The Warren Centre

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2010-12-14T12:10:00.004+11:00

Welcome to the December-February newsletter for The Warren Centre. The theme for this newsletter is aerospace and the wider aviation industry. Recent events in the aviation industry in Australia make this a perfect time to get a better view on this interesting field of engineering. As the following reports suggest, aerospace engineering has far more scope and potential than might be considered in the wider community. It is an exciting field offering many opportunities for career development, both in Australia and internationally.

Introducing Our New Chief Operating Officer
Alexandra (Alex) McKenna was appointed as the new chief operating officer (COO) of The Warren Centre in October. Before taking up as COO she was based in Sydney as sustainability manager for DEXUS property group. In this role she has worked extensively with engineers, including with The Warren Centre on Stage One of its Low Energy High Rise project.

McKenna brings a fresh perspective to The Warren Centre, as she has a background in building sustainability and prior to that in occupational health and safety in the beef cattle industry.

Celebrating Our Engineering Heroes
Since 2003 our most creative and inspirational engineers have been honoured with The Warren Centre Innovation Awards. This continues to be one of the most important tasks of the centre – highlighting the work of true exemplars of engineering in Australia.

Why Bother Studying Aerospace Engineering in Australia?“
Glad you asked the question!” Dr K C Wong replies cheerfully.
As Aeronautical Engineering Program Coordinator in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering (AMME) at Sydney University, he has a well informed and enthusiastic perspective on the industry.

450 Mirror Solar Facility Under Construction In Newcastle
OK, here it is – a solar power facility here in Australia to generate electricity at the same or less cost than fossil fuel powered power stations – after cost of carbon is taken into account. Under construction now.

Advanced Maintenance Capabilities Essential
An effective maintenance industry is fundamental for a safe and efficient national aerospace and aviation capability. The industry has to stay on top of a wide range of capabilities and skill sets to maintain genuine international relevance in a very competitive global marketplace.

Aerospace and Aviation Great Economic Growth Drivers
Airports are key indicators of the vital importance of aviation in any advanced economy. They are huge and complex business and engineering endeavours. More can be done to use them as hubs for further encouragement and development of aerospace and associated engineering capabilities.

Empowered Engineers Needed To Make The Difference For A Profession That Matters
Constant improvement of aerospace engineering skills is essential to maintain global competitiveness in this crucial industry. Cultural factors are important to maintain meaningful national policy engagement

Global Networks And Real Time Connectivity Now Essential for Aerospace Success
Design development and manufacture of complex equipment like aircraft and aerospace systems has been transformed by the capabilities of the web in just a few short years. Such complex systems are now designed, developed and manufactured in a fast moving international context where real time, global collaboration is an operational necessity in a relentlessly competitive environment. Opportunities for innovative Australian engineering in this space are both hindered and enabled depending on the entrepreneurial response of local participants – “clever, shrewd, nimble and global” are essential operating characteristics of successful players in the business today.

Kiwis More Super Powerful Than Oz?
Can this be true, or is the scoring dodgy (again)? According to the “Twenty Technologies That Can Give You Super Powers” feature on the Bloomberg Business Week website, Kiwis scored for two commercially inventions, Australia scored none. Go figure…

Introducing our new chief operating officer

2010-12-14T11:49:00.000+11:00

Alexandra (Alex) McKenna was appointed as the new chief operating officer (COO) of The Warren Centre in October. She replaces the former COO, Robert Mitchell, who resigned in August to take up a position with Capstone Partners, a boutique firm specialising in technology commercialisation.

McKenna brings a fresh perspective to The Warren Centre, as she has a background in building sustainability and prior to that in occupational health and safety in the beef cattle industry.
She completed a degree in Agricultural Science, majoring in animal production, at the University of Sydney and later pursued a Masters in Environmental Law, Business and Management at the Australian National University. However, in common with engineers, she has a background in using her knowledge and experience to solve problems.

Before taking up as COO she was based in Sydney as sustainability manager for DEXUS property group. In this role she has worked extensively with engineers, including with The Warren Centre on Stage One of its Low Energy, High Rise project.

“I have worked a lot with engineers and enjoy doing so. At DEXUS I engaged many engineers and I like the way engineers think and like working with them to achieve good outcomes,” she told the newsletter.

DEXUS is a $13 billion company and has the largest commercial property portfolio in Australia. The driver of her work there over the past few years was developing a $41 million energy upgrade plan for the group to deliver an office portfolio average of 4.5 star NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating Scheme) Energy rating by 2012.

“This involved setting a budget for each building, based on optimising its mechanical services, while reducing inherent operational problems.

“Part of the project was to develop a strategic improvement plan and this is where I made a lot of good contacts with engineers.

“The strategic improvement plan was a new way of looking at office buildings where specific inefficiencies were targeted. So instead of adopting a traditional approach, based on say chiller performance, the plan involved taking a step back and looking at the total building services and at the design and construction of the building.

“The buildings studied were typically 20 years old and were fully tenanted. We looked at the buildings’ designs and how they had been operated since construction,” she said.

McKenna said the Low Energy High Rise project has shown that there are significant statistical differences in the way buildings are operated which correlates to energy efficiency and NABERS Energy ratings. The project has identified that changes in the way a building is managed can deliver significant improvements, in fact around 1 star, with minimal expense.

The Low Energy High Rise project has adopted some of these concepts for its current Stage Two study.

McKenna, who has farmers on both sides of her family is proud of her background in agriculture. Her father is a surgeon, and initially she was attracted to veterinary science, but decided on agriculture instead.

“Agriculture is a largely unprescribed environment where each operation is often very different from the preceding one. Tradition is strong; there are no set formulas and you are working in small groups. You need to master a number of divergent skills, but nevertheless, may need to deliver a result down to an exact level of detail.

“This gives you a full appreciation of the upstream and downstream consequences of your decisions – aspects which are also beneficial in engineering.

“As with engineering, in agriculture you need to ask; what is the end goal? Who are the key players? Who will be using the solution? Does the solution meet your needs or does it fall short? Is there a better way of reaching the end goal?”

Her first role in agriculture was at Meat Standards Australia which required her to work with beef producers on quality assurance and supply chain management, from the paddock through to the abattoir and consumer, to establishing a brand and consistent product offering.

“Part of this work would mean taking beef producers through abattoirs so they could understand how critical well finished cattle are to the meat processing operation.”

Later she worked as the environment and safety manager on properties belonging to the Colonial Agricultural Company, a fund managed then by Colonial First State Global Asset Management. There she travelled extensively on its properties around Australia investigating occupational health and safety concerns, environmental legislation and permits, vegetation records and environmental compliance. This work involved an 8500km round trip using small planes and cars, mostly in Queensland, but also in New South Wales and the Northern Territory.

She said the Queensland legislation, in particular, on environment and health and safety was extremely complex and it was hard to get good guidance, so she undertook further postgraduate study in environmental law and business management at ANU. She tailored her studies to environment and health and safety, completing a commercial law module of her course at Sydney University’s law school.

“Because you are working with large animals, the cattle industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the country. There are a lot of horse-fall injuries and crush injuries through working with cattle in yards.”

Much of McKenna’s career has centred on bringing people together in working groups to solve particular problems and then to reach agreement on particular outcomes.

