REMEMBER turning 25? The future stretches ahead and anything seems possible. It is an age of optimism and potential. A time for defining great challenges. It's at 25 that we begin our life's work of changing the world, in small ways and big.
The Queensland University of Technology, synonymous with such endeavour, is 25 this year. It was in 1989 that the former institute became a university, changing its name to QUT.
To celebrate this milestone – and the spirit of turning 25 – this week we showcase 25 amazing innovations, devices and fields of research being developed here in Queensland by QUT.
Each idea has the potential to change the world, in small ways and big, and always for the better.
This series, 25 ideas to change the world, presents five ideas each day, grouped in themes like health, genetics and sustainability. We begin with technology – five areas of study unlocking cool new digital tools.
Smarter robots through gift of sight
ROBOTS are capable of highly intricate pre-programmed manoeuvres, but until they master a sense most humans take for granted, science fiction will struggle to become everyday fact.
“Seeing is probably the most important sense you’ve got. Everything you do, you use your eyes to help,” said Professor Peter Corke, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Robotic Vision, based at QUT.
"At the moment, robots are very bad at seeing things around them."
Professor Corke and his team view that absence as a key reason why the advanced technology is rarely seen in complex environments like the home. Robots are generally unable to negotiate through a space prone to change.
The solution, they believe, lies in combining cameras with specially-developed software that enable robots to ‘read’ the world around them. Digital vision, so to speak.
Much like the human eye and brain work together to make sense of a person’s environment, information captured by a robot’s camera would be analysed to guide the appropriate response.
Professor Corke said the technology would open a world of almost unlimited potential, enabling robots to adapt and operate more like humans.
“It would be usable in any field and any activity that humans can do now,” he said.
“The ultimate goal is that we build one and we say, ‘Okay robot, this is a capsicum, this is what it looks like. Go out and find them, put them in this basket,” he said.
It’s a field of research already delivering real-world results. Visitors to the QUT building where Professor Corke works find themselves greeted by a robot able to show guests to his office.
“We have robots at QUT that can wander around the corridors, around the bookshop, for day after day and know where everything is,” he said.
But Professor Corke said the research still had a long way to go. For example, the effectiveness of robots already developed relies largely on the existence of ‘good’ conditions.
“We’ve got bits and pieces of the puzzle, but we haven’t pulled it all together and the solutions that we have, I’d say they are brittle,” he said.
But it’s now a matter of when, not if, the technology would become available, he said.
“There will come a point in the future when there will be robots all around us and we cannot imagine life without them,” Professor Corke said.
Learn more at www.roboticvision.org
Computer surveillance now in 3D
THE world is on alert like never before.
The threat of terrorism and rising crime levels has brought a boom in electronic surveillance.
CCTV cameras have become part of everyday life and a vital tool in preventing and investigating offences.
But given that terrorists and criminals do not tend to smile at security cameras, their effectiveness can be limited, particularly in busy public areas with lots of movement.
Even multiple cameras may capture only a few glimpses of a person of interest as they move around, making identification difficult or impossible with current facial recognition systems.
“For example, they could be at major sporting events, concerts, in airports, train stations and so on,’’ says Associate Professor Clinton Fookes.
“Someone might be 100 metres away, moving, in poor lighting or shadow so it can be very difficult to retrieve information from images.’’
Prof Fookes and colleagues at QUT’s Science and Engineering faculty are developing smart technology to overcome this obstacle.
It takes 2D and 3D video images from a number of sources – or from the same sources at different times – and uses mathematical algorithms to take facial features and convert them into a model that can recognise and match them.The system then uses the information to build a 3D image of a face.
“Once we have the information, the system will then be able to identify a shortlist of possible candidates and it will be up to a human observer to authenticate the correct match,” Prof Fookes said.
It could be used to spot people on a watch-list or to identify suspects after an incident.
Prof Fookes said they hoped to have a prototype functioning in the next year.
The team is also working on "walk-through biometrics portals" systems that could be used to confirm the identity of people at airports, for example.
The technology would include facial and iris recognition without people having to stop and stand still or remove glasses and could also incorporate their gait, or style of walking.
Learn more at www.qut.edu.au/science-engineering
Cars and bicycles collision avoidance system
THE death of 21-year-old Mardi Bartlett, struck while riding in Brisbane on March 1, shook the local cycling community. Twenty more have lost their lives cycling on Australian roads since.
It’s a human toll Dr Sebastien Demmel, from QUT’s Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety, is determined to reduce – by giving drivers and cyclists early warning of disaster.
The scientist is developing a smartphone-based system that will use GPS and Wi-Fi Direct technology, already available in most recent devices, to allow cyclists and drivers to share critical information while on the move.
“If you’re riding your bike or if you're driving, your phone is trying to find peers using the same app and once they find one, they’ll start exchanging position information,” Dr Demmel said.
“They (the devices) will try to predict if they’re going to collide or not."
