High-Bandwidth Control and Advanced Dynamic Modelling for Unmanned Helicopters. Advanced control theory will be applied to enable precise control of unmanned helicopters in the presence of disturbances. This is critical for: operating unmanned helicopters among the buildings of urban environments, reconnaissance, investigating dangerous areas, pursuit of targets, and many other desirable capabilities for law enforcement and military purposes. The ability of a small RUAV to launch and recover to ....High-Bandwidth Control and Advanced Dynamic Modelling for Unmanned Helicopters. Advanced control theory will be applied to enable precise control of unmanned helicopters in the presence of disturbances. This is critical for: operating unmanned helicopters among the buildings of urban environments, reconnaissance, investigating dangerous areas, pursuit of targets, and many other desirable capabilities for law enforcement and military purposes. The ability of a small RUAV to launch and recover to a moving vessel would significantly enhance operational possibilities for border protection tasks and the Australian Defence Force. The research has direct application to other mechanical systems such as underwater vehicles, mobile robots, and precision control of agricultural vehicles, overhead cranes, and mining equipment.Read moreRead less
Remote Delivery and Capture of Payloads using Aerial Deployed Tethers. The capability to rapidly transport payloads to and from remote locations is critical for search and rescue, disaster relief, remote communities, and military operations. Conventional technology is not well suited to this role, hence we propose to develop an intelligent system to manoeuvre a tether, towed from an aircraft, to pick-up or set-down a payload, with zero surface velocity. Because of the complex, nonlinear dynamics ....Remote Delivery and Capture of Payloads using Aerial Deployed Tethers. The capability to rapidly transport payloads to and from remote locations is critical for search and rescue, disaster relief, remote communities, and military operations. Conventional technology is not well suited to this role, hence we propose to develop an intelligent system to manoeuvre a tether, towed from an aircraft, to pick-up or set-down a payload, with zero surface velocity. Because of the complex, nonlinear dynamics of a cable-body system, advanced modelling and nonlinear optimal control will be applied in this task. The resulting world-first system will provide important economic opportunities and demonstrate Australian scientific capacity for novel developing intelligent systems.Read moreRead less
Characterising and suppressing vortex induced vibration. Vortex-Induced Vibration has become the design limiting factor in offshore design of elements such as the flexible pipelines that bring oil and gas to the surface. With rising oil and gas prices it is becoming more economic to explore such resources in deeper waters, which exacerbates the problem. Currently, high factors of safety must be used in the design of such pipelines because of our current lack of understanding of when the vibratio ....Characterising and suppressing vortex induced vibration. Vortex-Induced Vibration has become the design limiting factor in offshore design of elements such as the flexible pipelines that bring oil and gas to the surface. With rising oil and gas prices it is becoming more economic to explore such resources in deeper waters, which exacerbates the problem. Currently, high factors of safety must be used in the design of such pipelines because of our current lack of understanding of when the vibrations occur and their frequency and amplitude. This study will provide insight into the character of such vibrations and also look at means of suppressing them.Read moreRead less
Insect-inspired flapping wing robots: autonomous flight control systems. This project aims to design a novel control scheme for insect-inspired, flapping-wing, micro aerial vehicles. This type of micro aerial vehicle has complex, periodic, time-varying and inherently unstable dynamics, which are practically challenging to model and implement in hardware. This project will design energy-based automatic stabilization and task-dependent control, and develop the insect-inspired platform for testing ....Insect-inspired flapping wing robots: autonomous flight control systems. This project aims to design a novel control scheme for insect-inspired, flapping-wing, micro aerial vehicles. This type of micro aerial vehicle has complex, periodic, time-varying and inherently unstable dynamics, which are practically challenging to model and implement in hardware. This project will design energy-based automatic stabilization and task-dependent control, and develop the insect-inspired platform for testing nonlinear control strategies. The expected outcomes will include new system and control theories, concepts, principles and technologies in controller design that can provide reliable flight control for bio-inspired, flapping-wing systems.Read moreRead less
Image Based Visual Servo Control of Dynamic Under-Actuated Systems. The project builds on earlier work on visual servo control of under-actuated rigid body dynamics to develop and implement sophisticated and robust image based visual servo control for a wide class of under-actuated and fully actuated dynamic systems. The scope of the project extends far beyond basic testing of preliminary results to address key technical issues facing visual servo control algorithms at this time. The project i ....Image Based Visual Servo Control of Dynamic Under-Actuated Systems. The project builds on earlier work on visual servo control of under-actuated rigid body dynamics to develop and implement sophisticated and robust image based visual servo control for a wide class of under-actuated and fully actuated dynamic systems. The scope of the project extends far beyond basic testing of preliminary results to address key technical issues facing visual servo control algorithms at this time. The project is strongly motivated by the host of emerging applications for visual servo control of unmanned aerial vehicles. The experimental program within the project is based on control of a four rotor VTOL `hoverbot'.Read moreRead less
