Category: News

On the back of their recent win of the Boston Dynamics SPOT robot, we interviewed PhD researchers Michael Somerfield and Bina Rajan about their plans for the quadruple robot, including how they will modify its capabilities to enhance their workflows.

Michael: My research is directly in the field of Legged Robotics, so the spot allows me to test my research on a world-class platform.

Bina: My work is oriented around understanding the behaviour of camera blur on moving platforms. it would be interesting to understand this behaviour on a quadrupedal platform like spot.

What tasks or experiments do you envision Spot performing in your research?

At the end of 2024, ARIAM PhD researchers Michael Somerfield and Bina Rajan created the winning submission to the SafetyCulture Innovation Challenge. The competition invited university students and professional engineers to unleash their inner innovator for a chance to win a share of $5,000 in prizes, plus a Boston Dynamics Spot robot. Using the decommissioned Cape Don lighthouse vessel as a backdrop, Michael and Bina’s submission demonstrated an innovative idea for how Spot could revolutionise shipping inspection; boosting efficiency, safety, and productivity in a work environment. On March 19, the SafetyCulture team invited the winners to collect the robot in person and to tour their amazing offices in Surry Hills.

As the first off the shelf quadrupedal platform our Hub has acquired, our researchers plan to combine and utilise various sensor suites to test multi-modal data collection techniques for inspection, SLAM, 3d image reconstructions and many other ideas yet to be discovered.

Congratulations to ARIAM Chief Investigator, Dr. Donald Dansereau on the successful award of a NVIDIA Academic Grant to support his research project on Physics-Based Simulation for Robotic Vision in Extreme Environments. This research explores the use of physics-based simulations to design advanced imaging systems for robotic vision in extreme environments such as space and underwater. By leveraging NVIDIA‘s cutting-edge ray-tracing and deep learning platforms, the project aims to develop new kinds of sensors for challenging tasks like satellite inspection and underwater mapping. This innovative work has the potential to enhance robotic performance in critical applications, including infrastructure monitoring and environmental conservation.

The ELO₂ Consortium—co-led by EPE Oceania and Lunar Outpost Oceania—has been selected by the Australian Space Agency to build Australia’s first lunar rover, nicknamed “Roo-ver.” This $42 million national project will harness the innovation and expertise of universities, SMEs, and industry partners from every corner of Australia to design, manufacture, and operate the rover right here at home.

ARIAM CI’s Ian Manchester, Salah Sukkarieh, Thierry Peynot, Niko Sünderhauf and Dimity Miller are all involved and will be contributing advanced robotics technologies to this mission. This milestone showcases Australian ingenuity on the global stage, sparks new jobs and research opportunities in the growing space industry, and strengthens our contribution to NASA’s Artemis Program, with “Roo-ver” set to be remotely operated on the Moon from Australia. Stay tuned as we embark on this once-in-a-lifetime mission to put an Aussie-made rover on the lunar surface and usher in a new era of national space leadership!

We are delighted to announce a significant new partnership for the ARIAM Research Hub!

In an extensive multi-year collaboration led by Prof. Salah Sukkarieh, ARIAM will join forces with roboticists, AI experts, and plant breeders from Rijk Zwaan to revolutionize crop breeding operations. This partnership will leverage cutting-edge robotics, advanced sensing, and digital twin technologies.

Rijk Zwaan, a global leader in vegetable breeding, is a family-owned company renowned for its innovation and research excellence. With over 4,000 employees, Rijk Zwaan dedicates 30% of its annual revenue to R&D, driving global advancements in agriculture. This collaboration is a fusion of innovative research, technical expertise, and practical application. By bridging the gap between academia and industry, we aim to deliver
impactful agricultural robotic and AI solutions. Our goal is to enhance crop breeding efficiency, improve sustainability, and address future food production challenges.

We believe that Rijk Zwaan will be a fantastic addition to the ARIAM partner cohort and there are strong research synergies with current projects that we look forward to exploring further.

