The Story Bridge is 78 years old, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is hitting 95. Australian bridges are designed for a life span of 100 years. “The designers of these bridges allowed for the growth of traffic and load consideration, so safety factors for material strength were built into bridges like the Story and Sydney Harbour…
Helium Ions Open Whole New World of Materials
They have illustrated their findings with the creation of nano ‘sieves’ that can help separate molecules down to an unprecedented size 10,000 times finer than a human hair. The research, Superplastic nanoscale pore shaping by ion irradiation, was published in Nature Communications today and authored by Dr Morteza Aramesh, Dr Mayamei Yashar, Dr Annalena Wolff, and Professor…
Robotics Researchers Track Autonomous Underground Mining Vehicles
Queensland University of Technology robotics researchers have developed new technology to equip underground mining vehicles to navigate autonomously through dust, camera blur and bad lighting. Using mathematics and biologically-inspired algorithms, the technology uses vehicle-mounted cameras to track the location of the vehicle in underground tunnels to within metres. The research has been led by a…
Will This Aussie Robot Be Amazon’s ‘Pick’ Of The Bunch?
It’s the competition that could save Amazon.com billions in logistics – and QUT’s custom-built robot may be the winning solution. Built by a team of roboticists from the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision (the Centre), headquartered at QUT, ‘CartMan’ the logistics robot will pit its item-picking skills against 15 other international robots in the third annual Amazon Robotics…
‘Magic’ Plant Discovery Could Lead To Growing Food In Space
QUT scientists have discovered the gene that will open the door for space-based food production. Professor Peter Waterhouse, a plant geneticist at QUT, discovered the gene in the ancient Australian native tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana, known as Pitjuri to indigenous Aboriginals tribes. Professor Waterhouse made the discovery while tracing the history of the Pitjuri plant,…
Robot Researcher Combines Nature to Nurture ‘Superhuman’ Navigation
Computer modelling of the human eye, the brain of a rat, and a robot could revolutionise advances in neuroscience and new technology, says a QUT leading robotics researcher. Dr Michael Milford from QUT’s Science and Engineering Faculty says the new study uses new computer algorithms to enable robots to navigate intelligently, unrestricted by high-density buildings…