“With the farm safety work we cooperated closely with the Queensland Department of Health and Safety on draft codes of practice for farm safety. In the property sector the work concentrated on getting working groups together to manage reporting obligations under the National Greenhouse Reporting Act.

“Actually, there is a lot of overlap between environmental sustainability and risk management
“This sort of project work, of collaborating and sharing ideas – of getting on the same page – has been a common theme in my career, and I think this will be an important aspect of my work with the Warren Centre.”

By Bob Jackson, a former journalist with Engineers Media, is a Warren Centre volunteer.

Celebrating our engineering heroes

2010-12-14T11:46:00.004+11:00

Since 2003 our most creative and inspirational engineers have been honoured with The Warren Centre Innovation Awards. This continues to be one of the most important tasks of the centre – highlighting the work of true exemplars of engineering in Australia.

This year they included:

Dr Simon Poole and Dr Steven Frisken of Finisar Australia, which designs, develops and manufactures optical communications & instrumentation equipment (From left: Dr Simon Poole, Dr Steven Frisken and Professor Michael Dureau)

Professor Gernot Heiser of Open Kernel Labs, a leading computer operating systems research group (500 million mobile phones use their L4 microkernel product)

(From left: Professor Gernot Heiser and Professor Michael Dureau)

Alexander Gosling, co-founder, director and chief executive of Invetech, a company focused on product development.
(From left: Alexander Gosling and Professor Michael Dureau)

Dr Bob Johnson, who pioneered Maptek’s innovative software technology & laser imaging hardware for the mining industry,
(From left: Dr Bob Johnson and Professor Michael Dureau)

• Neil O’Sullivan and the Management Team, for the design & commercialisation of leading edge switchgear. Significant environmental benefits result from NOJA Power’s products which eliminate sulfur hexafluoride, a severe greenhouse gas.
(From left: Professor Michael Dureau, Neil O'Sullivan, Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte)

A 2003 Warren Centre Innovation Hero Award winner, Professor Durrant-Whyte, presented this year's Innovation Lecture. He spoke about his work in Field Robotics and their importance to the Australian economy. Durrant-Whyte, who gave a stimulating and highly informative lecture, is Professor of Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney and Director of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR).

The fascinating work of several innovation heroes also featured in the August issue of this newsletter. Here, Dr Steve Frisken and Dr Simon Poole (Innovation Heroes 2010), Dr Tristram Carfrae (2008) and Dr Chris Nicol (2006) spoke about their most significant projects.

Nominations of worthy recipients for 2011 Innovation Heroes are welcome. Just click on the following link for the application form. Nominations close on the 28th February 2011.

Why bother studying aerospace engineering in Australia?

2010-12-14T11:46:00.000+11:00

“Glad you asked the question!” Dr K C Wong replies cheerfully.

As Aeronautical Engineering Program Coordinator in the school of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering (AMME) at Sydney University, he has a well informed and enthusiastic perspective on the industry.

According to Wong, who prefers to be called KC, there is a very positive future for engineers in the ever more global aviation and aerospace industry. Forget that Australia has not built many complete full size aircraft within our shores over the last 30 years, KC asserts that our global involvement and export revenues earned by our aerospace and aviation activities is now greater than it has ever been.

With the internet and new software that enables global collaboration in real time, local engineering skills can be applied around the world. Global sourcing and manufacturing practices now see major aircraft being assembled from components that are designed and indeed made in many different locations around the globe. “Follow the sun engineering” now sees people around the world working on aircraft projects on a 24 hour a day basis as the work is continued by a series of collaborative teams.

KC considers that the future is looking quite positive at Sydney University’s AMME. Sydney University was the first Australian university to offer instruction in aeronautical engineering, followed by RMIT and UNSW. More recently universities across the land have entered aerospace, including QUT, Queensland, Adelaide and most recently Monash.

Reflecting the high standards and popularity of the Sydney University course, the 2010 ATAR score is 99.3 and the university is keeping its offerings innovative, practical and industry-relevant in an endeavour to keep Sydney at the forefront.

For example, students in the first year of the degree course at Sydney get hands on experience in actually building an aircraft that flies. This is not a toy, but a full size Jabiru kit that eventually takes to the air. The exercise provides students with a rapid introduction to not only design issues, but real aircraft construction and workshop challenges as well as hands-on experience, so that they begin to understand what is involved in actually making real flying machines.

Certainly there are career paths around the world, but says KC, there are also many local opportunities. Many international aerospace organisations have engineering offices in Australia and there are also an increasing number of other local opportunities.

The scope of aerospace and aviation engineering is very broad, and one area of increasing excitement is unmanned aircraft systems (UASs). These can range from designs which are little bigger than a hobby aircraft for an extraordinary diversity of more localised applications, to machines like the global hawk (about the size of a Boeing 737) which can move from continent to continent while being controlled remotely from thousands of kilometres away.

UASs have a huge future because they can be designed to operate without the limitations of a human crew. This keeps operators safe in conflict or other extreme situations and also avoids prolonged or tedious tasks like mapping, surveillance and patrolling. Such flying machines are already working in geological and other mapping, natural resource exploration, environmental management, but mainly in defence applications.

Aviation is vital to a large nation like Australia – for economic, strategic and security reasons. It is a vital capability that must be maintained and a national policy recognising and encouraging more world class innovative aerospace engineering is somewhat overdue.

“One of our best national assets is actually the ability of our youth, and those who are inspired by the incredible opportunities in aerospace,” KC emphasises.
“As a society our educational institutions, government and industry owe our young people the best possible education and opportunities in this vital area. Only then can we make a truly significant global contribution.”

From Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

450 Mirror Solar Facility Under Construction In Newcastle

2010-12-14T11:45:00.000+11:00

Australia’s largest solar-thermal tower system designed to demonstrate that after the cost of carbon is taken into account, electricity can be generated by sun-power at the same or less cost than fossil fuel-generated electricity started construction at the CSIRO National Solar Energy Centre in Newcastle in NSW on 26 October 2010.

CSIRO started installing 450 large mirrors (heliostats) manufactured by Central Coast company, Performance Engineering Group, that will create temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees C. Creating these 2.4 x 1.8m panels of glass mirrors for a solar field is not easy... the shape has to be very accurate and the construction has to be strong enough to withstand extreme weather.

The heliostats have a lightweight steel frame with a unique, simple design, ideal for mass production. Smaller than many heliostats currently being used around the world, they are never-the-less just as efficient, more cost effective and much easier to install.

Dr Alex Wonhas, said the economical design of the heliostats will also make solar fields more cost effective to build and operate.

“It’s a local idea generated by CSIRO and manufactured by a local company, which will have global impact,” said CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship Director, Dr. Alex Wonhas.

The heliostat field is part of CSIRO’s new solar Brayton Cycle project – a solar tower and field that generates electricity from just the air and sun.

Image available from CSIRO Science Image.

CSIRO’s renewable energy research
CSIRO’s solar Brayton Cycle project
Visit the Australian Solar Institute’s website

From Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

Advanced Maintenance Capabilities Essential

2010-12-14T11:34:00.018+11:00

An effective maintenance industry is fundamental for a safe and efficient national aerospace and aviation capability. The industry has to stay on top of a wide range of capabilities and skill sets to maintain genuine international relevance in a very competitive global marketplace.

