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Month: December 2024

2024 Industry Symposium and Cobot mini-Expo

Posted on by Merryn Ballantyne

The Australian Cobotics Centre successfully hosted its first Industry Symposium and Mini-Expo on Thursday, 5th December 2024, at the QUT Kelvin Grove campus in Brisbane. This engaging event, sponsored by ARM Hub AI Adopt Centre and the Queensland Government’s Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Manufacturing and Regional and Rural Development, brought together over 100 manufacturers, researchers, and industry professionals to explore the latest advancements in advanced manufacturing technologies and discuss the evolving role of humans in the future of manufacturing.

Event Highlights

Keynote talk

Professor Cori Stewart, CEO of ARM Hub gave a keynote talk about the current state of Australian manufacturing and how AI can enhance productivity.

Industry talks

During the event, we heard from industry partners of the Centre about their experiences of cobots and related technology:

 

Panel Discussion: “The Future of Australian Manufacturing: From AI to Humanoids, Where Does the Human Fit?”

One of the standout moments of the event was the panel discussion facilitated by Professor Jonathan Roberts, Director of the Australian Cobotics Centre. Panelists included:

  • Dr Cornelis van Niekerk, Weld Australia
  • Associate Professor Penny Williams, QUT Centre for Decent Work and Industry and Australian Cobotics Centre
  • Dr Sue Keay, Robotics Australia Group
  • Richard (Ric) Pruss, Workr Labs

This lively discussion, facilitated by Centre Director, Professor Jonathan Roberts, explored the transformative impact of technologies like AI and humanoid robots on manufacturing. The panel also addressed the importance of maintaining a human-centered approach in an increasingly automated industry, sparking thought-provoking dialogue among attendees.

Mini-Expo

The mini-expo was a highlight for many participants, offering hands-on experiences with cobotic technologies. Live research demonstrations and stands from exhibitors including DCISIV Technolgogies, Queensland XR Hub, ARM Hub AI Adopt Centre, the Queensland Government’s Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Manufacturing and Regional and Rural Development showcased the potential of these innovations to enhance productivity, improve workplace safety, and support the competitiveness of Australian manufacturers.

Looking Ahead

Events like this symposium play a crucial role in strengthening industry connections and disseminating research outcomes.

For those who couldn’t attend, stay tuned for future events and opportunities to engage with the Centre’s groundbreaking work. Check out our program and project pages to learn more about our ongoing projects and upcoming initiatives.

We extend our gratitude to all speakers, panelists, and attendees who made the 2024 Industry Symposium a resounding success.

 

ARTICLE: How Vocational Education and Training (VET) looks to meet the skills needs of the advanced Manufacturing Sector

Posted on by Katherine Christensen

As manufacturing moves to more advanced methods of production that utilises technologies such as cobots, vocational education and training (VET) providers are under increasing pressure to develop and deliver training that meets the evolving needs of the advanced manufacturing sector. This article uses the notion of employability to present three themes emerging from my research to unpack how skills are perceived and understood by those involved in provision and delivery of vocational education for advanced manufacturing.

Readiness: Laying the Groundwork for Success

In courses like Electrotechnology, higher-level math and literacy are prerequisites for success. VET providers look to support students with a range of programs including in class support to help bridge literacy, numeracy and digital abilities gaps of new students, ensuring they are better equipped to handle complex technical training.

Teachers are critical to ensuring readiness. As industries increasingly shift in the use and application of technology, trainers and training providers need to also keep pace but may lack familiarity with modern technologies such as robotics and automation. Investment in teacher development is essential to ensure they can deliver training that meets the current demands of industry.

VET providers must also ensure that their training equipment and facilities reflect the new technological landscape. This can be a significant hurdle, as systemic factors related to capital expenditure for public providers often restrict the ability to invest in advanced tools and machinery, requiring support from industry partners.

Adaptation: Responding to Changing Skills Needs

Adaptation underscores the importance of providers’ ability to respond to the changing skills needs of the workforce. While VET institutions recognize the need to evolve, the process of revising training packages is often slowed by conflicting industry interests and other stakeholder agendas.

