Intelligent Robotics Research Center (IRRC), University of Australia
The Intelligent Robotics Research Center at the Monash University in Australia does research mainly in mobile robot navigation, machine perception and manipulation. This laboratory is within the university’s Computer Systems Engineering group of its Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering.
Their research covers a wide array of topics within the field of robotics which includes Computer Vision, Mapping and Navigation, Machine Learning, Swarm Robotics and Digital Logic, and Sensor Design and Implementation. As part of the university’s ECSE, the IRRC also covers the field of telecommunications, RFID, biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence and bionic vision among others.
Among the many projects that this research Center has undertaken is the SLAMbot, which is a robot for real time simultaneous localization and mapping research. This IRRC robot is equipped with two sonar tracking sensors that have full echo capture through the PCI bus to processor memory.
The researchers at IRRC embedded this robot with a SICK laser range-finder that is mounted on the robot’s front in order to avoid any obstacles that may be lying in its path. The SLAMbot showcased the Center’s strengths at an internationally-recognized level, the other being machine perception which includes image processing, ultrasonic sensing, tactile and olfactory sensing, pattern recognition, optical flow and computer vision, range finder, and interactive computer graphics.
Another robot is the Werrimbi, which translates to bat, robot. This robot comes with a state-of-the-art sonar sensor and odometry design. There is also an outdoor robot which is being utilized for autonomous navigation, the MD-15 robot.
Professor Ray Jarvis, together with Tristan Crees, Alan Lipton and Shaun Geddes, have also designed and created the Go-2 robot for Scienceworks. Aside from these robots, the Center is also adept in microcomputer systems, parallel computer architectures, VLSI design. Electronics, control systems, general artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks.
This research Center is also affiliated with the ARC-funded Center for Perceptive and Intelligent Machines in Complex Environments (CPIMCE).
