Category: News

Continuing our celebration of 1 year in operation, today we are looking at one of the first projects of the Centre – the Shorts project with InfraBuild. The project is just about to complete its first phase in which a proof of concept has been completed.

The “Shorts” project with Infrabuild aims to improve the health and safety of steel factory workers by utilising a Cobot (collaborative robot) to remove off-spec steel bars from the production line. Currently, a worker performs this job which requires repetitively monitoring and throwing fast moving, heavy, hot steel bars off of a conveyor which poses an inherent risk of injury.

Infrabuild’s production line is unique, in that they produce a wide range of steel bars with different shapes and sizes. While this makes them unique capability-wise globally, current off-the-shelf solutions for automating this detection and removal process cannot deal with the variety of bars. Hence, our researchers and engineers are aiming to develop a flexible system using a Cobot with inbuilt and external sensors that shifts away from traditional automation approaches and can adapt to the different steel bars that they manufacture – even new ones in the future – while working safely around workers.

The project had two distinct phases of initial work to prove that a cobot could complete the task:

1. The identification of the shortest bar in the group via an automated system
2. The use of a cobot to remove the bar from a moving conveyor belt

Benefits

• providing safer working environment for their staff by removing humans from the dangerous part of the process
• potential for higher production efficiency as the system can run at all hours

Project Team

• Andrew Thomas, InfraBuild
• Mark Christianson, InfraBuild
• Fred Sukkar, Australian Cobotics Centre Postdoctoral Research Fellow (UTS)
• Dasun Gunasinghe, Australian Cobotics Centre Lead Engineer (QUT)
• Gavin Suddrey, Australian Cobotics Centre Engineer (QUT)
• Teresa Vidal-Calleja, Australian Cobotics Centre Research Program Lead (UTS)
• Jonathan Roberts, Australian Cobotics Centre Director

Today marks the completion of our first year of operation!

Over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time understanding the challenges of our industry partners (InfraBuild, Cook Medical APAC, Weld Australia, B&R Enclosures, IR4 PTY LTD and ARM Hub (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing)) to ensure we can deliver research impact in areas matter most.

In celebration of our incredible first year, over the coming weeks, we will be sharing our key achievements and highlights from the past 12 months.

This is all ahead of our official launch by the Australian Research Council, which will be take place in December. Our launch event will be a showcase of the impact of our Centre’s research on Australian Manufacturing so far and a taster of what we have planned in future!

Thank you to our researchers and industry partners for their enthusiasm, engagement and commitment to collaboration. The next 4 years, and beyond, are looking very bright!

On 25th July and 8th August,  researchers from the Centre (Glenda Caldwell, Greg Hearn, Penny Williams, Stine Johansen, Melinda Laundon and Alan Burden) visited B & R Enclosures to conduct a survey with their employees and to facilitate an introductory cobotics workshop. The survey will provide insights into worker perceptions of new technology at work, including cobotics, to help inform our Human Robot Workforce research program’s specific topic areas.

The workshop included many of the staff who will be involved in our projects and provided an opportunity to priotitise and understand key challenges within the space. Thanks B & R for having us and for being so open with the team.

We are looking forward to sharing updates on these projects, linked to our Designing Socio-technical Robotic Systems program, as they progress.

Congratulations to our ‘Human-Robot Workforce’ researchers, co-lead Dr Penny Williams and Chief Investigator Prof Paula McDonald on being awarded the SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence in the Work, Employment and Society journal.

The prize is awarded annually to one paper in each of the BSA’s prestigious journals: Cultural Sociology, Sociological Research Online, Sociology and Work, Employment and Society and is awarded to the paper published in the previous year’s volume judged to represent innovation or excellence in the field.

Their paper, Means of Control in the Organization of Digitally Intermediated Care Work, can be found here: Means of Control in the Organization of Digitally Intermediated Care Work – Paula McDonald, Penny Williams, Robyn Mayes, 2021 (sagepub.com)

2022 Winners

Work, Employment and Society

• Paula McDonald, Penny Williams, Robyn Mayes – Means of Control in the Organization of Digitally Intermediated Care Work, Volume: 35 issue: 5, page(s): 872-890

Sociology

• Insa Koch, Mark Fransham, Sarah Cant, Jill Ebrey, Luna Glucksberg, Mike Savage – Social Polarisation at the Local Level: A Four-Town Comparative Study on the Challenges of Politicising Inequality in Britain, Volume 55, issue 1

Cultural Sociology

• Please watch this space for details.

