Research Programme

The objective of the Centre is to research and explore the nature of intelligence in autonomous systems. The strategic plan for the Centre is based around two key research demonstrations which, over the life of the Centre, will show-case the integrated operation of complex intelligent autonomous systems with capabilities substantially beyond any system now existing:

• Natural Environments: the demonstration of cooperative autonomous air and ground vehicles, equipped with multi-modal sensing capabilities, to build and maintain a composite picture of a complex and dynamic outdoor environment.
• Built Environments: the demonstration of robust and long-term operation of robotic and intelligent building systems aiding and cooperate in human-oriented tasks in domestic, office and hospital environments.

The key milestones in the strategic plan are based around these two research demonstrators. The strategic plan is underpinned by a fundamental research programme comprising four interacting themes;

• Perception, sensing, representations of information, the modelling and management of uncertainty, data fusion and perceptual interpretation.
• Control, of individual micro and macro machines, of heterogeneous groups of platforms and sensors, and of contact and interaction with the environment and each other.
• Learning, supervised and unsupervised learning in unstructured and dynamic environments, multi-agent learning, pattern recognition and concept formation.
• Systems, design and optimisation of "systems of systems", modelling and management of  complexity, large scale systems theory, and modelling of information flow.

These themes define the science of autonomous systems and represent the main focus of the proposed Centre. The research demonstrators ensure that the many threads of the fundamental research programme are brought together and that a bridge exists to future commercial development of research results.

The key outcome of the fundamental research programme will be a deeper mathematical, algorithmic and practical understanding of perception, control and learning in complex intelligent systems.

The integration, demonstration and evaluation of the four elements of the research programme is the primary role of the two Research Demonstrators. These establish milestones for the fundamental research programme. It is also anticipated that there will be a number of intermediate outcomes especially in areas of sensor systems, data fusion, platform control and systems design. These are areas of immediate and substantial industry interest. The scope and innovation of the fundamental research programme is briefly described here.