Category: Researchers

The Australian Cobotics Centre has some incredibly E.P.I.C. researchers. Each month we will be profiling a different researcher.

Nisar Ahmed Channa is a PhD Researcher in the Human-Robot Workforce research program at the Australian Cobotics Centre. His research interests lie primarily in the areas of technology and human resource management, industry 4.0, and organisational behaviour.

We interviewed Nisar recently to find out more about why he does what he does.

• Tell us a bit about yourself and your research with the Centre?

I am a PhD researcher working on program 5.2: Manufacturing jobs of the future. This program aims to explore current state of literature on Cobots-workforce nexus, challenges associated with adoption of Cobots for both human workers and manufacturing companies, and implications of Cobots for manufacturing companies. My research helps to address challenges associated with the adoption of Cobots in manufacturing and is of vital importance for both academics and policy makers for workforce policies and practices needed to manage human and non-human resources. Recently, we have completed two studies on the current state of industry, speculative, and commentary sources in addressing the impact of Cobots on future jobs and employment. As a result of this, we developed a framework which helps manufacturing companies to enhance their organizational capabilities to adopt Cobots. The outcomes of this program will pave the way for Cobots to supplement human workers in assembly lines.

• Why did you decide to be a part of the Australian Cobotics Centre?

The main reason behind this was the fact that Australian Cobotics Centre provide me with an opportunity to work with prominent scholars in this area and to pursue my research interests in this field. Working with centre will also allow me to interact with the industry and to get firsthand knowledge about the workforce issues in manufacturing sector and to work on solutions to those issues. It will be an opportunity to contribute into an effort to enhance manufacturing capacity and increase Australia’s manufacturing potential.

• What project are you most proud of throughout your career and why?

One of the projects on which I worked during my masters was on how organizations going through adversities and uncertainties caused by changes in external environments can bounce back from such situations and remain competitive by developing capacity of resilience through strategic alignment of resources. At that time, the industry was going through a variety of challenges caused by global economic crises. This was one of the initial attempts endeavoured by the academia to provide policy guidelines to industry and government on how to tackle such crises and to remain competitive. I am further expanding this work in my PhD and research I am doing with ACC.

• What do you hope the long-term impact of your work will be?

The research I am doing with ACC will lead to address issues related with adoption of Cobots in manufacturing industry. To deal with issues related to unavailability of skilled workforce, manufacturing companies are automating their manufacturing processes and adopting Cobots to meet the unavailability of skilled workforce. However, the adoption of Cobots in manufacturing brings new challenges in form of resistance from employees and workforce policies and practices needed to manage human and non-human resources. I am optimistic that my work will help Australian manufacturing companies to address these challenges associated with adoption of Cobots.

• Aside from your research, what topic could you give an hour-long presentation on with little to no preparation?

Apart from my current research at ACC, history is a topic which always fascinate me. I can easily present on topics like political history of South Asia for hours.

Collaboration and information sharing across our research programs and disciplines is vital for our Centre’s success. To support this, we ask that all our PhD Researchers present a short project introduction within their first 6 months of starting their PhD.

Earlier in the month, we heard from Jacqueline Greentree, Nisar Ahmed Channa and Nadimul Haque. Each provided an overview of their project’s goals and objectives, proposed methodology, and expected outcomes. We will continue to share updates on their progress as their research continues. In the meantime, you can find out more about what they hope to achieve HERE

 

 

The Australian Cobotics Centre has some incredibly E.P.I.C. researchers. Each month we will be profiling a different researcher.

Alan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Designing Socio-Technical Robotic Systems Program (Program 3). His research works to embed holistic design as a critical factor in creating a seamless integration of humans and machines working together. The aim of this is to improve human work conditions and environments, increase effectiveness and efficiencies in production, as well as workforce acceptance.

We interviewed Alan recently to find out more about why he does what he does.

• Tell us a bit about yourself and your research with the Centre?

My background is in three areas – science, architecture, and in human factors design. I worked in all three industries, and I try to bring the experiences to my research. In the ACC, I research socio-technical systems – which focus on the connections between people, the technologies they use, their activities and the use of space. This area of research is growing rapidly along with other areas linked to cobotics. The long-term impact of my research will add to the knowledge and help forge a future direction for interactions between humans and robots, particularly within workspaces.

• Why did you decide to be a part of the Australian Cobotics Centre?