A complex and demanding enterprise like aviation depends upon a diversity of interconnected and sophisticated networks.

At one end of the industry leading edge design and development endeavours are exploring new aviation futures, while at the other - just as important and nothing if not crucial, keeping everything safe and efficient, is maintenance.

Fundamental for industry wide safety as well as performance, effective maintenance systems are an expensive necessity that must be kept up to date as well as carefully managed in order to protect profit margins (which tend to be wafer thin in the very competitive civil aviation industry).

John Holland Aviation Services is the largest independent in the business in Australia and effectively derives from a takeover of the former Ansett Airlines maintenance business.

Based at Tullamarine in Melbourne, it employs some 400 people (Qantas has some 6,000). JHAS is the only heavy aircraft independent MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) operator in Australia and features comprehensive EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) coverage. It provides state-of-the-art aviation engineering facilities with a full component and aircraft servicing capabilities to deal with commercial jetliners and military aircraft from all major manufacturers, as well as new generation aircraft. JHAS also provides fully integrated airport and specialist services to support airline operators and facilities.

International competition in aviation maintenance is unrelenting - after all, in many case the client can just fly their “job” somewhere else to get the best deal. But that is not always a realistic option, and local demand is buoyant and growing – by some 15% to 30% per annum according to JHAS General Manager Andrew Henderson. This comes from a healthy base growth as fleet sizes increase, but also as a result of fleets getting older and needing more maintenance. Much of the work for JHAS comes from larger fleets like Virgin, Tiger and Skywest among others.

Australian fleets are quite young by international standards,” says Henderson, “thus we expect that maintenance work demand will keep on growing steadily.”

Much of the hands-on workforce is trade qualified, supplemented by specialist engineers in various areas.

The diversity of the demands of this highly engineering intensive industry are demonstrated by the range of services provided by JHAS, and these include maintenance management and certification services (including CASA & EASA), cleaning (aviation standard deep cleans, airframe cleans), ramp services, logistics equipment, painting, composite materials, component overhauls, special scanning and analysis, structures, hydraulics, electronics and instrument calibration among others.

As aircraft and associated systems change, required skillsets will have to adapt accordingly. Greater use of electronic systems and auto diagnosis may affect the maintenance industry in surprising ways.

Aerospace and aviation is an essential industry for any globally competitive nation, and Australia needs to involve itself as widely and deeply as possible. Advanced maintenance capabilities are an essential.

From Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

Aerospace and aviation great economic growth drivers

2010-12-14T11:33:00.000+11:00

Airports are key indicators of the vital importance of aviation in any advanced economy. They are huge and complex business and engineering endeavours. More can be done to use them as hubs for further encouragement and development of aerospace and associated engineering capabilities.

Australia’s airports are thriving as they morph into concentrated showpieces of economic vigour – technologically complex endeavours that are a vitally important part of the local, national and often international economic fabric.

The decision to introduce the private sector into Australian airports has seen the constraints of government funding fall away as private capital has taken up the diverse challenges and run with them. But government support and involvement in policy, planning and general facilitation can still make a great difference in outcomes and there is more that has to be achieved.

The first wave of privatisation began with Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth in 1997, quickly followed by Adelaide, Canberra and the Gold Coast in 1998. Sydney and Bankstown joined the club in 2002 and 2004 respectively. Now, if a sound business case could be argued, a range of new money making opportunities could be attempted. … and they have been.

Airports are extremely engineering intensive environments – extremely complex “machines” which happen to have aviation as a common focus. All sorts of engineering skills are called upon to plan, build and operate them. The economic impacts reach much further out into the Australian community than just locally.

According to Sydney Airport Corporation Limited Chairman Russell Balding, “Last year the Australian Government approved the airport’s Master Plan which forecasts passenger growth of 4.2% per annum, going from 33 million in 2009 to about 79 million in 20 years.”

Air traffic in Australia is significant by world standards. The Sydney – Melbourne air corridor is currently the third busiest in the world.

According to figures in the just released Infrastructure Partners report on “East Coast High Capacity Infrastructure - A Realistic Pathway to Very Fast Trains” the cost of developing a new second airport for Sydney is of the order of $15 billion (and that is still only after the still-contentious-after-many-decades argument has been resolved as to where to site the new facility).

Says Melbourne Airport CEO Chris Woodruff, “Melbourne Airport’s extensive capital development program will deliver a one billion dollar investment in expansion projects over the next five years.”

Melbourne Airport is part of the Hume Council area in northern Melbourne, and is a key contributor to the local economy. It provides a focus for a related activities hub for industries such as transport, logistics and aviation. According to Grant Meyer, Manager of Economic Development for the City of Hume, the airport directly employs over 11,000 people and this is expected to double within the next 20-30 years. It is hoped that new business parks will be established as part of a hub that will contain high technology and high ‘value add’ jobs.

It has been reported that the Victorian State Government recently completed a feasibility study into a proposed Aviation Training Academy in the surrounds of the airport.

Meanwhile Queensland has been pushing hard to position itself as is a significant aviation and aerospace hub in the Asia Pacific region.

According to a Queensland government website “After almost a decade of unprecedented industry growth, Queensland is now regarded as the:

centre for Australia's aerospace industry
centre for Australia's rotary wing (helicopter) industry
centre for Australia's aviation training services
emerging centre for Australia's general aviation industry
developing hub for research and development of emerging aviation technologies.”

Some may see it is a bold claim, but it does demonstrate a sense of initiative that is needed to help get the momentum of these sorts of endeavours going.

But once these industry hubs do get going and they are supported by political will and some financial muscle, educational and employment opportunities, you have en energy that can build upon itself. Suddenly you CAN have a high tech competitive industry cell that attracts what it needs to maintain itself as well as grow.

Once again, policy is important to get advanced engineering technology running on a commercial basis.

Now in Queensland, the government is asserting

the aviation, aerospace and defence industry contributes an estimated A$6 billion to the Queensland economy (The Australian, March 2008)
nearly 30 per cent of all Australian-based pilots are located in Queensland (ABS, Census 2006)
there are 16,500 aviation, aerospace and defence-related jobs in Queensland, 23 per cent of the Australian total (ABS, Census 2006)
with just under 1,000 companies, Queensland is home to nearly 30 per cent per cent of all Australian aviation and aerospace companies (ABS, Census 2006).

The state promotes a variety of locations both on and off airports to suit aviation and aerospace initiatives wanting to set up in Queensland. Airport locations include Brisbane Airport, Gold Coast Airport, Cairns Airport and Townsville Airport as well as Amberley Air Base (an Australian Defence Force hub).

By way of demonstrating that the policy initiatives are working, the government website claims to have a lot of players already in the space, including:

Australian Aerospace (subsidiary of Eurocopter) - Asia Pacific headquarters, rotary wing manufacturing, composite components manufacturing and R&D
Boeing Defence Australia - Australian headquarters, aerospace and network enabled systems
Boeing Research and Technology Australia – headquarters, R&D
Boeing Training and Flight Services- pilot simulator training
Frequentis Australasia - communications and aerospace control centre
GE Aviation Systems Australia - Asia Pacific headquarters and avionics component maintenance
Hawker Pacific - aircraft maintenance operations in Cairns, Townsville and Brisbane
Insitu Pacific Limited - regional head office, production facility and training school
Interturbine Advanced Composites (IAC) (subsidiary of Interturbine Group, Germany) - aerospace logistics company
Sikorsky Aircraft Services (Helitech) - aircraft maintenance and sales
Pratt and Whitney Canada (Australasia) - engine maintenance
Qantas (Brisbane heavy maintenance) - B-767 / A-330 heavy maintenance facility
Qantas Defence Services - avionics and engine maintenance
Raytheon Australia - avionics maintenance and logistics centre
Singapore Flying College - pilot training
Tasman Aviation Enterprises (TAE) - Australia's leading gas turbine and aerospace general engineering company.

