Creating reliable robotic weapons

Reliability in autonomous and robotic weapons is a core investment of the government’s $1.2bn Next Generation Technologies Fund.

Scientists research computational fluid dynamics flow modelling of a submarine as part of studies of the Next Generation Technologies Fund at the University of Adelaide.

Reliability in autonomous and robotic weapons is a core investment of the government’s $1.2bn Next Generation Technologies Fund, administered by the Defence Department’s Defence Science and Technology Group.

The $50m, Brisbane-based Trusted Autonomous Systems Defence Cooperative Research Centre (TAS DCRC) is Australia’s first and only such centre under the fund, and currently there are no plans for another DCRC, a department spokesperson says. It opened last year and is also supported by the Queensland Government.

TAS says it fosters collaboration between Australia’s defence industry and research organisations and is receiving the $50m during seven years. Supported projects are meant to develop “autonomous and robotic technologies to enable trusted and effective co-operation between humans and machines’’, TAS says.

The Next Generation Technologies Fund has enabled more than 275 projects and invested more than $170m in high-priority areas for the department, the Defence spokesperson says. It is “harnessing expertise from across the country and enabling the cross-fertilisation of previously siloed knowledge pools’’, according to DSTG.

Achievements include “promising progress’’ at the University of South Australia “in the development of adaptive camouflage, successfully producing lightweight polymer panels that automatically change colour to blend in with the environment’’.

A completed assignment at UniSA was “a prototype wireless network with a greater range and data rate than traditional radio networks’’ for troops.

Researchers are also looking for synthetic language to communicate with artificial intelligence and devising “robotic whisker technology’’ for drones to fly more easily indoors and around objects.

TAS’s founding purpose is for “industry-led projects with real translation opportunities to move technology rapidly from universities into industry and ultimately into leading-edge capability for the Australian Defence Force”.

It says it also groups scientists, engineers, ethicists and philosophers, lawyers, and academics in its team. It is focused on developing the capacity of Australia’s defence industry “to acquire, deploy and sustain the most advanced autonomous and robotic technology’’.

Chief executive Jason Scholz said in a government submission last December its work more generally can “unlock the many safety, environmental and efficiency benefits autonomous systems can bring, boost Australian jobs, and cement Queensland’s status as the ‘drone state’ of Australia’’.

Centre staff include Rachel Horne, director of autonomy accreditation — maritime, who says “as investment in AI robotics and autonomous systems ramps up, it is vital that these systems can be tested and assured to meet society’s expectations for their safety, trust and reliability’’. Horne was a regulatory adviser at the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

Among other TAS projects:

● Boeing Australia is leading research into cognitive intelligence surveillance reconnaissance, which is about embedding machine-learning techniques on unmanned craft so they can “better understand and react to the environment’’.

● BAE Systems is working with researchers at the Universities of Melbourne and Adelaide on developing an “autonomous platform capable of robust and persistent operation in complex, contested land environments’’.

● Thales has partnered with DST, Flinders University, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney and the Western Sydney University and Australian companies INENI Realtime and Mission Systems on a $15m study for “new autonomous technologies and training solution to revolutionise mine clearance’’ in shorelines.

● RMIT is leading a project “for a self-organising, low-cost, high-altitude balloon constellation (pseudo-satellite) for persistent surveillance and communications’’.

● Meanwhile the University of Melbourne is a partner in the DCRC with three projects, and also has other established research projects with more than 10 industry partners.

“We aim to build research of scale, with large programs in advanced antennas, human performance, quantum sensors, advanced materials, information operations, cybersecurity, medical countermeasures, and the maritime and aerospace fields,’’ says Len Sciacca, enterprise professor, defence science & technology, at Melbourne, on the university website.

“The University of Melbourne’s defence research portfolio is now one of the largest in the country and includes expertise from academic departments spanning engineering and IT, medicine, science, social sciences, law and arts.’’