The curiosity of new technology mainly. I wanted to work with a multidisciplinary team looking at areas I was also interested in exploring. I am interested in emerging technologies such as extended reality (XR) and the next generations of those technologies. Some of these technologies allow connections between our physical environments and the digital realm, with the digital realm becoming incredibly represented as a 3D world. These technologies aren’t just the domain of game design, computer science, or engineering – but increasingly a blend of all research disciplines. I think that’s why so many of us now collaborate with different researchers and industries from diverse fields – because the technology has the potential to impact all of us.

• What project are you most proud of throughout your career and why?

I don’t dwell on many past projects, but some are memorable for a few reasons. I’ve done a few projects that could be considered interactive or artistic installations, and it was interesting to see how people engage with something you’ve designed – especially when it’s not the way you thought anyone would try. It’s always surprising and teaches you to squash any assumptions.

• What do you hope the long-term impact of your work will be?

I hope my work will help the frameworks we need for cobotics. Particularly when bringing cobots into existing workplaces. That will be where most cobots will have the most impact in Australia. In the future, I also believe there is a capacity to research the effects that cobotics and energy technology will have on workplace architecture, human well-being, and user experience. Those are areas I’d like to be involved in going forward.

• Aside from your research, what topic could you give an hour-long presentation on with little to no preparation?

Haha, probably a short list of things considered trivial or geeky. Anything technological, English Premier League, The Simpsons (the ‘golden era’ of seasons 2 to 10), Lord of the Rings or 80s movies. Closer to research, like data visualisation, and graphic design, and could talk about that for a bit.

Welcome to Yuan Liu, our newest PhD Researcher working on the Augmented and Virtual Reality in Collaborative Robotics project, as part of the Designing Socio-technical Robotic Systems program supervised by Glenda Caldwell.

Yuan’s research will investigate co-design and development of immersive visualisation (i.e. augmented reality, virtual reality) approaches to simulate, prototype, and evaluate products and spaces for human-robot collaboration within real-world manufacturing processes and contexts. The benefits of using immersive visualisation approaches will include the ability to evaluate before, during, and after different collaborative robotic settings and necessary manufacturing process and spatial adaptations have been made.

Yuan’s current research interests will focus on multimedia technologies (Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality) and human computer interaction.

Welcome Yuan!

Read more about the program.

Welcome to Louis Fernandez! Louis is a PhD Researcher working on our Multi-modal Human Robot Collaboration project, which is part of the Human Robot Interaction program. He is based at UTS and supervised by Marc Carmichael.

Louis’s research will develop a vocabulary of multimodal HRC interaction techniques to accomplish tasks such as specifying the intended path for the robotic tool to follow by manually drawing onto the work surface, instructing the robot through naturalistic speech and gesture, and directly sensing feedback on the state of a robotic task through visual, auditory, and haptic feedback.

The project will also study the needs for human robot interaction in an authentic work context to make sure that the interaction techniques are appropriate for use in that setting.

Welcome Louis!

Read more about the program.

The Australian Cobotics Centre has some incredibly E.P.I.C. researchers. Each month we will be profiling a different researcher.

Fred (Fouad) Sukkar is a robotics researcher with several years of experience in the areas of agricultural robotics and industrial automation. Fred has been working on developing algorithms to enable natural and safe human-robot collaborative environments and is based at UTS.

We interviewed Fred recently to find out more about why he does what he does.

• Tell us a bit about yourself and your research with the Centre?

I am the postdoctoral research fellow for the Biomimic Cobots program which aims to enable robot-human collaborative work environments. My work helps to make cobots (collaborative robots) more intelligent through bioinspiration in order to carry out practical and valuable work in the real world. Recently, as part of my work with program 1 we developed a first proof of concept robot design for identifying and removing short bars from a conveyor line for our industry partner Infrabuild. The design of the system was inspired by the way workers currently carry out this task. The broader aim of my work is to enable robots that behave naturally when performing tasks with and around humans and to make their jobs safer. This is an important step for robots to become widely adopted and embraced by the manufacturing industry.

• Why did you decide to be a part of the Australian Cobotics Centre?