For the Queensland Government website click here.

From Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

Empowered engineers needed to make the difference for a profession that matters

2010-12-14T11:31:00.001+11:00

Constant improvement of aerospace engineering skills is essential to maintain global competitiveness in this crucial industry. Cultural factors are important to maintain meaningful national policy engagement.

In an address entitled "Maintaining a Competitive Edge in Today's Global Economy" delivered early in 2010 as part of Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management’s IMPACT Series of Global Insight Luncheons in Chicago, Boeing Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney emphasised the importance of empowered engineers to both industry and national competitiveness in a relentlessly competitive global economy.

Aerospace is in many ways a bellwether industry because of its very globalised nature and ultra advanced technologies. It is even more so because it operates in a market with a lot of very powerful stakeholders… its products are not unimportant consumer throwaways, but expensive and complex systems with far reaching political, national security, military and industry development consequences. Any nation with pretensions to modernity and technological nous needs some exposure to this fiercely competitive game. And just staying in the game demands some very serious policy making commitment.

It is a point that should be well heeded by our engineering educators as well as everyone involved right across the national policy making spectrum. No one, no business or nation is immune – even the USA is feeling the pressure in a rapidly shifting geopolitical context. Getting the national policy settings right is vital – whether you are the USA, China or Australia…

“I think our topic -- maintaining a competitive edge in today's global economy -- couldn't be more timely,” said McNerney, adding that “I believe we have arrived at a critical intersection between competitiveness -- particularly U.S. competitiveness -- and the changing global economy.

During a time when fast-growing, emerging competitors like India, China, Brazil and Russia are investing heavily to educate their people, compete in new sectors and expand their economies, the United States is actually losing global GNP market share -- and becoming less competitive by many measures. In particular, we're seeing alarming declines in education -- mostly in science, technology, engineering and math -- the very areas that are the seeds of innovation, sustained competitive advantage, and even national defense.

While countries like India and China are funneling more and more of their best and brightest into science, engineering and math programs (by some accounts doubling their production of three- and four-year graduates in these fields over a recent three-year period), the number of U.S. students graduating with engineering degrees, in particular, has stagnated.

In 2008, 10 of the world's 20 top Engineering/IT universities were outside the United States. In 2009, 13 of 20 were outside the U.S.

Meanwhile, more and more American kids are dropping out even before they finish high school -- or even grade school! These children are losing opportunities for life -- and the U.S. is losing a potential source of future innovation and competitiveness -- at a time when we need more workers with a broad combination of technical, social and analytic skills.

More than anything, we need greater support for the so-called STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math. We need to get parents re-engaged, strengthen early-childhood education, incentivize teachers and excite a new generation of students.”

McNerney’s concerns at their core address the issue of culture and cultural emphasis; science, engineering and technology flourish in cultures that value these disciplines.

Dumbing down the consumer to an all-swallowing “I don’t care how it works, I just want it all now!” self gratification unit does have long term consequences. National cultures do matter.

Perhaps a few more engineering students could engage a few more of their fellow political science, law and humanities students in changing some cultural thinking? Create a more conducive environment for some real advanced engineering initiatives…

For full text of the Jim McNerney address click here.

Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

Global networks and real time connectivity now essential for aerospace success

2010-12-14T11:31:00.000+11:00

Design development and manufacture of complex equipment like aircraft and aerospace systems has been transformed by the capabilities of the web in just a few short years. Such complex systems are now designed, developed and manufactured in a fast moving international context where real time, global collaboration is an operational necessity in a relentlessly competitive environment. Opportunities for innovative Australian engineering in this space are both hindered and enabled depending on the entrepreneurial response of local participants – “clever, shrewd, nimble and global” are essential operating characteristics of successful players in the business today.

Few industries have seen so many changes in so few years as aviation. From the Montgolfier Brothers manned hot air balloon flight in 1783, to the first powered flight in 1903, the rate of progress in this powerful and globe shrinking industry has been relentless.

In the 1960s we were using slide rules for our engineering calculations. In just a few decades computers had well and truly taken over. How long does the international space station now take to go right around the world? About the length of your average movie – an hour and a half. Now, in aerospace design and manufacture, the world has become smaller still, with real time collaboration with multiple parties around the planet an essential to stay competitive.

Astonishing to consider the changes in less than one lifetime… from slide rules to huge digital files describing in absolute detail, the most fantastic flying machines being transferred around the world in seconds. Other flying machines are controlled in real time from thousands of kilometres away (flying over millions of people who live without electricity or running water).

The global aviation business is relentless. The possibilities thus opened up for Australian engineering innovation throughout a global marketplace are numerous and diverse. With components and services sourced globally, the market for innovative engineering solutions is now world wide for Australian engineers.

The Executive VP of the French Dassault Systemes (DS) organisation, Etienne Droit, recently in Australia, was able to overview the new global context for international product design development and manufacture. DS provides software for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) for products that can vary from major aircraft, to cars, to mobile phones to even high fashion shoes and handbags. The whole paradigm has moved – now teams around the world can collaborate in real time and view products in 3D – the brain’s natural way of making sens of things. DS has 7,000 licence holders in Australia and New Zealand alone which enables local engineers to compete globally.

The experience of French Dassault Systemes is worth noting in one additional and very important regard; operating in some 83 countries with revenues of over USD$2 billion per year, 25% of those revenues are invested in R&D each year and 50% of the staff of DS are in R&D. It is an interesting lesson not just in technology, but also in organisational culture… which is what is needed for engineering excellence to thrive.

Of course other vendors such as Siemens and Autodesk also operate in a similar space.

Global collaboration is seen as the way of making the best decisions faster. According to Droit, 80% of all products fail, 50% of those because the specifications were not what the market wanted, and some 30% of those because the product did not hit the market at the right time – being either too early or too late.

And the international markets are ruthless – a product has a month or two to get market traction or it is gone within 6 months. With such demanding cycle times, it important to get it right the first time.

We are experiencing a massive shift in global business culture and operating practices. This provides many opportunities for Australian engineering innovation to penetrate global markets.

Local collaborators, collaborating with colleagues around the world can have a global impact.

As Margaret Mead once wrote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

The new environment provides the opportunity for good idea to shine around the world. Now we can get those innovative Australian engineering ideas out to the world and earning revenue, without having to first spend tens of millions of dollars in factories, real estate, prototypes etc, etc. As Victor Hugo said “nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

From Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

Kiwi more super powerful than Oz?

2010-12-14T11:30:00.000+11:00

According to the “Twenty Technologies That Can Give You Super Powers” feature on the Bloomberg Businessweek website, Kiwis scored for two commercially inventions, Australia scored none!