To counter this, VET providers have increasingly turned to alternative forms of training. Microcredentials have emerged as flexible solutions to upskill or reskill workers in emerging areas like autonomous technologies and robotics. These shorter, more targeted programs can be developed quickly and are designed to address specific industry needs, even if they fall outside the scope of formal qualifications. Institutions are also offering hybrid courses that combine in-person and online elements, allowing workers to access training more flexibly. This adaptability is crucial as industries face rapid technological advancements and a need for workers with specialized skills.

Collaboration: Bridging the Gap Between Education and Industry

Collaboration emphasises the importance of partnerships between educational institutions, industry, and government to effectively meet the workforce’s evolving needs, and ensure that training is relevant and up to industry standards.

New initiatives like higher apprenticeships, which combine trade qualifications with university degrees, are emerging. These programs require careful coordination between VET and university sectors to ensure that students receive the necessary support and meet the varying requirements of both systems.

Industry partnerships also extend beyond course design to include equipment sharing and resource pooling. Industry partners help to overcome capital investment limitations of VET institutions by providing the latest equipment such as cobots. This reciprocal arrangement helps both parties. Industry partners gain access to skilled workers trained on the latest equipment, while VET providers can offer students hands-on experience with tools and equipment used in workplaces.

Moving Forward

Through readiness, adaptation, and collaboration VET providers can better prepare learners for the future workforce. Ensuring that learners enter training with the right foundational skills, adapting training offerings to meet the rapidly changing technological landscape, and fostering strong collaborations with industry and higher education institutions are all key steps in skilling a workforce capable of thriving in technologically complex workplaces. Ongoing collaboration between education providers, industry, and policymakers will be key to ensuring workers have the skills necessary to succeed in the advanced manufacturing industry.

2024 Centre Awards

Posted on by Merryn Ballantyne

At the annual ACC Symposium, an awards evening was held with nominations put forward by Centre members in the lead up to the event. Our annual awards were a great way of celebrating the achievements of our people and their collaborative efforts over the past 12 months. The event is hosted by our Centre Director, Professor Jonathan Roberts.

2024 winners included:

  • Research Achievement: The Achievement award is awarded to a person that has made an outstanding contribution to ACC-related research.
  • Contribution to Public Debate: The award for Best Contribution to Public Debate is awarded to an individual or team who has exhibited outstanding thought leadership on any ACC related topic and its impact on society.
  • Best Collaborative Research output: The Best Collaborative Research Output is awarded to researchers who have worked together to conduct collaborative research relevant to the ACC, as evidenced by this research output.
    • WINNER: Dr Fouad (Fred) Sukkar,  for his work with THWS, Prof Tobias Kaupp, Usama Ali, Adrian Müller
  • Best Event: The award for Best-Profile Raising Event is presented to the individual or team who best represent the aspirations of the Centre.
    • WINNER: Sparking Innovation, Weld Australia Roadshow at Swinburne 
  • Emerging Leader: The award for Emerging Leader is awarded to the individual who provides guidance and inspiration to their peers and has displayed promising leadership skills.
    • WINNER: Jasper Vermeulen, QUT PhD Researcher
  • Quiet Achiever: The Quiet Achiever award is for a person that has produced an impressive amount of research outcomes in the last 12 months or made significant research progress.
  • EPIC Centre Citizen: The award for Centre Citizen is awarded to a person that embodies the spirit of the Centre and fosters a supportive, innovative, inclusive and fun environment as well as being an all-round achiever who displays positivity and resourcefulness.
  • Whoopsie Daisy: The Whoopsie Daisy Award honours an individual who, when faced with an unexpected challenge or mistake in their work, demonstrated resilience and transformed the situation into a valuable learning opportunity. This award celebrates their ability to adapt, grow, and turn setbacks into successes, showcasing the strength of innovation and perseverance in overcoming obstacles.
    • WINNER: Dr Alan Burden, QUT Postdoctoral Research Fellow
  • Industry Champion (individual): The Industry Champion Award is presented to a person who has demonstrated a strong commitment to engaging and collaborating with industry. This award celebrates leadership in fostering partnerships between industry and academia, driving innovation in automation, and promoting the integration of cobotics technology to enhance productivity, safety, and sustainability.
  • Industry-Research Collaboration: (Team) This award is awarded to a project team, consisting of industry and researchers who have collaborated to create impactful solutions that address real-world challenges. The team’s efforts demonstrate a successful integration of industry needs and research innovation and showcases the benefits of industry and academic collaboration.
    • WINNERS:
      • The Swinburne team and Universal Shower Base: Prof Mats Isaksson, Mariadas Roshan, Jagannatha Pyaraka, Rebecca Lowery
      • Translation projects with Stryker: Partner Investigator, Dr Tom Williamson, Dr Alan Burden,  Dr Stine Johansen, James Dwyer, Jasper Vermeulen, Yuan Liu, Prof Markus Rittenbruch, Prof Glenda Caldwell, A/Prof Müge Belek Fialho Teixeira , A/Prof Jared Donovan and Dr Matthias Guertler.

Continue reading “2024 Centre Awards”

Celebrating Research Excellence: Australian Cobotics Centre’s Research Showcase 2024

Posted on by Merryn Ballantyne

On 5th December 2024, the Australian Cobotics Centre proudly hosted its annual Research Showcase, celebrating the achievements of its researchers over the past 12 months. This year’s event provided an invaluable opportunity for the Centre’s HDR (Higher Degree by Research) students and early career researchers to present their research outcomes in a dynamic and engaging format through lightning talks and research demonstrations.

The showcase was hosted by Professor Glenda Caldwell, Associate Director of Research Training, who emphasised the importance of professional development and communication skills in research careers. In line with the Centre’s training and development program, researchers delivered three-minute lightning talks—a presentation format that challenged them to distill their research aims, outcomes, and impact into a 3 minute talk suitable for a multidisciplinary audience.

3 minute lightning talks

The showcase featured a diverse range of topics reflecting the Centre’s interdisciplinary focus on collaborative robotics in manufacturing and beyond. The following presentations were delivered:

  1. James Dwyer – Rethinking Our Approach: Rapid Prototyping, Fast Failures, and Facilitating Interdisciplinary Conversations in Cobotics
  2. Stine Johansen – Robotic Blended Sonification
  3. Akash Hettiarachchi – The Impact of Collaborative Robots (Cobots) on a Diversified Manufacturing Workforce
  4. Phuong Anh Tran – A Research Study on the Design of Human-Cobot Manufacturing Work
  5. Munia Ahamed – Trust Your Robot: Building Acceptance in Human-Robot Teams
  6. Nadimul Haque – Framework for Adapting Robot Skills to Novel Tasks
  7. Jagannatha Pyaraka – Minimal Key-Point Learning for Robot Skill Transfer from Videos
  8. Zongyuan Zhang – Using a Mobile Robot for Sanding: The Non-Rigid Fixation Problem
  9. Jasper Vermeulen – How Humans (Still) Play a Pivotal Role in Successful Human-Robot Teams
  10. Yuan Liu – Human Decision Making in Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC)
  11. Alan Burden – Optimising Cobot Integration with AR Simulation

Demonstrations

Rapid Robot Prototypes, presented by James Dwyer, PhD researcher, QUT, Human Robot Interaction research program

Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) has the potential to improve work across various sectors, but it also brings changes to work practices, processes, and ways of thinking. Practical design tools are needed to connect the technical advancements in HRC with the real-world needs and expectations of end-users.

This demonstration introduces the ‘kinematic puppet,’ a novel, cost-effective, modular interface that makes it easy to explore robotic movements and interactions. By physically simulating different scenarios and controlling robot actions manually through “puppeteering”, it enables teams to test HRC concepts without needing specialised robotics skills. This hands-on approach provides actionable insights into the usability, efficiency, and ergonomic suitability of robotic platforms across different HRC scenarios and tasks.

Interactive distance field mapping and planning (IDMP) framework, presented by Dr Fouad Sukkar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UTS; Nadimul Haque, PhD researcher, UTS, Biomimic Cobots research program

Human-robot collaborative applications require scene representations that are kept up-to-date and facilitate safe robot motions in dynamic scenes. In this exhibition we showcase an interactive distance field mapping and planning (IDMP) framework that handles dynamic objects and collision avoidance through an efficient Gaussian Process field representation. In terms of mapping, IDMP is able to fuse point cloud data from single and multiple sensors, query the free space at any spatial resolution, and deal with moving objects without semantics. In terms of planning, IDMP allows seamless integration with gradient-based reactive planners facilitating dynamic obstacle avoidance for safe human-robot interactions. Video, code, and datasets are publicly available at https://uts-ri.github.io/IDMP.

Real-Time Collaborative Action Tracking (ReCAT) system, presented by Yuan Liu, PhD Researcher, QUT, Designing Socio-Technical Robotic Systems research program

The Real-Time Collaborative Action Tracking (ReCAT) system demonstrates how human pose, movement, and gestures can be detected and tracked through a camera in real time. Using advanced computer vision techniques, attendees can see firsthand how a webcam captures and interprets behaviour, offering valuable insights to support the future of human-centred design in human-robot collaboration.

XR Application for Cobot Interaction and Workflow Optimisation, presented by Dr Alan Burden, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, QUT, Designing Socio-Technical Robotic Systems research program

The demo showcases an Augmented Reality (AR) interface using a Meta Quest headset and Unreal Engine 5. The AR system employs simple visual and interactive elements to send commands to a cobot, enabling it to perform tasks like picking and placing items with precision. The AR interface highlights the 3D environment, giving users a clear, intuitive understanding of how cobots can be effectively integrated into real-world spaces.

Quality Assurance & Compliance using haptic feedback, presented by Dr Mariadas Roshan, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Swinburne & Danial Rizvi, PhD researcher, UTS, Quality Assurance & Compliance research program

Demonstrations include a video showcasing the use of the Spot Dog as an assistant, another video illustrating how live feedback can be utilized to optimize robotic welding processes, and a live demonstration of a haptic device designed for inspections in manufacturing parts with restricted access. Gain insights into practical applications of robotics and emerging technologies aimed at improving efficiency and quality assessment in industrial environments.

The 2024 Research Showcase not only celebrated achievements but also reinforced the Centre’s commitment to supporting the professional growth of its researchers. By focusing on communication, engagement, and collaboration, the Centre is equipping its students and early career researchers with the tools they need to drive innovation in cobotics and advanced manufacturing.

We congratulate all presenters on their contributions and look forward to seeing their continued impact in the coming year.

 

ARTICLE: Beyond the Factory Floor: Cobots as the Ultimate Growth Hack for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs)

Posted on by Katherine Christensen

Automation has long been the domain of large enterprises with deep pockets and extensive resources. However, the landscape is undergoing a transformation, with collaborative robots, often referred to as cobots, leading the way in driving this change. Designed to work seamlessly alongside humans, cobots are making automation accessible, even for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). According to a recent report[1], the global cobot market is projected to grow from $1.2 billion in 2023 to close to $3 billion by 2028, reflecting their rising adoption across industries.

For SMEs, staying competitive often requires overcoming unique challenges such as limited budgets, smaller teams, and the need for operational agility. According to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s 2024 Small Business Condition Survey[2], labour shortages and rising costs are among the most significant obstacles that small businesses face. While traditional automation systems can help address labour shortages, they are often rigid, complex, and prohibitively expensive, making them unsuitable for many SMEs. Enter cobots, a revolutionary solution that combines affordability, flexibility, and ease of deployment.

  • What Are Cobots, and How Do They Differ from Traditional Robots?