The ACC was a great opportunity to pursue my research interests alongside other prominent academics in the field. It was also an exciting opportunity to be a part of a first-of-its-kind effort to put Australia on the map for excellence and innovative research in manufacturing. The work with the centre extends my PHD research which was on robotic manipulator planning and perception.  In particular, I developed principled algorithms to increase reliability and efficiency while having some practical guarantees about the robot’s behaviour. Also, this role will be an opportunity to translate my research to industry and also explore some of my future research such as leveraging robotic learning methods to improve performance and solve a wider range of problems.

• What project are you most proud of throughout your career and why?

The work I did during my PhD on multi-robot active perception was a culmination of ideas to different problems I had been thinking about and working on for a long time while being in both academia and industry. It was the first real hardware demonstration of a system of its scale and complexity running in real time. The resulting paper titled “Multi-Robot Region-of-Interest Reconstruction with Dec-MCTS” won a best paper award at ICRA, the largest international robotics conference. The fundamental ideas behind this work are currently being used in the research I am working on with ACC.

• What do you hope the long-term impact of your work will be?

My hope is that my work with the ACC will lead to truly human-robot collaborative work environments where robots improve the quality of life of workers, whether it be a safer workplace or empowering them to carry out tasks that they would not have been able to do otherwise. I also aim to establish myself as a leading researcher in the field with the help of my excellent collaborators in the Centre. 

• Aside from your research, what topic could you give an hour-long presentation on with little to no preparation?

Apart from robotics, music is a huge passion of mine and I could easily give a presentation on one or many of my favourite bands such as Radiohead, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Mars Volta, Muse or Silverchair (just to name a few).

The Australian Cobotics Centre has some incredibly E.P.I.C. researchers. Each month we will be profiling a different researcher. Dr Melinda Laundon is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with our Human Robot Workforce program and is based at QUT.

We sat down with Melinda recently to find out more about why she does what she does.

• Tell us a bit about yourself and your research with the Centre?

I’m part of the Human-Robot Workforce research program. We have a broad scope to research the changing skills, capabilities, and composition of the Australian manufacturing workforce, including the influence of cobots on jobs, workers and organisations. My research is investigating attraction and retention of manufacturing workers, from the perspective of sector stakeholders, managers and the workers themselves. I hope it will help to understand how advanced technologies can change the way we attract people to careers in manufacturing, and help to address some of the crucial skills shortage issues in Australian manufacturing.

• Why did you decide to be a part of the Australian Cobotics Centre?

I jumped at the chance to work with great researchers from many different disciplines, as well as the opportunity to engage with industry partners on issues that are immediately important and relevant. I could also see strong parallels between the Cobotics Centre’s commitment to sustainable growth and quality jobs in manufacturing, and QUT’s Centre for Decent Work & Industry, where I co-lead a research stream on sustainable transitions between education and work.

• What project are you most proud of throughout your career and why?

I’m proud of my work with the Australian Research Council and universities to help academics and PhD students to plan for and achieve an impact on society from their research.  I’m also proud of my roles as a mentor and assessor for Higher Education Academy (HEA) Fellowship schemes at QUT and other universities. HEA Fellowship emphasises the value of reflection, professional development to improve student learning, and sharing good practice with colleagues – all of which apply to research as well as university teaching.

• What do you hope the long-term impact of your work will be?

I came to academia after a policy career in the Australian Public Service, including stints with the Australian Communications and Media Authority and the Australian Research Council. My PhD in management examined employees’ fairness perceptions at work, especially in relation to reward and recognition. I started my academic career with the intention of not only doing good scholarly research but also having a practical impact on organisations and public policy. I hope that my research helps to inform policy and practice by contributing deeper understandings of workers’ perceptions and needs.

• Aside from your research, what topic could you give an hour-long presentation on with little to no preparation?

This is a tough one! I might have to break it up into a few smaller lectures on different topics including Scottish and Australian crime fiction, Australian slow fashion labels, and music played on Triple J in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

 

The Centre has been lucky enough to have two undergraduate students from QUT, Sabrin Daniel and Melanie Lay, working on projects with us over the last couple of months as part of QUT’s Vacation Research Experience Scheme (VRES).

VRES allows students the opportunity to participate in a research project for approximately 6-10 weeks. This opportunity is particularly valuable if they’re interested in pursuing a research degree! 

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We sat down with Sabrin and asked her a little more about her experience:

 

Why did you decide to participate in QUT’s VRES?