Kiwi hit No 1 was a human jet pack, made by Martin Aircraft of New Zealand. This commercially-available jet pack will be released by New Zealand's Martin Aircraft at a price around US$ 90,000. Weighing 115 Kg, it offers 30 minutes of flight time and it is fueled by conventional gasoline.

Kiwi Hit No 2 was K Sonar, from New Zealand's Bay Advanced Technologies. This is a sonar device for the blind that attaches to a walking cane and uses ultrasonic waves to sense the environment. Special earphones convey the information to the wearer. The present model has been on the market for about five years. The inventor Leslie Kay, has retired, but the product is still being marketed by Auckland-based Zabonne.

Cloud seeding to encourage rainfall gets a mention, but the pioneering work done in Australia over many years, does not. Fargo (N.D.) based Weather Modification, founded in 1961 is now apparently the largest cloud-seeding company in the USA (silver iodide and dry ice dropped into the atmosphere). According to the London based Telegraph, Cloud seeding was used in the former Soviet Union to remove radioactive particles from the air following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

See Twenty Technologies That Can Give You Super Powers

From Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

Headlines

2010-08-11T14:19:00.000+10:00

Energy and fuel, its ALL about the battery

Humankind evolved utilizing “real time” solar energy (sunlight, wood) only shifting to “deep time” solar batteries (oil, coal, natural gas) starting with the industrial revolution. At current discharge rates how long will those deep time batteries last? Followed by an orderly transition to what?

Product Development, you still need that Creative Spark!

Two of The Warren Centre’s 2010 Innovation Heroes explain that the key to great product development is to clearly understand a problem worth solving, and then bring the right new approach that problem. Only then can an arsenal of great IT add value …

What will you do with 100 cores?

Any ICT business that derives competitive advantage from the execution speed of a single thread of code is at risk. In 2009, Intel estimated that <2% of the world’s programmers understand multi-threaded programming and most of these are developing computer games! Dr Chris Nicol CTO at NICTA plots a way through this for all of us.

The Art and Practice of Engineering in a digital world

Thanks to IT, engineering design for the Built Environment now uses data rich, object based modelling to evaluate design options. Engineers in the digital era will need to better understand the art of design alongside their current understanding of the science of engineering. ARUP’s Tristram Carfrae explains!

Energy and fuel, its ALL about the battery

2010-08-11T11:41:00.001+10:00

by Dr Don M. Parkin, University of Sydney

Don puts it all into perspective – reliable, high quality energy supply is absolutely fundamental to the way we live in Australia. Changes across the energy industry make it timely to consider the battery paradigm – how do we store energy across the system so we can access what we want when we want? What are some of the implications?

picture courtesy Dr Don Parkin

The cultures and economies of modern industrialized societies are dependent on flexible energy forms on demand, anywhere, at an affordable price. Here we define “battery” to mean any energy storage device that societies can discharge and/or charge to meet its energy needs. Energy forms including oil, coal, natural gas, biomass, uranium, geothermal and tides are thus natural batteries.

All mass and energy originate in the formation of the universe and our solar system. Soon after the Big Bang hydrogen isotopes were formed, followed by heavy elements including uranium in super nova events. Later in time, our solar system formed with the sun burning hydrogen isotopes. The earth’s available mass and energy for human utilization are thus hydrogen isotopes, uranium, and heat from the kinetic energy of formation plus solar energy “photons”.

Transmission and distribution energy
storage options, from America's
Energy Future: Technology and
Transformation, NRC 2009

Humankind evolved utilizing “real time” (RT) solar as its energy source only shifting to a significant reliance on the “deep time” (DT) solar batteries (oil, coal, natural gas) starting with the industrial revolution. At current discharge rates the usable time scale of these DT solar batteries is represented by the time span from the start of the industrial revolution to the present. Although the exact charge left in the coal and natural gas batteries ranges from centuries to millennia, the discussion regarding the oil battery revolves principally around approaching unusable discharge within a century. It is further projected that for humankind catastrophic global warming will occur on the much shorter time scale of human generations, primarily due to CO2 emission from this discharge.

To address global warming the world community is discussing and exploring mechanisms to reduce or eliminate reliance on DT solar batteries by shifting toward RT solar, geothermal and tides, uranium, and possibly hydrogen isotope fusion energy to mitigate CO2 release. For RT solar to make a significant contribution to this shift, all its manifestations – photosynthesis, photons, thermal, weather, wind – must be utilized.

The temporal and spatial variability aspects of RT solar limit its potential for electrical grid power to the order of 20% and make its potential for a base load role problematic. Beyond the limited biomass and hydro storage battery contributions, there thus must be a viable commodity scale battery system(s) supporting photons, thermal, and wind.

The various chemical battery systems proposed to address this requirement have limited ranges of application and none reach the commodity characteristics required for bulk power management. One possible battery system that does meet the necessary commodity characteristics as well as being a viable battery partner for uranium, geothermal and tides plus transportation is hydrogen. There are very significant hurdles to building an energy economy utilizing hydrogen however. Economically viable fuel cells, transportable storage, production efficiency, and electrical power production efficiency are notable examples.

Nevertheless, continuation of the lifestyle we enjoy today requires that sometime in the near future RT solar be a major part of societies energy supply. This role requires the development of a commodity level battery system. Hence, it is all about the battery.

Product Development, you still need that Creative Spark!

2010-08-11T11:41:00.000+10:00

by Dr Steve Friskin, Finisar

I was asked to provide some thoughts on the impact of IT developments on engineering programs in a modern technical engineering environment. I guess a few caveats are appropriate in that I’m neither an engineer (actually a physicist by training) nor particularly up to date on the latest trends in IT – my knowledge of Facebook comes from my children’s interactions rather that my own experience and any engineer at my work who knows me well would have a chuckle at the incongruity of my penning (to use the pre-digital verb) any thoughts on this matter. However, having worked as Chief Technical Officer of various optical communications R&D companies over the last couple of decades I have observed – if in some respects from the sidelines – the increasing impact of IT on the way that development programs are carried out, and have some personal ideas of what is important.

Projected internet video and wireless
growth to 2013 (c) Finisar; Cisco data

The telecommunications revolution has been both spawned and enabled by the advances in information technology and the way that we share information globally. Data rates that were inconceivable only a few years ago are now common place and the multi-Terabit optical wavelength switches which our company Finisar Australia develops and manufactures were inconceivable in the early 90’s when sub- Gigabit optical transmission was the state- of-the- art. The benefits of these advances are probably most significant in technical and engineering fields. As a global company, teleconferencing, video conferencing file sharing and ‘traditional’ email enable complex engineering projects to be coordinated, developments to be reviewed and joint resources to be brought to problem solving across multiple time zones.

The key to great product development is to clearly understand a problem worth solving, and then bring the right new approach that problem. That’s when an arsenal of great IT can add value by testing and iterating ideas quickly – hopefully each iteration providing deeper insight into the problem or some hints of the way ahead. In this way IT can be a great adjunct to physical understanding and engineering intuition , but a solution that is driven by the constraints of the IT tool applied is unlikely to create the winning product or design.

