The following Technical Tours are available as options in the registration form. Please register early as there is limited capacity for all tours. Technical Tours are open to participants across all registration categories. The tour itineraries are subject to changes.
Monday 21 May 2018
CSIRO’s Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies (QCAT) Labs
Cost: $50 AUD per person
Time: 9:00am departure from Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Approximate 12:30pm arrival back to the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Inclusions: Return bus transfers, morning tea snack & water
Capacity: 113 delegates maximum
The University of Queensland Labs
Cost: $50 AUD per person
Time: 2:00pm departure from Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Approximate 5:00pm arrival back to the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Inclusions: Return bus transfers, afternoon tea snack & water
Capacity: 113 delegates maximum
Friday 25 May 2018
Port of Brisbane – Patrick’s AutoStrad Terminal with Automated Straddle Carriers
Cost: $50 AUD per person
Time: 9:00am departure from Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Approximate 12:30pm arrival back to the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Inclusions: Return bus transfers, morning tea snack & water
Capacity: 57 delegates maximum
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Labs
Cost: $50 AUD per person
Time: 2:00pm departure from Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Approximate 5:00pm arrival back to the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Inclusions: Return bus transfers, afternoon tea snack & water
Capacity: 113 delegates maximum
Click here to register to attend a Technical Tour
Specific details on the time, cost, inclusions and maximum tour capacity will be available shortly.
CSIRO’s Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies (QCAT) Labs
The technical tour to the CSIRO’s Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies (QCAT) in Pullenvale will consist of visits to the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group, The Distributed Sensing Systems Group as well as the Remote Management Centre.
The Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group at CSIRO is one of the leading robotics research groups in the world conducting foundational and applied research for a broad range of domains. These include agriculture, advanced manufacturing, mining, biodiversity and biosecurity, environmental research and monitoring, cultural heritage and online learning. The group has a long track record on field robotics applications and is a pioneer in mobile Lidar based 3D SLAM technology. The Group has approximately 40 researchers and engineers along with extensive laboratory facilities and research equipment.
The Distributed Sensing Systems Group is one of the leading large-scale sensing groups in the world focusing on sustainable data acquisition from wireless sensors distributed over large spatial scales. It involves data captured from sensors through every day devices, such as mobile or smart phone, and purpose-built devices for data collection from the natural or built environments. Technologies developed by the DSS Group have been deployed at continental scale in Australia, and across six continents on a broad range of environmental, agricultural, and industrial applications.
The Remote Management Centre (RMC) is a visualization laboratory focusing on improving safety, productivity and sustainability by applying tele-technologies in the areas of operation, supervision, collaboration and assistance. The application of these technologies involves fundamental and applied research into Human Systems Integrations (HSI). The lab features a 6m cylindrical display system, a 4m dome display system, a 10-channel spatial sound system and many other immersive Mixed, Augmented and Virtual Reality devices.
The tour will give you an opportunity to see robots, sensing and visualization technologies in action as well as get a good understanding about the technologies underpinning them through a series of demos and displays.
The University of Queensland Labs
The ITEE Robotics Design Lab studies how robotic systems can be designed holistically to solve problems. The RDL includes the Aerial Robotics Group, planning and decision making group and motion and compliant systems control group. The laboratory is spread across two research spaces including multiple motion tracking rigs, indoor and outdoor flying spaces for drones and dynamic test cells.
The Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language social robotics lab develops robots for exploring social, behavioral and ethnographic interactions. Opie is a child-safe humanoid used to interact with school-age students and learn about social cues and teaching. iRat is a small wheeled robot used for comparative behavioural and neurological studies with lab rats, as well as in collaborative language synthesis experiments.
The Queensland Brain Institute Neuroscience of Vision and Aerial Robotics lab explores how animals such as birds and bees employ vision to fly and interact with the world, and how to apply these methods to small flying robots. The lab develops practical experimental aircraft utilizing cameras for stability, navigation and control.
The UQ Centre for Hypersonics is a world leading research group in hypersonic flight – including test facilities air-breathing propulsion and rocket flight, aerothermodynamics, computational fluid dynamics and optical diagnostics. The centre is home to several free-piston shock tunnels and expansion tubes for high speed flow experimentation.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Labs
Robotics and Autonomous Systems Lab
QUT’s newly refurbished robotics lab is home to the world’s first national centre focused on robotic vision. Many of the robots on display demonstrate the benefits you can gain by applying computer vision to robotics. Featured during the tour is our underwater environmental robot, COTSbot, that is designed to control the numbers of Crown-of-Thorns starfish that are currently a threat to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Also on display is our robot CartMan (short for Cartesian Manipulator robot), winner of the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge, with parts custom-made on the lab’s 3D printers. See Harvey (the Harvester robot) picking capsicum and also see our vision systems applied to weed identification and removal on Australia’s vast broad acre farms. Visit our medical robotics lab to see how we are applying robotic vision solutions to orthopaedic surgery and round off your visit by admiring our social robots and our performance robots (Perfbots).
Design Robotics Lab
The Design Robotics team is working to give industrial robots the ability to see what they are working on and adapt their movements for different shaped objects. This will make robots easier to set up, program and work with so they are more useful for people to use. Design Robotics will widen the spectrum of products which can be produced by robots so companies can manufacture higher value goods while upskilling staff and increasing jobs.
The Cube
The Cube is one of the world’s largest digital interactive learning and display spaces dedicated to providing an inspiring, explorative and participatory experience of QUT’s Science and Engineering research. The Cube consists of 48 multi-touch screens soaring across two storeys. Housed in QUT’s Science and Engineering Centre, The Cube is your hub for scientific and digital exploration. Collaborating with QUT researchers and drawing on knowledge and data from research areas in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), The Cube facilitates opportunities for the public to discover, visualise and contribute to research projects. Environments will be replicated at a real-world scale, allowing the public, as ‘citizen scientists’, to experience real project scenarios and explore big questions of the 21st century.
As part of the visit, you will have the chance to play Code-A-Bot: an interactive digital game putting you in charge of programming robot workers to collect and sort rubbish, improving the overall efficiency of a waste recycling plant. Using The Cube’s digital touch screens, robots can be coded to move, sense, and collect or distribute rubbish around the facility and into the correct bins. You can also work together with other players and their robots to improve efficiencies and achieve the best results.
Port of Brisbane – Patrick’s AutoStrad Terminal with Automated Straddle Carriers
Patrick’s journey to automation began in the 1996, when Patrick saw automation as an opportunity to streamline operations and introduce process-line concepts into terminal stevedoring. The challenge of improving the safety and efficiency of the operation was one to which automation was well suited.
Patrick designed and developed an automated system based on a conventional straddle carrier provided by Kalmar – an 8 wheeled, 65 ton, 12.5m high container carrying vehicle. To do so required the development of navigation, sensory and command and control systems suitable for the large scale environment of a shipping terminal – for example pioneering the use of radar (supplied by Navtech Radar) for navigation to ensure all-weather reliable operation. The system has grown from a R&D project into a robust, commercial operation that is one of the safest, advanced and successful in the world.
Today, Patrick’s Brisbane and Sydney terminals operate a combined fleet of 77 AutoStrads that undertake all container transport tasks within the sites. The end-to-end automation of operational process is a showcase for the possibilities of robotics and automation in heavy industries.
