New centre gives robots the ‘gift of sight’

The centre will be led by Professor Peter Corke, from Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) science and engineering faculty.

“It's very timely and a great opportunity to create the next generation of robots,” Professor Corke says.

While he says robots are “never the entire solution”, they are a useful technology to add to the mix to achieve better outcomes.  

“They can free skilled people for tasks that they do best, those that involve reasoning, understanding, communications and providing empathy. Robots will be infinitely patient and might be preferred by those in care, for example for activities like bathing where embarrassment might be an issue,” he says.

Professor Corke claims the centre will enable robots to perform more like human beings do, to understand the complexities of the world just by seeing (without having to put bar codes on everything), to understand what's different, the intent of people and how people move so as to be safer in the company of humans.

While it wasn't a specific target in the original proposal for the development of the centre, Professor Corke says health care in general is a very labour intensive and complex business.

“It's facing cost pressures, as well as having more elderly people to look after. In many other industries robots have allowed for greater cost effectiveness, and it they should be applicable to health. The problem to date has been that the robots are just not capable enough to even consider doing this,” he says.

The centre will reportedly form one of the largest groups of its kind in the world, and will become a focal point for international activity.

“Society is on the cusp of a revolution in robotics in which personal robots will become an everyday fact of life. What we need to make this happen is to develop technology which allows a robot to perceive its environment – to sense, understand and learn from the information it gathers.

“We want to use cameras in robots, which are less costly and use less power than other types of sensors,” he explains.

The centre will deliver the science and technologies that will turn cameras into powerful sensing devices capable of understanding and responding to their environment, and enabling robots to operate reliably over long periods, in complex unstructured surroundings where they will interact with humans as well as objects, many of which will require delicate handling.

“They will operate comfortably in places where it wouldn't have been safe to use robots previously because the environments were too complex to be understood,” Professor Corke adds.

“Robotic systems have proven their value in controlled environments where the complexity and variation of tasks are low. For example, factory robots are a mature and highly successful technology and robotic trains in Japan are amongst the most efficient in the world.

“We can't remember what life was like before iPhones and iPads, but the iPhone was only released in 2007. They are no longer remarkable. In 10 to 15 years time robots in the workplace will be similarly unremarkable.”

The centre brings together research talent at QUT, University of Adelaide, Australian National University and Monash University, with overseas partner universities Oxford, Imperial College, ETH, INRIA and Georgia Tech.