Within Engana (now Finisar) we recognised early on that our competitive advantage would come from combining leading-edge optical hardware design with the ability to define the product’s features and performance through the algorithms embedded in the device control software. Whilst the optical hardware design sets the baseline performance limits of our Wavelength Selective Switch products (“Ye canna change the laws of physics, Cap’n”) the flexibility enabled by our software-based approach to product functionality allows us to both compensate for much of the variation which occurs in real-world manufacturing of complex opto-electronic components, and also allows us to rapidly innovate in terms of the features provided to customers. The underlying concept behind the business we established of “software-enabled optical functionality” was made possible by the developments in IT as well as programmable optical imagers such as Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) employed previously only in TV projectors.

An example of ‘software-enabled optical functionality’ is our new FlexGrid ™ capability where our software-based channel definition (as opposed to the optical hardware defined approach of our competitors) allows us to very rapidly release a suite a of products which support not only todays 10- and 40- Gbit/sec transmission speeds, but provide a future-proof path to 400 Gbit/sec and even 1 Terabit/sec data streams in the future. We used to joke that what we started as an optics company would finish up as a software house – and this is increasingly the case!

Furthermore, the new capabilities enabled by IT, new product releases and upgrades can be emailed to be down-loaded and embedded on our optical switches without impacting the in service traffic that is being carried. All of our products provide in service upgradability, and upgrades to products installed in hundreds of sites can be coordinated simply through software.

More generally, search engines have opened up a world of previously obscure knowledge on every facet of engineering design, materials, properties and specialist suppliers from anywhere in the world are accessible and able to quote as easily as the machine shop down the road..

Operationally, the developments in databases and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) have enabled us to data -mine to explore any facet of the manufacturing yield or look for correlations indicating the root cause of any deviation or non-compliance. In turn this makes a huge statistical database available to our customers who in deploying their products, can better understand not only the specified limits of various performance parameters, but the trends and statistical analysis of any specification. Of key importance to the Telecom world (which demands the highest levels of reliability) is traceability – the ability to track the origin of each of hundreds of components to their origin (supplier and lot identification) with knowledge only of the serial number.

Among the major applications, Agile and Oracle are the workhorses of the corporation, coordinating the engineering control and documentation and uniting the accounting, procurement and shipping functions. These applications come with significant overhead and so dedicated staff exist within our organisation to maintain the implementation/training and support of these programs. They are essential tools as projects grow in scope to ensure the correct processes are captured at each stage of the product cycle.

At the engineering level there are engineering design tools across all disciplines from the layout of our latest multi layer PCB, silicon CMOS simulations, optical propagation tools and various mechanical and thermal analyses as well as software testing and mathematical programs to support the various activities that need to be brought together.

Engineering development programs and even post deadline papers at international conferences have been enabled for us, by efficient “shipping” of code of a new switching function (or more accurately a digital holographic image) to demonstrate for the first time wavelength selective optical power sharing as well as switching.

But just a few thoughts to conclude on what IT hasn’t done yet... An IT tool is great for simulations, data analysis, calculations and even optimisations of parameters but without a creative insight into a unique way to achieve a goal it doesn’t create a competitive advantage.

See www.finisar.com

Dr. Steven Frisken was a co-founder of Photonic Technologies which was acquired by Nortel Networks, and he became the interim CEO. He introduced a telecommunications optical circulator adopted by industry and passive and dynamic EDFA gain flattening filters leading to the first laboratory DWDM amplifiers. Steve Frisken also co-founded Engana with Simon Poole, Australia’s most successful optical start-up company.

Dr. Simon Poole is an innovator in communications and photonics technologies. He co-invented the Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifier with a market of $300M pa. He founded and sold two successful photonics companies, INDX and Engana, responsible for developing world leading Wavelength Selective Switching technologies. He is now working as the Director, New Business Ventures of Finisar Australia to expand the company’s core activities into the field of Optical Instrumentation.

What will you do with 100 cores?

2010-08-11T11:40:00.000+10:00

by Dr. Chris Nicol, Chief Technology Officer, NICTA

Warren Centre Innovation Hero has some questions about what the next wave of computing technology might bring.

There is an inflexion point approaching the computing industry. Consider the following statement and see if it could apply to your business.

Any software business or embedded computing provider that derives competitive advantage from the execution speed of a single thread of code is at risk.

Why is this true and what does it mean? Most software written for computers is written in a sequential programming language like C. Most secondary and tertiary computer courses teach this type of programming skill. All of it is rapidly becoming out of date, and much of the trillions of lines of software that has been developed in the past, may need to be re-written or become obsolete. Multi-core processors are about to change everything. Processors have taken a dramatic shift in architecture over the past few years from superscalar to multi-core. A multi-core machine is essentially a parallel processing architecture known as Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD). This architectural trend started with the Intel Core Duo and has continued to Opteron, PowerXCell, UltraSparc, Cortex, SuperH and so on. All of these processor platforms are shipping multi-core chips. This trend will continue over the next decade. At the IEEE ISSCC conference in Feb 2010, Intel announced a 48-core processor chip. By 2015 we will likely have over 100 cores on a “many-core” processing chip in our notebook computers.

What will you do with 100 cores? Not much is my guess. If you open the Performance tab on the Task Manager of your Corei7-based computer you may notice that most of the 8(1) CPU threads are underutilised. This is because most of the software written for a PC executes as a single sequential thread on one of the processors. In a 100 core system, much of your software will have access to less than 1% of the available computing power of the machine. Yet as customer problem sets continue to grow, the computation needed to process them will also grow and therefore execution times will get longer. Even though a 100 core computer will have 25 times the processing capability, a single program will actually be slower unless it is re-written.

A large amount of software will need to be re-written for multi-threaded execution to exploit multi-core systems. This is a difficult undertaking because there is a shortage of people who know how to do it. At the Intel Developers Conference in 2009, Intel estimated that <2% of the world’s programmers understand multi-threaded programming and most of these are developing computer games. Multi-threaded programming remains a graduate level course in many degree programs and there are few tools available to assist with the re-architecture of legacy software. It follows that even those organisations with the most adaptive of strategies, may not be able to find or train the talent needed to re-architect their software in time. The CAD software industry is an example of one that could be redefined by the proliferation of multi-core computing.

Why we are where we are.

The transition to multi-core has occurred due to the escalating power consumption of advanced processors hitting a ceiling of 130 Watts. The chart at left shows the power consumption of Intel processors since 1970. With the Itanium, Intel processors peaked at 130 Watts. The x86-64 compatible processor architectures have been optimised over many years to extract the maximum performance from a single thread of sequential code (Using techniques like multiple on-chip phase-locked loops, Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) architectures, fine-grained pipelining, branch prediction, speculative execution etc). When processors hit the 130W power ceiling, the only way to get more performance (and continue to deliver to Moore’s Law) is to place several cores on the chip. Furthermore, the cores have hit a peak clock rate of 4GHz (called the Clock Wall). This is in part due to the fact that large synchronous digital chips in 32nm CMOS are not much faster than those in 45nm and 65nm. One reason for this is that the clock requires increased overhead in deep sub micron technology nodes. Typically, about 10% of the clock period is overhead to cover variance of device parameters and operating conditions. In technology nodes below 45nm, the increased variance of device parameters has required an increase in the amount of overhead added to the clock. So while typical device performance may improve, the overall clock period does not. Therefore, the performance available from any single core has essentially peaked – and herein is the problem for much of today’s software.