Congratulations to Prof. Stefan Williams, Associate Prof. Thierry Peynot and Dr. Donald Dansereau on the award of their Australian Research Council Discovery Project: Introspection for Resilient Robotic Perception in Challenging Environments.

Their project aims to enhance robotic perception in challenging environments such as murky water and extreme weather where state-of-the-art approaches fail. By developing new representations and processing architectures capable of introspection, it enables robots to recognise and adapt to their own perceptual limitations.

The expected outcomes are robotic systems with unprecedented resilience in challenging application domains like infrastructure monitoring and autonomous driving. This should bring economic benefit to Australia with broad robotic deployments in environmental monitoring and understanding of critical marine and terrestrial ecosystems, parks, and infrastructure, and improved mobility for the elderly and disabled.

To round up the year, we hosted our first Annual Conference and Research Showcase at the University of Sydney’s Business School, on November 25^th. The day was a great success and provided our research team with the opportunity to present their research projects, via lightning talks and poster presentations and discuss their opportunities as well as challenges. We hope that this event will help foster broader collaboration across the Hub.

The conference was opened by Prof. Julie Cairney, Interim DVCR at the University of Sydney and ARIAM Board Member.  A special thanks to Dr. Michael Bewley, VP of AI & Computer Vision – Nearmap, for an inspiring presentation on the evolution of AI at Nearmap. Our Director, Prof. Ian Manchester, shared key achievements and highlights for 2024, Prof. Niko Sünderhauf introduced us to exciting innovations in robotics research, and Prof. Stefan Williams facilitated a strategy session to co-design the next set of projects in our collaborative demonstrator program.

The event was a wonderful way to end an exciting year of research collaboration and to celebrate our collective achievements. We look forward to more opportunities to come together as a team, including our partners and key stakeholders, in 2025.

In collaboration with the Australian Centre for Robotics (ACFR) and MySpaceMedia, we hosted our annual industry-networking sundowner event in
October at the ACFR Labs, University of Sydney. We were delighted to welcome Lt. Gen Larry James as our keynote speaker, and listen to guest panellists Aude Vignelles, Michal Weiss & Navinda Kottege. They were joined by our Director, Prof. Ian Manchester and Prof. Salah Sukkarieh, to discuss Cross Sector Operations and Robotics and its applications in the space, agriculture and defence sectors.

ACFR PhD students Jack Naylor and Tara Bartlett presented their respective research projects in Building New Representations, Algorithms and Sensors to Help Platforms Operate Safely and Robustly in Space (Jack) and Footstep Planning For Agile Bipedal Robots (Tara).

It was great to be joined by so many current and emerging members of the Australian robotics community.

Last week ARIAM Research Hub members immersed themselves in the history of the MV Cape Don for two days of data collection and vessel analysis.

Using the Emesent Hovermap and Leica fixed scanner, our researchers surveyed the interior and exterior of the vessel; enabling us to develop a model for use by our researchers & partners in simulations and future robotics operations.

Data will also be shared with The Sea Heritage Foundation to report on the condition of the upper and lower decks; assisting them with the monitoring and maintenance of the MV Cape Don.

ARIAM Hub Researchers joined by the Reach Robotics team, kicked off our Robotic Capability Demonstrator Program  on August 28-29th on the MV Cape Don at the Old Coal Loader Centre, Waverton. Despite high winds, our researchers and collaborators were able to deploy ROVs to conduct trials and collect the first datasets of the MV Cape Don vessel. The Reach team collected sonar data and stereo imagery, conducting a brief survey of the prop and hull. The data collected during this trip plus other models including those collected by Trendspek will lay the foundation to create a digital twin of the vessel. It provided the Cape Don crew with their first opportunity to get a glimpse of the current condition of the ship’s hull.

We will be returning in October 2024 to perform new forms of surveying the above water areas of the vessel using the Emesent Hovermap LiDAR scanner.