Swarm-Robotics Industry Transformation Initiative
Technology Target: Uncrewed Vehicle Teams
Industry Target: Emergency Services and Defence
Vision:
To advance Australia’s capability in uncrewed vehicle teaming technologies for a future where teams of uncrewed vehicles work seamlessly with human operators in prevention, detection, response to and recovery from natural hazards and other threats to Australians.
Mission:
To transform the technology, policy and operating procedures needed to integrate uncrewed vehicle teams with human teams in support of workplace health and safety, productivity and resilience in emergency services and defence operations.
Technology Benefits:
Uncrewed vehicle teams are groups of mobile vehicles capable of carrying sensors into hazardous or hard to reach environments. Compared to body worn and hand-held sensors or sensors mounted on teleoperated or crewed vehicle, uncrewed vehicle teams offer the benefits of:
- Safety: The human operator can remain in a safe location while they direct and monitor the vehicles
- Productivity: A single operator can direct and monitor multiple units, reducing training costs and acting as a force multiplier
- Resilience: Uncrewed vehicle teams can continue their mission even when some vehicles need to refuel, resupply or sustain damage
- Speed: Large areas can be covered more quickly than by a single vehicle. Multiple readings can be collected in parallel and fused into a single display
- Agility: Small vehicles can access and navigate difficult spaces
Themes
To achieve the benefits above, projects in this initiative will be organised in four themes:
The focus of this theme is on advancing uncrewed vehicle teaming technologies for emergency services and defence. Projects in this theme aim to deliver the fundamental science, platforms and sensing technology and human-machine interfaces for uncrewed vehicle teams that can support situation awareness in emergency services and defence operations.
The focus of this theme is on developing the policy and regulatory frameworks for safe and sustainable deployment of uncrewed vehicle teams. Projects in this theme aim to deliver guidelines for the use of single-operator-multi-vehicle teams across urban, rural, coastal and remote domains, including in scenarios shared with crewed vehicles.
This theme focuses on ensuring industry and community confidence in uncrewed vehicle teaming technologies. Projects in this theme aim to advance the engineering of uncrewed vehicle teams to achieve safe, secure, reliable and sustainable capability in difficult, dynamic and uncertain environments, including environments with limited communications infrastructure.
This theme focuses on integrating uncrewed vehicle teams in emergency services and defence operations. Projects in this theme aim to develop workflows, training and operating procedures to optimise the deployment and maintenance of uncrewed vehicle teams.
Proposed Flagship Applications
Multiple vehicles providing accurate data on products of combustion can provide timely insight into the risk of explosion, evacuation needs and environmental damage among others. Real time data from uncrewed vehicles can provide ground truth data on pollutant types, concentrations and dispersion to support field operations and computational models.
A primary search aims to locate the source of a contaminant or fire to support effective containment, as well as locate any immediately threatened victims. Uncrewed vehicles with different sensing and other payloads can provide data and assistance in difficult to reach places.
Aerial drones are used for real-time shark monitoring, beach surveillance and hazard reduction to inform the need for beach evacuations or closures. Teaming allows seamless handover from one drone to another with no interruption to data collection and communication. This may include patrolling remote coastlines for biosecurity threats (for example H5 bird flu). Teams of vehicles provide both geographical coverage and detailed examination of potential issues.
Infrastructure inspection is required after natural disasters such as fire, flood, cyclone, and hail events for purposes such as declaring an area safe for occupants to return home, insurance claims, scheduling repairs and other needs. Remote inspection using uncrewed vehicles in certain areas can free human resources for direct inspection in other areas.
Expression of Interest
Industry Transformation Initiatives
Industry transformation Initiatives are funded by the Australian Government to drive the science, engineering, policy and training necessary for new technologies to progress to have operational impact. They provide opportunities for industry to support and benefit from research and development of new technologies important to their industry by:
- Shaping flagship projects that use technology for specific applications or customer needs
- Influencing policy and regulatory design
- Providing access to specialist expertise, software, hardware and facilities
- Forming links across the supply chain and between industry and academia
- Providing research and training in new technologies