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Associate Professor Cori Stewart is the Chief Executive Officer of the ARM (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing) Hub in Queensland. She spoke to William Poole. AMT: Firstly, what is the ARM Hub and why was it established? Cori Stewart: The ARM Hub is now a year and a half old, and it was established around a couple of drivers. Firstly, to see Australia drive the commercial value of robotics and come out big in the way robotics are applied to industry. One of our founding partners, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), is the nation’s leading robotics centre, and they got behind it. Along with its national partner network, QUT has been conducting amazing fundamental research in robotics. That technology is now coming down and being used on the factory floor – things like computer vision, AI, machine learning ... all the things that make robots smart and integrate into wider manufacturing capability. So, ARM Hub came about to offer this agile translation capability, and also knowhow, for new technology. The other part was as the country drives towards a manufacturing future – and this was happening before COVID – we had major manufacturing strategies in place across the country, knowing manufacturing will be the future of high-value jobs, regional development, of Australia keeping its living standards. When COVID hit, it really brought to bear exactly why it’s essential to have manufacturing, and also the challenges facing manufacturing. The ARM Hub opened the day the first COVID lockdown was announced, and our journey has been a COVID response journey. The ARM Hub was always there to drive advanced manufacturing capability in collaboration with industry, but COVID-19 escalated the urgency for this type of support. For the ARM Hub, manufacturing companies, particularly SMEs, are our focus. They can come to us and we’ll work with them on the technology roadmap in their companies, we figure out what Industry 4.0 or Industry 5.0 capabilities they need, and then build the expert teams around those needs. We solve the adoption and implementation problems that are essential to future growth. We draw on researchers; we have partnerships with over 12 research institutions, and we draw down that capability. We also partner with smart tech companies, and we also have our own in-house mechatronics and data science team that move around on projects and augment what needs to be done. So in a nutshell, we have an agile teambuilding capability that fills the skills gap that industry has around Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0. AMT: Can you give examples of the projects you’re working on? CS: We do two kinds of projects: We do projects that are about modernising manufacturing capability, moving companies that aren’t advanced manufacturers into advanced capability. And we work with deep-tech companies where our technology development and capability goes into industry and making that technology commercially available.
AMT OCT/NOV 2021
As a leading example of modernising manufacturing, we colocated with a company called UAP – in their niche production of high-end public art - they’re the biggest in the world. They were a manual foundry and steel production house; they brought in robotics and AR/VR (augmented reality/virtual reality); and we ran an $8m program to modernise them. That really catalysed a lot of our collaboration, because if a company steeped in tradition, that’s not a tech or science company can undergo dramatic digital transformation, almost any company can. We also work with companies like Sun Metals and other large resource companies that are innovating and modernising their manufacturing processes – these are established facilities that are modernising to maintain their competitive position. The other kind of project, probably the more common case, is tech companies trying either to make something or to disrupt the manufacturing sector and provide new solutions. We find ourselves doing AI with these companies, building smarts into their products. An example is Verton Technologies Australia. They came to us with a new product for the heavy-lifting industry, eliminating the need for taglines. Their innovative system is now being used with cranes on large-scale wind turbine installation and maintenance in Europe. Being able to adjust, through applied physics and AI, how to get those blades on and off was a gamechanger. Verton’s product makes cranes themselves work like robots, and keeps humans safe on risky jobs. They put a lot of data science into the system that tells them all sorts of things – project timing, workers’ capability, and even risk factors – so they actually become a data supplier to other industries. Sectors from the shipping industry to the construction industry can use the data. What the ARM Hub is finding is we’re working with companies who are making a new product that they’re going to sell, but they can also sell a data service, and become a platform company. Verton is a great example because they were a start-up, then they got major joint ventures in Europe that set them off, and they’ve just moved out after being co-located with us for a year because they’ve expanded to have their own very large warehouse. And off they go. There’s a few companies like that – really small SMEs or start-ups that are going to scale up, and they use our technical capability to get to certain Technical Readiness Levels (TRLs), or for proof of concept, or to get their product to a certain standard so it can get the market interest it needs. We don’t do accelerator programs, but we definitely provide the capability to make sure they’re getting their product developed.