Sociological Research Online

• Please watch this space for details.

 

We are pleased to announce that the ARM Hub (and Australian Cobotics Centre) will be hosting Dr Steph Hutchison through an Australian Network for Art & Technology (ANAT) Residency over the second half of 2022.

ANAT’s prestigious flagship program has supported creative research collaborations between more than 100 artists and scientists, since it was established in 2004.

ANAT Synapse involves Australian science organisations hosting artists in residence, leading to profound artistic and professional development for the participants, while also building a sustainable support base for interdisciplinary creative collaboration in Australia.

The Project entitled, Cobotic Improvisations, draws on dance improvisation and choreographic methodologies to research how humans might predict the movement of their robot collaborators. The ARM Hub and the Australian Cobotics Centre have the potential to benefit from the embodied practice methods and viewing human-robot collaboration through a new lens – choreographic, improvisation and embodied practice. The capacity of choreographic and dance improvisational methods enable Steph to quickly prototype and perform different scenarios. And, the sensitivity of the dancer to read the relationships within the environment have the potential to inform interaction and test the thresholds of comfortability of both humans and robots in close collaborative environments. Steph’s work will help the fundamental research in how humans can predict how a robot is about to move, which is a very under investigated issue in robotics.

The project is closely linked to the Centre’s Human-Robot Interaction program.

A Life-Cycle Framework to Manage Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange in Open Organisation

 

We are very proud to announce the Centre’s first official publication authored by the Centre’s Open Innovation Team – Dr Matthias Guertler, former CI Prof Nico Adams, A/Prof Glenda Caldwell and A/Prof Jared Donovan.

The paper was accepted as part of the International DESIGN Conference held from 23-26th May. The paper presents and evaluates the first part of a framework to manage successful collaboration and knowledge exchange across the entire life cycle an Open Organisation (OO).

 

You can read the full paper here: Design Conference Paper Template (cambridge.org)

We are sad to announce the departure of two of our Program co-Leads from Swinburne University of Technology. Professor XiaoQi Chen is moving to South China University of Technology where he will be the new Dean of the School of Intelligent Engineering. Professor Sally McArthur is moving to Deakin University where she will be Director of the Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM). Thank you XiaoQi and Sally for your input and support in shaping the Centre so far. We wish you the best in your new roles. In their places, we welcome Dr Michelle Dunn, Dr John McCormick and Assoc Prof Chris McCarthy to the Australian Cobotics Centre. Dr Michelle Dunn will take over the co-leadership of program 4 with Dr Lee Clemon from UTS and Assoc Prof Mats Isaksson will become co-lead of Program 1 with Prof Teresa Vidal-Calleja from UTS.

We would like to officially welcome our first PhD students to the Centre.

Baris Balci, is based at QUT and his project is part of the Biomimic Cobots Program. Baris received his BSc degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Ozyegin University in 2018. During his undergraduate studies, he was a research assistant at OzU Robotics Lab where he worked on medical robotics, haptics, and planetary rovers. His current research interests include robotic manufacturing and physical human-robot interaction.

Jagannatha Pyaraka is based at Swinburne and his project is part of the Biomimic Cobots Program. Jagannatha received his Bachelor of Engineering degree from GITAM Deemed University in 2018 and Masters degree in Mechatronics, Robotics and Automation Engineering in 2021 from Swinburne University of Technology. Following his undergraduate degree, he worked as a Senior QA Automation Engineer at NTT DATA Services. Jagan is excited to continue to work  in the field of Robotics/Automation that serves and inspires society in leading a simple and better quality of life.

The Australian Cobotics Centre’s Associate PhD Student, Marisa Bucolo, was recently featured in the Queensland University of Technology News as one of the QUT Robotics Researchers teaching Spot new tricks. Spot is an agile mobile robot that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility, allowing you to automate routine inspection tasks and data capture safely, accurately, and frequently.

Bucolo, working with Professor Matt Dunbabin, Centre Director Jonathan Roberts and Program 2 Co-lead Jared Donovan, is using Spot to study how robots can signal their intentions to people.

Click below to read the full article titled ‘QUT robotic researchers teaching Spot new tricks’ the – Queensland University of Technology News.

Read the full article here