Collaboration is key to innovative solutions

Discover how RMIT University creates innovative solutions for Defence.

The development of blockchain has led to an exciting trend in digital automation

RMIT University conducts research with impact, supporting and resourcing innovative thinking and initiatives, and opportunities for disruptive technology. Collaborating across disciplines and industries, we deliver trusted technology, business solutions and workforce skills development.

Our expertise in Australia’s defence, aerospace and transport systems industries, based at the Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre, brings together aerospace and defence research from across the university, including in business, law, social science, finance, science, health, engineering and design. We partner with industry to conduct fundamental and applied research into defence-related science and technology.

Director of RMIT’s Blockchain Innovation Hub, Professor Jason Potts, sees what is possible in blockchain, a technology that enables people to co-ordinate economic activity — make payments, transfer property, build new economic infrastructure — through new-generation software platforms. 

The innovation hub operates the Blockchain Business Lab, which allows companies or industry partners, such as defence specialists, to work through the opportunities and solutions that blockchain technology can bring.

This has led to an exciting trend in digital automation. The rapid development of decentralised digital economic infrastructure is useful for assembling economic systems in ad hoc contexts, such as supply lines or logistics, or dealing with co-ordination of communications without centralised control. 

An example is the development of decentralised identity and communication systems, which enable non-combatants in battlefield situations to identify themselves securely and verify non-combatant status to ensure safe passage or minimise risk of attack or harm.

Professor of economics Robert Hoffman’s research in behavioural economics deals with decision-making in social and strategic situations. Professor Hoffman is a member of RMIT’s Behavioural Business Lab, a state-of-the-art laboratory facility and group of researchers who share an interest in decision-making in practical contexts.

As climate change, Brexit and COVID-19 demonstrate, global problems are becoming more complex. International and multi-party decision-making is becoming more difficult. Behavioural economics helps to understand decision-making by combining economics and psychology. 

Defence abounds with challenges, options and choice. Decision-making is critical to strategic and operational matters. It’s increasingly important to have a better understanding of human operators of machinery and their interactions, and how decision-makers respond in fast-moving, high-stakes and low-information environments that characterise conflict scenarios. Co-operating in teams under high stress, such as on submarines, means we can better understand personalities, natural tendencies and training. 

RMIT, named Geospatial Research Institute of the Year for 2019, was commended for its “enthusiasm and innovative thinking, developing dramatic advancements in technologies, and commitment to driving the industry towards the future”. 

RMIT’s expertise across geospatial sciences comes at an important time, as society increasingly relies on spatial data and technologies. Technology that was formerly niche is now consumer grade, and its applications enable a wide range of environmental, economic and social benefits. 

Geospatial science professor Allison Kealy is interested in how these technologies can help people achieve things safely and move more smartly. Collaborating with disciplinary teams that align with international capabilities is essential for this task.

Professor Kealy is part of Plan Jericho, a project that aims to develop principled mathematical scheduling and estimation models for autonomously navigating and locating teams of unmanned aerial vehicles. The multidisciplinary team includes experts from Plan Jericho, Defence Science Institute, RMIT University and University of Melbourne across signal processing; electrical, mechanical and aerospace engineering; mathematics; and geospatial science.

Practical inputs from Defence have helped to shape and define the solution, creating the motivation through which mathematics can deliver tractable solutions without compromising robustness and optimality. 

The project will deliver a true Australian capability that will support Australia’s competitive edge in defence, and deliver the human resources required to support this into the future.

Our researchers collaborate across disciplines and apply advanced techniques to find practical and technological solutions to global problems. We’re training the next generation of scientists and engineers in programs that actively engage with industry to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world, and our graduates are in high demand. Our technology, resources and expertise make RMIT a great partner for industry, government and defence.

Michelle Gee is director of the Sir Lawrence Wackett Centre at RMIT University.