Research

• To develop both fundamental and applied research programs in field robotics that encompass the development of new theories and methods in robotics, and the deployment of these in targeted industrial applications.

The Fundamental Research Program focuses on enabling technologies in four key areas. These areas draw together common themes and research priorities from the applied research program (i.e. projects) with the goal of supporting long-term developments across the whole field robotics area.

1. Perception, sensing, representations of information, the modelling and management of uncertainty, data fusion and perceptual interpretation.
2. Control, of individual micro and macro machines, of heterogeneous groups of platforms and sensors, and of contact and interaction with the environment and each other.
3. Learning, supervised and unsupervised learning in unstructured and dynamic environments, multi-agent learning, pattern recognition and concept formation.
4. Systems, design and optimisation of “systems of systems”, modelling and management of complexity, large scale systems theory, and modelling of information flow.

These themes define the science of field robotics and represent the main focus of ACFR. The projects ensure that the many threads of the fundamental research programs are brought together and that a bridge exists to future commercial development of research results.