifier in Teachable Machine to running a vision‑guided pick‑and‑place task on a robot arm.
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We are delighted to welcome Bhanu Watawana as a new Research Assistant at Swinburne working with Michelle and Roshan on project 4.7 Cobot Welding.
We’re pleased to launch our Research in Focus series, featuring the contributions of our Postdoctoral and PhD researchers and the value their work is delivering to Australian manufacturing. As many of our researchers move into the final stages of their projects, this series highlights the outcomes of their work and what comes next.
Our first video features Jagannatha Charjee Pyaraka from Swinburne University of Technology. Jagan started his PhD with the Australian Cobotics Centre in July 2022 as part of the Biomimic Cobots Program and is due to submit his PhD thesis in the coming months.
Jagan’s PhD focuses on developing lightweight learning‑from‑demonstration frameworks, enabling collaborative robots to learn manipulation tasks directly from human demonstrations, even when data and compute resources are limited. His project also included industry placements with Workr and InfraBuild, applying robotics and machine‑learning techniques to real industrial challenges.
Supervisory team:
Across his candidature, Jagan has contributed to a broad range of Centre activities, including:
To learn more about Jagan’s background, publications, and projects, you can read his profile here:
Our Human-Robot Workforce researchers, Associate Professor Penny Williams and Professor Paula McDonald were at The Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ) conference at the University of Technology Sydney from 28-30th January.
Penny presented in multiple sessions including one in the ‘Technology and Worker Voice’ stream: Humanoids at Work: What will happen when workplaces are shared with human-like robots? by Melinda Laundon, Penny Williams.
The theme of this year’s conference is Shifting perspective and practice: Industrial relations in a changing world of work. This theme invites reflection and dialogue on societal impact in industrial relations scholarship and practice, and the challenges and opportunities of undertaking socially impactful research in a changing world of work.
Read more: AIRAANZ conference 2026 | AIRAANZ
Deputy Director of the Australian Cobotics Centre & QUT Professor, Professor Glenda Caldwell, has been prominently featured in a recent AMTIL article exploring how Industry 5.0 is reshaping Australia’s manufacturing landscape. The piece highlights the growing importance of cobots as industry shifts toward more human‑centred, sustainable, and adaptable production systems.
In the article, Prof Caldwell explains that while Industry 4.0 focused heavily on technological advancement, Industry 5.0 calls for a deeper understanding of the human element—placing people, their needs, and their expertise at the centre of technology design and deployment. She emphasises that effective cobot integration begins with understanding the tasks workers perform, the environment they operate in, and the challenges they face.
The AMTIL article also notes the advantages of cobots, including built‑in safety sensors and the ability to work alongside people without traditional industrial barriers, making them more accessible to Australian manufacturers of all scales. Industry experts, including Weld Australia’s Dr Cornelius van Niekerk, reinforce how these features reduce infrastructure requirements while enhancing workplace safety.
Read more:
👉 AMTIL Article
Continuing our 2025 program highlights, today we celebrate Program 3: Designing Socio‑Technical Robotic Systems led by A/Prof Müge Belek Fialho Teixeira and Dr Matthias Guertler, with postdoc Dr Alan Burden.
Here’s what stood out in 2025
Congratulations to the entire Program for another excellent year!
As we wrap up 2025, Program 2: Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) reflects on a year of strong collaboration, impactful research, and industry‑embedded outcomes that are shaping how humans and robots work together. The program led by Co-leads, Prof Markus Rittenbruch and A/Prof Jared Donovan with postdoc Dr Valeria Macalupú had an amazing year with:
Huge thanks to our researchers, HDRs, postdocs and industry partners for another year of thoughtful, human‑centred robotics research with real‑world impact.
We’re kicking off our 2025 research program highlights with Program 1 – Biomimic Cobots, led by Prof Teresa Vidal Calleja (University of Technology Sydney) and Prof Mats Isaksson (Swinburne University of Technology) with postdoc Dr Sheila Sutjipto.
In 2025, the team delivered outstanding progress in enabling robots to perceive, learn, adapt and collaborate safely with humans, demonstrating what it takes to deploy advanced robotics “in the wild” in real industrial environments.
Here’s what stood out over the last year
Congratulations to the entire Biomimic Cobots team for an exceptional year of research excellence and real‑world impact. We can’t wait to see what 2026 brings.
Undergraduate engineering students from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have spent the semester engaging hands‑on with one of the Australian Cobotics Centre’s most innovative research tools: the kinematic puppet developed by PhD researcher James Dwyer. Guided by UTS Chief Investigator A/Prof Marc Carmichael, the student cohort has been closely following James Dwyer’s published work to accurately recreate the puppet and explore its potential for real‑world industrial applications.
James’s Human–Robotic Interaction Prototyping Toolkit provides an accessible, low‑cost platform for designing and testing robot behaviours in a safe, intuitive way before transitioning concepts to actual robotic systems. You can learn more about the project here:
https://www.australiancobotics.org/project/project-2-2-human-robotic-interaction-prototyping-toolkit/
This semester, UTS students applied the toolkit to potential scenarios with industry partner Infrabuild, designing new end‑effectors that support collaborative robotics tasks in steel manufacturing environments. By iterating through physical prototypes, testing motion, and experimenting with interaction affordances, the students gained valuable experience in human‑centred design for cobotics.
The collaboration showcases the growing strength of cross‑university engagement within the Australian Cobotics Centre, with researchers, students, and industry partners all contributing to shared problem‑solving. It also highlights how research tools like James’s puppet can accelerate learning and spark innovation across multiple projects.
It’s fantastic to see this level of cross‑university collaboration in action and to see students meaningfully contributing to an industry‑aligned research challenge.
Read more on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7401580610944995330