Throughout my degree, I’ve had a particular interest in Social and Organisational Psychology. As a result, I thought this was the best way to gain insight into organisational issues such as teamwork and productivity, as well as gaining experience in conducting a literature review. Moreover, it is clear that post COVID-19, advancements in technology is changing the way businesses meet client and consumer expectations, therefore I was curious to understand how this would impact me as a HR professional. Specifically, how HR will need to adapt its policies and processes to support companies in this transition.

What did you learn that you think will be most useful in your future work or studies? 

The process in identifying patterns within the literature and being able to make appropriate conclusions about their impact to the topic at hand was a great skill that I learnt. I believe that this will help me in my future studies. As well, this is a skill that helps to identify what exists in the literature and what the gaps are to be able to implement appropriate policies and HR practices. Specifically in my research, a common consensus is that human-robot collaboration (HRC) requires commitment, capability and fulfilment and issues such as communication, trust and interdependency can hinder HRC. As a result, reading the literature allowed me to understand how HR professionals can address these issues which will be useful for me in the future.

What did you enjoy most about your project? 

I thoroughly enjoyed attending the Australian Cobotics Centre (ACC) launch, as I was able to hear industry partners speak about how cobots present opportunities for their industries, along with the anticipated challenges. Additionally, I was fortunate enough to be able to do a site visit at Urban Arts Precinct (UAP) with my mentors, Melinda Laundon and Greg Hearn. Both of these events helped in providing context for me to understand my research. Finally, I was fortunate enough to have mentors that provided me with resources to understand an efficient and systematic approach to conducting a literature. I believe their feedback and guidance throughout the process made this VRES project thoroughly enjoyable.

What would be the next steps in your project if it was to continue? 

The next step in the process is to identify and focus research questions based on the findings of my research.

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Meet the VRES Students

Sabrin Daniel worked with the Human-Robot Workforce research program. Her research focuses on Work crews and cobots: the future of work. Specifically, a literature review on, trends in cobotic adoption, how team dynamics will be impacted and the possible advantages and challenges to cobotic adoption trends in. She is currently an undergraduate at QUT studying a dual degree; a Bachelor of Behavioural Science (Psychology) and a Bachelor of Business (Human Resource Management Major).

Melanie Lay worked with the Designing Socio-Technical Robotic Systems Program. Her research aims to create digital twins to support human-robot collaboration. The outcome of this will include modelled 3D assets which can be used to digitally simulate a real-world manufacturing environment. She is currently an undergraduate student at QUT, studying a double degree of Bachelor of Design (Architecture)/Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics).

 

We’d like to officially welcome our newly appointed Chief Investigator, Müge Belek Fialho Teixeira to our Centre. Muge will be replacing Anjali who was the driving force behind the creation of our Manufacturing Floor of the Future video.

Müge is a creative maker, designer and transdisciplinary researcher, specializing in advanced manufacturing, digital fabrication, and parametric design.

She has worked with prominent architectural firms such as Zaha Hadid Architects, taught at several institutions including QUT (Queensland University of Technology), The University of Queensland, Istanbul Technical University, and Architectural Association (AA) Visiting Schools. She also has multiple publications in peer reviewed books and journals interviews, presented in many international conferences such as CAADRIA (Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia).

Currently, Müge is a Design Lead at ARM Hub (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing) and a Senior Lecturer in the QUT Faculty of Engineering (FoE), School of Architecture and Built Environment (ABE) Interior Architecture. She was a Chief Investigator and a post-doctoral researcher at QUT in Design Robotics Project funded by IMCRC (Innovative Manufacturing Corporate Research Centre), that partnered with RMIT and UAP. She holds a BSc. in Architecture, a MSc. on “Collaborative Design Studio Environments” from Istanbul Technical University (ITU), and a MArch from Architectural Association School of Architecture Design Research Laboratory (AADRL). She holds a PhD focused on Trans-Architectural Design Paradigm, during which she studied for two years with Marcos Novak in University of California Santa Barbara, Translab. She is also the cofounder of [f]FLAT, an environment to research and develop design and media art works.

Her main research interests are in the areas of Transdisciplinary Design Research, Phenomenology of Perception, Multimodal Spaces and Pancomputational Design Strategies. She is interested in creating an understanding of our world out of our natural attitude through sensory experiences of space that are created using computational and digital strategies. She constantly looks for ways to expand the body of knowledge through transdisciplinary studies/thinking in design through making. Her understanding on the “world of making” is based on constant experimentation and pushing the boundaries of current discourses through rigorous applied research.