Unmanned robots

Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte, who is one of our Federation Fellows is leading our new Centre of Excellence in Autonomous Systems, with the help of a $10 million Commonwealth Government grant. Research undertaken for the centre could lead to a whole new industry for Australia.

The Centre of Excellence in Autonomous Systems is focusing on building vehicles for unstructured applications such as unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance in hostile environments. This involves a mixture of unmanned air vehicles, and ground vehicles.

The Centre is working on 'intelligent' agents that can interact with human controllers and can figure out where to deploy resources, and help with planning and coordination. Very similar applications scenarios occur in search and rescue, defence, agriculture, bushfire fighting and more.

This will not just be a single robot performing a task, but a collection of autonomous agents interacting and working together to deliver a capability. The research will be undertaken in the areas of perception, control and systems engineering, and will enhance the development of a new autonomous systems industry in Australia.

We have the opportunity to build the largest and most successful autonomous systems research group in the world. As well as the potential to use this technology in safeguarding Australia, we have a window in which to build a whole new industry in Australia.