Image-based teleoperation of semi-autonomous robotic vehicles. This project will contribute strongly to Australia's robotic service industry in the development of semi-autonomous robotic inspection vehicles by; developing core technology in image-based teleoperation, training experts in the area, promoting the study of this topic within the Australian academia, and developing test facilities and prototype vehicles. Robotic inspection vehicles have the potential to replace direct human presence i ....Image-based teleoperation of semi-autonomous robotic vehicles. This project will contribute strongly to Australia's robotic service industry in the development of semi-autonomous robotic inspection vehicles by; developing core technology in image-based teleoperation, training experts in the area, promoting the study of this topic within the Australian academia, and developing test facilities and prototype vehicles. Robotic inspection vehicles have the potential to replace direct human presence in difficult, dangerous or simply uncomfortable inspection tasks such as; inspection of industrial pressure vessels, piping and conduits in factories or mines, undersea cabling, inspection of bridges, dams and other large scale civil buildings, amongst many other possibilities.Read moreRead less
Precipitation in shallow convection over the Southern Ocean. This project aims to quantify the amount of precipitation over the Southern Ocean and identify the key dynamical and microphysical processes that lead to its development. Large uncertainties exist in the frequency and intensity of precipitation, which limits the ability to model the coupled Southern Ocean climate system. Observations from the RV Investigator, an Australian marine research vessel, have revealed heavy precipitation event ....Precipitation in shallow convection over the Southern Ocean. This project aims to quantify the amount of precipitation over the Southern Ocean and identify the key dynamical and microphysical processes that lead to its development. Large uncertainties exist in the frequency and intensity of precipitation, which limits the ability to model the coupled Southern Ocean climate system. Observations from the RV Investigator, an Australian marine research vessel, have revealed heavy precipitation events within the shallow convection commonly found between fronts that have not been captured by either satellite observations or numerical models. This project will improve weather forecasts, including precipitation, and climate projections over the Southern Ocean and the adjoining Antarctic and the southern part of Australia.Read moreRead less
Local climate changes caused by large bushfire burnt areas. This project aims to quantify the impact on local climate produced by large burnt areas after extreme bushfires. This project expects to generate new knowledge on these previously unexplored fire-scar induced changes to local climate. It will extend an innovative approach that combines satellite based earth observation with very high resolution regional climate modelling to quantify the impacts on land-atmosphere feedbacks and local cli ....Local climate changes caused by large bushfire burnt areas. This project aims to quantify the impact on local climate produced by large burnt areas after extreme bushfires. This project expects to generate new knowledge on these previously unexplored fire-scar induced changes to local climate. It will extend an innovative approach that combines satellite based earth observation with very high resolution regional climate modelling to quantify the impacts on land-atmosphere feedbacks and local climate. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced methods to quantify local climate changes after extreme fires and their effect on vegetation recovery. This should provide significant benefits to the planning for, and management of, vegetation recovery after extreme fires.Read moreRead less
Role of modulating water wave groups in enhancing air-water fluxes. This project aims to investigate the importance of the group structure and breaking of wind-generated waves of various scales in the air-water exchange of mass, momentum and energy. This project expects to generate new understanding in the area of air-water exchanges using an innovative approach based on direct numerical simulation of wind over unsteady water wave groups for a wide range of wind speed and wave steepness conditi ....Role of modulating water wave groups in enhancing air-water fluxes. This project aims to investigate the importance of the group structure and breaking of wind-generated waves of various scales in the air-water exchange of mass, momentum and energy. This project expects to generate new understanding in the area of air-water exchanges using an innovative approach based on direct numerical simulation of wind over unsteady water wave groups for a wide range of wind speed and wave steepness conditions.
Expected outcomes of this project include generating fundamental knowledge of the unresolved physics and new parameterisations for air-water exchange rates. This will deliver more accurate and more comprehensive forecast models for weather, inland and ocean waterways, and numerous industrial processes.Read moreRead less
The dynamics of turbulent entrainment in sheared convective boundary layers. This project aims to develop general laws to enable the accurate prediction of boundary layer entrainment processes. This will be significant in a wide range of environmental and engineering applications. In particular, the current lack of understanding of this area is a major source of uncertainty in the latest generation of global climate models.