There are considerable research efforts underway to develop tools that assist with mapping programs written in “C” to parallel processors. This is a very difficult problem. The Wikipedia page on Automatic Parallelization explains why this is a difficult and as-yet unsolved problem:

“The goal of automatic parallelization is to relieve programmers from the tedious and error-prone manual parallelization process. Though the quality of automatic parallelization has improved in the past several decades, fully automatic parallelization of sequential programs by compilers remains a grand challenge due to its need for complex program analysis and the unknown factors (such as input data range) during compilation.”(2)

Researchers are now shifting attention to new languages that enable the description of the concurrency of the problem. At NICTA, we are taking the approach of building domain-specific languages on top of a functional programming paradigm. Unlike imperative languages (e.g. C), a functional language requires the user to explicitly specify the relationship between computations. This enables the automatic generation of a parallel implementation by a compiler that maps concurrent threads onto multiple cores to achieve speed-up. Indeed, NICTA’s Scalable Vision Machines project(3) is developing a domain specific language for describing computer vision and real time image processing algorithms; and aims to automatically deploy their implementation to typical heterogeneous processing architectures found in smart IP camera systems. (For example we are mapping algorithms to a multi-core processor with a (Single Program Multiple Data) graphics co-processor). Some approaches being considered by researchers and developers are Intel Concurrent Collections(4) , F Sharp(5), CUDA(6) , OpenCL(7) and Haskell(8) .

The cores will get simpler.

When scaling to 100 cores, it makes less sense to use high performance super-scalar cores (like the x86) as the individual processing units. To keep the power consumption at a minimum in a many core system, more computationally efficient cores will be needed. This will be true for power-efficient Ultra High Performance Computing (UHPC) systems. The Silverthorne architecture (Atom) has a computational efficiency that is 3 times that of the Nehalem (Corei7 and Xeon) (9) and is a better choice for a many-core system.

This trend will continue, and we could see chips with over 1000 cores before 2020. These chips will have substantially simpler cores than the ones used in processors today. Indeed, these systems will start to resemble what computer architects have for decades called “Massively Parallel Processors (MPP)”.

The age of spatial computing

In today’s systems, programs written in a high level language like C are sequenced into a single processor by a compiler. The single processor is called a Central Processing Unit (CPU). The focus on a “central” processing unit has led to several processes (for multiple users) being time-multiplexed into a single, complex processor using a multi-tasking operating system like Linux.

However, when we have 1000 cores on a chip – the concept of a Central processing unit is no longer relevant. In an MPP system, we may start to see programs being mapped across many cores (spatial computing) rather than sequenced into a single processor. This type of spatial mapping will lead to a fundamental shift in the way that software is developed and mapped to MPP arrays. It will also redefine what we mean by an operating system.

Continuing this trend, these MPP systems may eventually start to resemble FPGAs with programmable cores and local interconnection networks. We could imagine that some day, reconfigurable computing and general purpose processing may in fact merge.

What should I do?

You can assume that the performance you get from your single threaded program today is the most you are ever likely to get. Map out the execution times for increasing sizes of customer data sets over the next 5 years. How will your program perform in the future? Imagine how the customer will feel when they realise your program with their data sets are squeezed onto a single core in their 100 core machine. You should be thinking about how to partition it across 2 cores. Then transfer the same executable onto an n core machine. How will you partition up the data sets to get a speedup across n cores? What speed-up would you get? Can you predict the expected speed-up for n = 2...100 and will this be sufficient to maintain your competitive advantage? If you understand the above and are comfortable with your expertise in this area then you could be one of the 2% that Intel speak of. If not, you can wait for parallelising C compilers to emerge from research labs, or you can take matters into your own hands and undertake a course in multi-threaded programming.

As individuals, it is our responsibility to manage our personal value proposition. If you are trained in multi-threaded programming, you will have a skill that will be highly sought after over the next decade. No matter how proficient you are at programming C or Java, you should consider adding multi-threaded programming to your set of skills. This is NOT something you should try to learn on your own. It is MUCH harder to learn than sequential programming. If you are a Technical Manager, you SHOULD invest in retraining your key staff in multi-threaded programming. You might also monitor the research activities in concurrent programming languages (like those listed above). You can be sure that your competitors will.

Contact the author, at chris.nicol@nicta.com.au for more information on multi-threaded programming.

The Art & Practice Of Engineering In A Digital World

2010-08-11T11:39:00.000+10:00

by Tristram Carfrae RDI, MA, FTSE, MIStrucE, MIEAust

Arup Fellow

Chair Buildings

Warren Centre Innovation Hero whose many various involvements include the world famous Water Cube building in Beijing, Tristram Carfrae reflects upon engineering in a digital world:

Information Technology is beginning to have a profound effect on the way the Built Environment is planned, designed, procured, constructed and operated.

111 Eagle St, Brisbane.
Image courtesy Arup

Plans and designs can be conceived, tested and optimised in a virtual world before committing to construction. Such plans and design will benefit from access to data about usage, consumption and performance of the existing built environment.

Construction will tend towards a manufacturing process using “just in time” procurement allied to “mass customisation” and on-site assembly with all information flowing directly from digital databases and/or information rich models (Built Environment Models - BEM).

Assets can be managed and efficiently operated directly from BEM, reducing energy consumption, optimising operating costs and determining replacement plans. Some systems (transport, electricity grids, water supply) can be optimised in real time using sensors, networks and computers. People will improve their usage of systems if provided with real time, pertinent information via communications networks (urban informatics, smart meters).

All usage, consumption and performance of systems and assets, including relevant human behaviour, can be recorded and used for physical optimisation and reconfiguration, and fed back into the planning and design of the future built environment.

The art and practice of engineering in a digital world

Melbourne's 'rectangular' stadium
Image courtesy Arup

The main changes occurring in engineering design stem from the data rich, object based modelling approach of BIM.

For example a building services electrical engineer might now start by placing intelligent objects within the chassis of a three dimensional virtual model made by the structural engineer and architect. These light fittings (or other intelligent object) know what sort of electrical supply they require and how they should be connected. The actual wiring diagrams, including the dreaded distribution boards, are then automatically generated by software that is “plugged in” to the modelling environment.

Melbourne's 'rectangular' stadium
Image courtesy Arup

A structural engineer trying to conceive elegant solutions to a complex three dimensional form might start by experimenting in a virtual world. It is no longer necessary to start with a two dimensional sketch on the back of an envelope, or a restaurant napkin. Indeed such a traditional process is limited by the individual’s grasp of complexity and may not arrive at a very elegant solution that uses all three dimensions. A trial and error approach in a digital three dimensional world may be more successful. In this new world we can experiment and learn from our failures without the potential consequences that used to be faced by a medieval cathedral builder/engineer/architect.

Optimising the amount of repetition
available in the cladding panels of the
Rectangular Pitch Stadium in
Melbourne. Image (c) Arup

But both these “modern” techniques rely more on hunch and intuition than ruthless mathematical logic, which is left to the software. Engineers in the digital era will need to better understand the art of design alongside their current understanding of the science of engineering.

After all, unlike a mathematical problem, no design challenge has only one, perfect solution. Design is one of the few activities that require both sides of the brain to be used simultaneously.

Headlines

2010-05-12T12:01:00.036+10:00

This edition of our e-bulletin investigates field robotics, engineering leadership and includes an article on distributed energy submitted by CSIRO.