Users in imminent danger will see colour coded warnings displayed on their phone and receive information indicating which direction the threat is approaching from.
With a range of up to 100 metres in good conditions, Dr Demmel said users should receive warnings 10 to 15 seconds in advance.
The technology is expected to be particularly useful when approaching street corners or when travelling in built-up areas, like the CBD, where visibility could be poor. Though still at the prototype stage, Dr Demmel said researchers were now taking the tech onto the road for the first time in the hope of fine-tuning the system.
He said the smartphone system made use of readily available equipment, avoiding the need for cars to be equipped with complicated and expensive technology.
“There’s more than 10 million smartphones in Australia, and so it’s an easy way to reach the public quickly,” he said.
“As long as you have a smartphone, you can download the app.”
But what if only the cyclist – the person most at risk – is using the software?
“We are exploring a way to have the app working for cyclists alone,” he said.
“Most (new) cars now have Bluetooth, and this Bluetooth is on all the time, so you can actually track them.”
Learn more at www.carrsq.qut.edu.au
Monitoring web for early detection of illness
THE Ebola virus spreading in West Africa is an extreme but timely example of the need to detect the outbreak of potentially deadly events as soon as possible.
Traditionally, the alert has been sounded by medical professionals reporting individual cases, a ‘trickle up’ approach that relies on authorities to detect patterns before the illness could no longer be contained.
But there is a new weapon in the fight against infectious diseases, powered by curiosity.
Dr Wenbiao Hu, a research fellow with QUT’s Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation, is investigating how online chatter and social media can be used to reveal emerging public health concerns sooner and with greater sophistication.
“If people think they might be suffering from a disease, especially an infectious disease, they will search the internet.
"Some people might search for ‘Influenza’, ‘high fever’, ‘cough’ or other symptoms," Dr Hu explained.
By monitoring spikes and patterns in particular search terms, complex models are able to identify and notify authorities of possible disease outbreaks before they catch fire and spread.
Dr Hu already has strong evidence to suggest the approach works. Earlier this year, he co-published results of an extensive review that showed how search engine algorithms could have detected the 2005-06 Bird Flu outbreak much earlier that traditional methods.
Now he is working to add greater sophistication to the current disease monitoring models.
“My proposal is we use online data combined with other (data) like social demographic or social ecological factors,” he said.
“For example, we combine weather, like climate variability, as we know some diseases have really strong seasonality.”
Dr Hu said the approach could one day encourage intervention by health officials. In the case of Influenza, early detection might allow Queensland Health to detect high-risk regions and respond via the delivery of a vaccination program or improved health education.
Dr Hu said authorities might also use the modelling to calculate the probability of infectious disease outbreaks “like a weather report”.
Learn more at www.ihbi.qut.edu.au
Video games shaping real life behaviour
COMPUTER gaming gets a lot of bad press, with a perception it leads to antisocial, unhealthy, potentially violent behaviour among young people.
But parents can breathe a sigh of relief – researchers have found the activity can actually improve young players’ overall wellbeing and help build stronger relationships.
“For the majority of people, video games have a positive influence on their emotional state. They can increase vitality, they can make you feel competent, engage you,” said Dr Daniel Johnson, director of QUT’s Games Research and Interaction Design Lab.
“If you’re playing with people you know and you’re engaging in a harmonious way, then that can be really good for you.
“A game might have violent content, but it can offer a high degree of strategy, engagement, collaborative work required of players.”
Now their learnings are being applied outside the digital space. Dr Johnson is working with the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre to identify the factors responsible for gaming's positive influences and understand how they can be leveraged.
“A lot of people are trying to apply the lessons from game design in other fields,” Dr Johnson said, pointing to how businesses, like banks and health institutions, increasingly seek to encourage greater engagement with their consumers.
“We can help identify what elements of games best motivate particular people, what elements of games motivate which sorts of behaviours … so that people can apply what’s known from game design in non-game domains,” he said.
That process of gamification can be applied to any visual environment, from apps and websites to even non-digital situations.
Dr Johnson pointed to recent work with online meditation provider Smiling Mind.
“They wanted to explore whether they could further increase motivational engagement through gamification,” he said.“So we’ve been looking at, for example, building a large interactive map (on their existing site) much in the style of a game like Mario World.”
Users now sail on a ship visiting various islands to access different exercises. The ship develops and changes the more training the client completes.
Another QUT researcher, PhD candidate Cody Phillips, is applying gaming theory to uncovering how different people respond to different reward types.
“For some people, rewards are the most important thing ... but for other people, it’s more about getting positive feedback and they respond really well when the game says good job,” Dr Johnson said.
“If Cody finds, for example, gamification Element A is really good for keeping people engaged in a topic, that might be of great interest to someone doing educational work.”
He said businesses could one day use game technology to facilitate the relationship with customers.
Learn more at wiki.qut.edu.au/display/grid/Games+Research+and+Interaction+Design+Lab
Animated images are illustrative only and do not represent real designs or projects.
Add your comment to this story
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout