Author: Merryn Ballantyne

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

Congratulations to our Research Program co-Lead, Teresa Vidal Calleja who has been named as one of 2022’s Women in Robotics You Need to Know About.

Teresa leads the Biomimic Cobots program in the Centre with Mats Isaksson. The goal of the program is to allow collaborative robots to mimic humans in acquiring perception and awareness, learning, adaptation, and manipulation skills.

The 2022 list, produced by Women in Robotics, covers the globe, with the chosen ones having nationalities from the EU, UK, USA, Australia, China, Turkey, India and Kenya. A number of women come from influential companies that are household names such as NASA, ABB, GE, Toyota and the Wall Street Journal.

As the number of women on the list grows so does the combined global impact of their efforts, increasing the visibility of women in the field who may otherwise go unrecognised. This list is published to overcome the unconscious perception that women aren’t making significant contributions.

Check out the full list here: https://lnkd.in/gKwWGUZd

The ACC has welcomed a new PhD Researcher, Jacqueline Greentree.

Jacqueline is based at QUT (Queensland University of Technology) and is part of the Centre’s Human-Robot Workforce program (led by Penny Williams and greg hearn).

Jacqueline is supervised by Paula McDonald and her research is focused on how collaborative robotics are reshaping the skills required of the Advanced Manufacturing workforce.

The findings will provide new insights on the extent of collaborative robotic adoption in Advanced Manufacturing in Australia, facilitate the identification of skill requirements for the future, and will explain the real and perceived impacts of technological change on the worker.

Read more about the program and its research projects here: Human-Robot Workforce

Welcome Jacqueline!

Last week some of our team from UTS Tech Lab (Teresa Vidal Calleja, Marc Carmichael and Matthias Guertler) attended the Modern Manufacturing Expo at the Sydney showgrounds.

They spoke to many people during the expo and Marc was even interviewed by Brett Balinski from @AuManufacturing news and media.

Check out the interview and podcast below: here: https://lnkd.in/dpXRkqpp

Matthias Guertler was interviewed by Christine Powis from Industry Update magazine.

Dr Penny Williams has been awarded an ARC DECRA grant for her project ‘Automated People Management: When algorithms manage employees’.

The $458,798 project aims to explain the impact of technologies that automate people management. The three-year project is expected to commence in early 2023. We congratulate Penny on this tremendous recognition.

 

Read more: DECRA grant success – Dr Penny Williams – Centre for Decent Work & Industry (qut.edu.au)

Associate Investigator, Dr Muge Belek Fialho Teixeira was highly commended in the Digital Mover and Shaker Award category at the recent 2022 Women in Technology awards held in Brisbane on 16th September.

As a design lead in ARM Hub, her research projects include mass customised, advanced manufactured, and technology embedded aged care furniture; customized and 3d printed assistive technologies for people with spinal cord injuries; sustainable fenders for marine environments; and AR/VR adoption in Architecture Engineering and Construction(AEC) industries.

Some of the Australian Cobotics Centre and ARM Hub team went along to support Muge and celebrate the achievements of all the women who were nominated.

The annual WiT Awards celebrate excellence and recognise the valuable contribution of women and champions of change from across Queensland’s STEM community.

Check out the full list of winners here: 2022 Award Winners – Women in Technology (wit.org.au)

We are pleased to announce a new scholarship for the Centre that is funded by and also a part of CSIRO’s Collaborative Intelligence Future Science Platform. 

The Collaborative Intelligence Future Science Platform develops the science that enables human intelligence and technology to work together across multiple domains, driving sustainable productivity growth and improving both the quantity and quality of jobs for human workers.

The PhD project will conduct research into collaboration between humans and robots (or AI more generally), focusing on the impact that these collaborations have on the human’s experience of work. This impact may be both positive and negative since the collaboration allows each actor to achieve more than either could alone but also changes the role of the human worker. In addition, we need to consider work design principles, since the transformative potential of collaborative intelligence will only be realised if organisational functions and processes are adapted to reflect these new ways of working.