Collaborative robots, or cobots, are a new generation of robotic systems designed to work directly with humans in shared workspaces. Unlike traditional industrial robots, which often require physical barriers for safety, cobots are equipped with advanced sensors and programming that allow them to detect and adapt to human presence. This makes them inherently safer and more versatile in environments where people and machines need to work side by side.

  • Why Cobots Are the Perfect Growth Hack for SMEs?

Cobots have the potential to transform SMEs by providing solutions that deliver a wide range of benefits. These include:

  • Cost-Effectiveness

Cobots are significantly more affordable than traditional industrial robots. Unlike industrial robots, which require heavy structures and safety cages, cobots can often be mounted with simple tools like a G-clamp, saving on installation costs and space. In contrast, industrial robots demand extensive safety measures and infrastructure, which not only consume space but also incur additional expenses. This cost difference is critical for SMEs operating on tight budgets.

  • Flexibility and Adaptability

Unlike traditional robots, which are designed to fully automate a task or leave it to manual labour, cobots offer a middle ground, semi-automation. This capability is invaluable for SMEs, where automating the complete workflows are complex or expensive.

For example, a furniture manufacturing SME can program a cobot to assist with sanding tasks. While the cobot performs the repetitive sanding, workers can focus on more intricate assembly tasks, significantly boosting overall productivity. This shared workspace model eliminates the rigidity of traditional automation, allowing SMEs to adapt quickly to changing demands.

  • Ease of Use

Cobots are designed with user-friendliness in mind, often featuring intuitive interfaces that require minimal training. Employees without technical expertise can quickly learn to program and operate these robots, reducing downtime. Blocky programming uses a drag-and-drop interface where users create workflows by connecting pre-designed blocks that represent commands or actions. This visual approach eliminates the need for complex coding knowledge, making it ideal for SMEs that may not have dedicated robotics experts on staff. For instance, programming a cobot to pick and place items can be as simple as dragging blocks for “move,” “grip,” and “release,” and arranging them in sequence.

  • Real-World Examples

Cobots have demonstrated significant value in real-world SME environments, offering practical solutions to common operational challenges. KUKA, a leading cobot manufacturer, has highlighted numerous cases[3] where SMEs have successfully implemented their collaborative robots. These include applications in quality inspection in plastics manufacturing, machine loading in metal industries, and assembly tasks in the automotive sector. Similarly, Universal Robots (UR), another leading cobot manufacturer, has documented a wide range of SME applications[4], such as palletizing in food production, welding in small-scale metal fabrication, and material handling in manufacturing environments. For example, the SME Bob’s Red Mill utilized UR cobots to automate palletizing tasks, effectively addressing labour shortages and boosting productivity. These examples illustrate how cobots are enabling SMEs to enhance their operations through flexible and scalable automation solutions tailored to their specific needs.

  • Start small, Scale smart !

By embracing cobots today, SMEs can secure the future of their operations and position themselves for sustained success in a world that is becoming more competitive. The key to successfully integrating cobots is to start with a focused approach by introducing them into one or two specific processes. As businesses gain confidence and expertise, they can gradually expand their use. This method helps organisations reduce risks, control costs, and tailor the technology to fit their specific requirements.

References

[1] T. Haworth, “Global cobot market exceeds $1bn in 2023, with strong growth forecast 2024-28,” Interact Analysis. Accessed: Nov. 21, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://interactanalysis.com/global-cobot-market-exceeds-1bn-in-2023-with-strong-growth-forecast-2024-28/

 [2] Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Small Business Conditions Survey 2024, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Canberra, ACT, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.australianchamber.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ACCI-Small-Business-Conditions-Survey-2024.pdf

[3] “Successful automation in small and medium-sized enterprises,” KUKA AG. Accessed: Nov. 21, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.kuka.com/en-de/company/iimagazine/2023/05/kmu-erfolgsgeschichten

[4] “Customer Success Stories – collaborative robots.” Accessed: Nov. 21, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.universal-robots.com/case-stories