Study level

  • PhD

Faculty/School

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Design Lab

Supervisors

Associate Professor Jared Donovan
Position
Associate Professor in Interaction Design
Division / Faculty
Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice
Professor Markus Rittenbruch
Position
Professor in Interaction Design
Division / Faculty
Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice

Overview

Complex manufacturing environments characterised by high value and high product mix manufacturing processes pose challenges to Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). Allowing people to see what robots are ‘thinking’ will allow workers to efficiently collaborate with co-located robotic partners. A tighter integration of work routines requires improved approaches to support awareness in human-robotic co-working spaces. There is a need for solutions that also let people see what the robot is intending to do so that they can also efficiently adjust their actions to work with the robot.

Research activities

In this PhD project you will explore how to support tightly integrated co-located work between humans and robots through intention visualisation and notification. This includes the design and research of advanced robotic intention visualisation environments that display routes, planned actions, task status and safety warnings from a robot to co-located human operators. Resulting prototypes could use floor projection and/or robotic arm mounted projection as well as tie in with the multi-user Augmented Reality interface to deliver time-critical information and notifications to human operators.
This work extends existing safety-focussed HRC application such as force-limiting and light curtains. The PhD project will be carried out in an applied industry setting with a strong focus on user-centred design.

Skills and experience

This PhD is situated at the intersection of Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Robot Interaction.

You should have a detailed understanding of:

  • user-centred design approaches
  • iterative design.

It desirable that you have experience with:

  • physical prototyping
  • physical computing
  • augmented reality
  • mixed reality.
Previous experience in working with collaborative robotic systems is not critical, but beneficial.

Scholarships

You may be eligible to apply for a research scholarship.

Explore our research scholarships

Keywords

Contact

Contact Associate Professor Markus Rittenbruch for more information.

Submit your Expression of Interest via the Australian Cobotics Centre website at https://www.australiancobotics.org/phd-expressions-of-interest/

The form requests:

  • an overview of your interest in the topic and proposed research methods
  • details of your choice of project and supervisor
  • an up-to-date CV indicating previous lab experience and skills.