Category Archives: Uncategorized

QUT PhD student becomes first woman to win Aerospace Australia award

A QUT PhD student today became the first woman to win a prestigious Aerospace Australia Limited industry Innovation Award for her work on a project to improve the safety of aircraft and reduce maintenance costs.

Vanessa Lussini from QUT’s School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering was awarded the 2015 $10,000 Young Innovator Scholarship for Defence Industry today at Avalon 2015: The Australian International Airshow and Aerospace & defence Exposition.

Ms Lussini’s project, being conducted for the Defence Materials Technology Centre, is focussed on using organic compounds to develop sensors to alert maintenance crews when sections of an aircraft need repainting before mechanical strain, direct sunlight, varying temperatures, water, salt and other pressures cause dangerous corrosion resulting in potentially catastrophic failure.

“Corrosion is like a cancer to metal and paint acts like a sunscreen which needs to be re-applied before the structural integrity of an aircraft is compromised,” said Ms Lussini who was at Avalon to accept her award.

“It’s critical to know when to repaint an aircraft but we can also paint them too often simply because they are scheduled to be done and every new coat adds weight.

“Often only certain sections need to be painted because they are more exposed and degrade faster. Or one plane is used every day and another sits in a hangar for long periods.

“Free radical oxidative degradation is the main route to coating failure and my project aims to create new, more resilient sensors detect deterioration. A group of compounds called profluorescent nitroxides have been shown to be effective free radical sensors, utilising a fluorescent emission to monitor the chemical character of the protective outer coating of aircraft. Read more.

 

New UAV Challenge will push flying robots to their limits

Outback Joe is in trouble again and will likely need a new breed of flying robot to help him.

QUT and CSIRO have raised the stakes for their next international UAV Challenge after a team of enthusiasts from Canberra, Australia, won the previous Outback Rescue mission in 2014.

Announcing UAV Challenge Medical Express 2016 at an unmanned systems conference associated with the Avalon Airshow yesterday, event co-ordinator Dennis Frousheger said the 2016 challenge was designed to push UAV technology to the limit. Read more.

Recognition for Professor Rod Walker

At the recent CRC for Spatial Information conference held in Perth, the outstanding contribution made by former ARCAA Director, Professor Rod Walker (dec) in the domain of Research Excellence was posthumously recognised. The award was presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to CRCSI research and innovation promising high impact outcomes for end users. As founding Director of the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation, Professor Rod Walker was instrumental in conceiving the research that has led to the development of the autonomous aircraft guidance system (FAS) that is now saving Ergon Energy $14M a year in remote asset inspection costs. ARCAA has played a key role in helping Ergon spin-out the new ROAMES business to Fugro. His award was accepted by Rod’s brother, Dr Arron Walker.

Founding ARCAA Director, Professor Rod Walker

Founding ARCAA Director, Professor Rod Walker

Bio-inspired PhD positions available

As part of a collaboration between Boeing Research & Technology-­Australia (BR&T­‐A), The Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and The University of Queensland (UQ), we have two projects that seek to draw inspiration from nature to address aspects of guidance, navigation, and motion control for unmanned aircraft.

We are looking for highly­‐motivated individuals to complete doctoral degrees in areas of:

  • Inverse optimal control and Markoff decision processes
  • Probabilistic robotics
  • Guidance and motion control
  • Computer vision
  • For more information, please review this file ARCAA_PhD_Students, or contact

    Professor Tristan Perez
    Electrical Engineering and Computer Science – Queensland University of Technology
    Queensland Brain Institute -­ The University of Queensland
    phone: + 61 7 3138 9076
    email: tristan.perez@qut.edu.au

    Unmanned Aircraft: Countdown to Mission Possible

    DAA  flight test crew celebrate a successful series of experiments.

    DAA flight test crew celebrate a successful series of experiments.

    Queensland Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) researchers have made what’s believed to be a world-first breakthrough for small Unmanned Aircraft (UA), developing an onboard system that has enabled a UA to detect another aircraft using vision while in flight.

    During the flight, the onboard system provided real time warnings back to the ground control station, resulting in a successful manual collision avoidance manoeuvre – a critical point for allowing UAs to fly in commercial airspace. The flight trial was carried out in unsegregated, class G airspace.

    The research, carried out by QUT’s Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA) in conjunction with Boeing Research & Technology – Australia (BR&T-A) and UAS industry leader Insitu Pacific, was successfully proven in recent trials at an airfield north-west of Brisbane.

    Watch the video on QUTube here https://youtu.be/L3DEGr-HM0U or for more information see the QUT News story.

    Boeing tech expert joins QUT to boost Project ResQu

    Adjunct Associate Professor Brendan Williams

    Adjunct Associate Professor Brendan Williams is seconded to QUT from Boeing

    Research to overcome the risks associated with flying unmanned aircraft in civil airspace is in full swing following the secondment of a Boeing research leader to QUT.

    Adjunct Associate Professor Brendan Williams has taken up a position at the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA) where he will work on the QUT-led Project ResQu.

    More information on Professor Williams’ secondment can be found here.

    Prof Pascual Campoy

    Invited Lectures by UPM Visiting Professor

    Prof. Pascual Campoy has finished a series of lectures at Queensland University of Technology. The lectures that were titled “Linear Automatic Control with applications in manufacturing and aerospace” were aimed to reinforce practical knowledge of 3rd and 4thyear QUT Aerospace Avionics student. Some of the topics covered included automatic control of a Boeing 747 model using Matlab simulink.This activity has been part of an ongoing collaboration funded by Caja de Madrid, the European Commission and the Australian Academy of Science through a FP7-PEOPLE-IRSES-2008 grant (PIRSES-GA-2009-230797 – ICPUAS).
    Prof Pascual Campoy

    Prof Pascual Campoy lectures 3rd and 4th year QUT Aerospace Avionics students