The project, entitled “Collaborative robots and humans’ work: human skills, attitudes and potential for motivation”, will conduct research in human-robots collaboration, in particular in the design of collaborative  robots to improve the motivating potential of work for humans and the transformative potential of artificial  intelligence and connective technology.

The project will develop tools, methodologies and processes required to integrate artificial and human intelligence and produce appropriate workflows and designs which could have a transformative impact across a wide range of industries and domains. The research will provide a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the workforce uplift that is required to realise the transformative potential of collaborative intelligence and robots.

The Phd Project will conduct research into collaboration between humans and robots (or AI more generally), focusing on the impact that these collaborations have on the motivating potential of work for humans and the skills needed by human workers.

The use of collaborative robots has the potential to affect the human’s experience of work in both positive and negative ways since the collaboration allows each actor to achieve more than either could alone but also changes the role of the human worker.  In addition, the transformative potential of artificial intelligence and connective technology is only realised when organisational functions and processes are adapted to reflect these new ways of working.

The project will be part of CSIRO’s Collaborative Intelligence Future Science Platform that will develop the science that enables human intelligence and technology to work together across multiple domains, driving sustainable productivity growth and improving both the quantity and quality of jobs for human workers. The project will develop tools, methodologies and processes required to integrate artificial and human intelligence and produce appropriate workflows and designs which could have a transformative impact across a wide range of industries and domains. The research will provide a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the workforce uplift that is required to realise the transformative potential of collaborative intelligence and robots.

Scholarship details

• A scholarship, tax exempt and indexed annually, from $34,013 per annum for a period of 3 years will be provided to the successful applicant with four weeks paid leave per year included.
• the researcher will be based at CSIRO and QUT
• the student will be enrolled at QUT and must meet QUT’s eligibility requirements

How to apply

Submit an EOI via our page if you are interested

Continuing our celebration of 1 year in operation, today we are looking at one of the key elements of the Centre – the 12 month industry placement that our postdocs and PhD researchers are required to completed during their time with the Centre.

Industry placements for our researchers are critical for the success of the Centre. Our aim is to transform Australian Manufacturing through the implementation of cobotics and, to do this, we need to understand the physical environment and constraints that our industry partners have, in order to co-design solutions that meet their needs.

All of our PhD and Postdoctoral Research Fellows will complete a total of 12 months at our industry partners over their time with the Centre. To maximise the experience and gain exposure to many different manufacturing operations and ways of working, our researchers will complete the placement across multiple industry partners and at various points throughout their time with the Centre.

Our postdoctoral researcher, Fred Sukkar, from the Biomimic Cobots program, has been a regular visitor to our Industry partner, InfraBuild, since he started with the Centre in February. We asked Fred to share some details about what he’s being doing and how he’s benefitted from working on-site at InfraBuild.

1. What are the benefits of having an industry partner linked to your research?

Having an industry partner to collaborate with is beneficial because it provides the opportunity to work on interesting research problems while having a tangible real world application of that research. For me its a great way to apply and build on my current research which focuses on giving Cobots the intelligence to carry out valuable and practical work through clever algorithms that take inspiration from the way humans carry out jobs. Another great benefit is having access to resources, such as experts in the field and a manufacturing plant test bed, that you don’t usually get in the lab.

2. What have you learnt by working with and visiting Infrabuild?

I have learnt a lot about the steel bar manufacturing process by seeing it in person at the steel mill at Rooty Hill, NSW and chatting with various workers there. I’ll be sitting inside the control room coding or looking at sensor data and workers will regularly rotate in and out. Everyone is always interested in what I’m doing and keen to give me a run down of how everything works. I have even got a lot of valuable insights and advice on how to solve the problem. The workers have a lot of first hand experience and understand different aspects of the system better than we do, so leveraging that has been invaluable.

3.  How do you approach working with different roles in the company?

Communication is the most important factor to consider when approaching people in different roles. Determining what is the necessary information to convey and conveying it in an easy to understand way is challenging but absolutely necessary in order to not overwhelm people and ensure everyone is on the same page. I found this to be really important during the project with Infrabuild because you interact with so many different people with varying backgrounds and technical skills. I have also found it necessary to constantly adapt over the project depending on the outcomes or, for example, due to people becoming more familiar with the project.