Author: Bridget Depelleport

We are thrilled to have been featured on Nine News Sydney for our research in the dynamic field of robotics aimed at managing critical infrastructure and environmental assets. Nine’s reporter, Sophie Walsh, visited the ACFR labs and interviewed our director, Prof. Ian Manchester. The story also features ARIAM partners Advanced Navigation, Reach Robotics, Hullbot and Abyss Solutions Ltd.  Sophie Walsh, experienced our cutting-edge technology first-hand during a ride around Chippendale in ACFR’s self-driving vehicle, and saw robots being developed for disaster response and space exploration. Thank you to Nine News for showcasing our work and for raising awareness of the significant potential of robotics in many industries.

Congratulations to The Australian National University (ANU) expert Professor Hanna Kurniawati, who has been appointed as the SmartSat CRC Professorial Chair for System Autonomy, Intelligence, and Decision Making. Professor Kurniawati is ARIAM Hub’s Theme Lead on Planning and Control and part of the Hub’s Executive Leadership Team.

SmartSat is Australia’s leading space research centre – where a team of Australia’s top researchers come together to spearhead the development of next generation space technologies.

“I am grateful and excited for this opportunity. Space technologies are entering a new era that will become increasingly important to our daily lives, and being in the Southern hemisphere, Australia has a geographical advantage in this domain,” she said.

Professor Kurniawati is based in the ANU School of Computing, and has significant experience in robotics, planning under uncertainty, robot motion planning, reinforcement learning, and integrated  planning and learning.

She has spent much of her career researching ways to develop decision-making technologies that would enable robots to operate more reliably and more robustly in cluttered and confined remote environments, as well as in crowded urban environments.

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Congratulations to our Deputy Director Technology & Impact, Prof. Stefan Williams, and our Theme Lead, Dr. Viorela Ila, on the award of an 2022 ARC Linkage Grant in collaboration with Hub Partner Reach Robotics. Together they have been awarded $420,000 to investigate Visual Methods for Advanced Automation of Underwater Manipulation. The research will seek to increase the autonomy of underwater robotic systems engaged in intervention and inspection tasks.

About Australian Research Council Linkage Program

The ARC Linkage Program promotes national and international research partnerships between researchers and business, industry, community organisations and other publicly funded research agencies to facilitate the transfer of skills, knowledge and ideas as a basis for securing commercial and other benefits of research.

The Linkage Projects grant opportunity supports projects which initiate or develop long term strategic research alliances to apply advanced knowledge to problems, acquire new knowledge and as a basis for securing commercial and other benefits of research.

Congratulations to our Hub Director, Professor Ian Manchester, and Hub Chief Investigator, Associate Professor Guodong Shi, the award of an ARC 2022 Discovery Project on Robust Data-Driven Control for Safety-Critical Systems.

More information here