Robots are coming to the 2010 Innovation Lecture

In a series of lectures across Australia next month, Hugh Durant-Whyte will open a window on an astonishing new world that his team is creating right now. Australia leads the world in field robotics technology - both fundamental robotics science and its commercial application across a diversity of crucial industries.

How engineering faculties can cultivate leadership

The Dean of Engineering at the University of Sydney, Professor Archie Johnston is an academic leader and a busy man. Also chair of the Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management, he has some clear and forthright ideas on what makes a leader in the engineering profession.

Autonomous robotics bring unique leadership challenges

Engineering changes the way humans operate; it regularly changes the course of history and civilisations. One of the latest waves of engineering innovation changing us is autonomous systems, a new area of field robotics opening opportunities to do the impossible and to do more with less!

Demonstrating far reaching engineering leadership

The Warren Centre’s “Professional Performance, Innovation and Risk” (PPIR) project is an outstanding example of professional leadership: “It would appear to be a world first in terms of a professional body setting out a code of professional performance”.

An intelligently engineered grid for Australia

The present value of cost savings from wide-scale deployment of distributed energy solutions could be as much as $130 billion by 2050. The engineering is do-able. Policy and regulatory frameworks need considered thought and leadership. All energy market stakeholders need to be engaged and educated. CSIRO’s Intelligent Grid Report provides the details ….

Robots are coming to the 2010 Innovation Lecture

2010-05-12T12:01:00.035+10:00

In a series of lectures across Australia next month, Professor Hugh Durant-Whyte will open a window on an astonishing new world that is being created right now.

Australian researchers are leaders in developing field robotics technology - both fundamental robotics science and its commercial application across a diversity of crucial industries.

Some of the largest robotics programs in the world are currently based here. Their impacts will be profound.

Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte is this year's Innovation Lecturer and ARC Federation Fellow, Research Director at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) at The University of Sydney.

Australia's sparsely populated landmass, combined with its resource riches is considered an ideal location for developing and applying robotics. The past decade has seen substantial technical developments and investment in 'field robotics', in large outdoor applications such as cargo handling, mining, agriculture and defence. The Innovation Lecture will provide a unique insight into many of these applications ... and beyond.

Robotics has an exciting future with applications ranging from marine science and offshore operations, through autonomous networks to monitor and steward our environment, to robots used to assist in remote health care. Globally, robotics promises to be a transformational industry in the 21st Century, an industry in which Australia can exploit its natural advantages to become a major developer and user of this technology.

Hugh Durrant-Whyte received his BSc in Nuclear Engineering from the University of London, UK, in 1983, and MSE and Ph D degrees, both in Systems Engineering, from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, in 1985 and 1986, respectively. From 1987 to 1995 he was a lecturer in engineering science at the University of Oxford, UK and a Fellow of Oriel College Oxford. Since 1995 he has been Professor of Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney where he leads the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Autonomous Systems. He has been awarded two Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowships; In 2002 and 2007. He has published over 350 research papers and has won numerous awards and prizes for his work. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (FIEEE), of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE), and of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA). He was named the 2008 Professional Engineer of the Year by the Institute of Engineers Australia Sydney Division.

Professor Durrant-Whyte is presenting the 2010 Innovation Lecture around Australia in June: The Robots are Coming.
This activity is sponsored Nationally by:
AusIndustry
Rio Tinto
Shelston IP
And sponsored in each State by:
Innovate SA and Adelaide University
NSW Investment and Industry
The University of Queensland
The Victorian Government

Click here for more information or to reserve your place at the lecture.

How engineering faculties can cultivate leadership

2010-05-12T12:01:00.022+10:00

The Dean of Engineering at the University of Sydney, Professor Archie Johnston, like all deans, is an academic leader and a busy man. He is also chair of the Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management (CELM). CELM was created by Engineers Australia in 2002 as (sic) “a strategic response to the demands of the complex and changing business environment in which engineers work”.

Johnston has some clear and forthright ideas on what makes a leader in the engineering profession.
“If you look at Engineers Australia’s Top 100 engineers, you will see many people who obviously have outstanding abilities and are leaders in their particular fields.

“Of course there are plenty of engineering leaders who are not listed in the Top 100, but all leaders tend to have a number of common attributes, such as good people skills, entrepreneurship and, above all, a passion to succeed.

When referring to exceptional engineering leaders, Johnston supports the term heroes.

“Really, to make your mark, you have to be out there and you have to be heard and seen, especially so that undergraduates and young engineers can see what makes a successful engineer. As well as having a solid technical base, you undoubtedly need good people skills and the ability to communicate, especially to non-engineering audiences, both locally and globally” he said.

Being a leader also often involves adding to the technical side.

“A number of our best graduates only practice engineering for a relatively short period of time before moving into some other field, which is a worry for some people as they think they are deserting the profession, when really they are just moving into further areas of interest and in many cases leveraging off their engineering roots,” he said, pointing out that engineering is increasingly becoming an enabling degree, like science was about 50 years ago or that law is increasingly becoming.

As an example he referred to a former graduate who has become a senior executive at Macquarie Bank in Sydney.

“Now people might see this as leaving engineering for finance, but a civil engineering background is most useful in assessing the merits of infrastructure investments (of which Macquarie has many).
“Even if you wanted to stop young people leaving the profession, the shackling impact on them might making them move away faster and this may not be in our best interests in the long term.”

As with most walks of life Johnston sees that high profile engineers who have succeeded in engineering businesses exude a passion for achieving excellence beyond just personal ambition and have the ability to energise team members to achieve unbelievable outcomes. They usually set their benchmarks very high and relish challenges associated with national and international comparisons.

“When you talk to most engineers and leaders at a social gathering, you often find they are reluctant in discussing their achievements, often because they see their success as unremarkable, when in fact it is often inspired.”

Engineers are frequently portrayed as problem solvers, which Johnston sees as somewhat negative. Rather, he prefers the descriptors “shapers of the future” and those who deliver “technical solutions on time and on budget with minimum impact on the environment and without upsetting people”, usually quoted at the conclusion of large and complex projects.

“But there is more to engineering leadership than this, and that is the impulse is to be inspirational and creative. And creativity can really capture the imagination of young people. The bubble envelope for the Beijing Olympic swimming centre, designed by a team from Arup led by Tristram Carfrae has inspired several young people to do double degrees in structural engineering and architecture,” he pointed out.

The campaign to educate youth about what engineers do and the example set by inspirational engineers is also assisting a return of talent to engineering schools.

At the University of Sydney, the undergraduate intake was up 15% this year and so too was the quality (expressed in the ATAR score).

“The turnaround started nationally about four to five years ago in civil engineering, in mechanical about three years ago and in electrical about two years ago,” said Johnston.

“200 students at Sydney are now also undertaking double degrees with engineering. These are some of our highest achieving undergraduates, people who are thinking outside of traditional boundaries and who are likely to become the engineering leaders of tomorrow.”

Professor Archie Johnston

Archie Johnston is a Fellow of Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), Engineers Australia, and, The Institution of Civil Engineers (London). He is Dean of Engineering and Information Technologies at The University of Sydney. He was previously in a similar role at the University of Technology Sydney. He is National Chair of the Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management (Engineers Australia), Deputy Chair of the Education Forum of ATSE, Advisor to the Reliance Group, Mumbai India, Advisory Professor to Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Advisor to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, Delhi, India. He is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Director of the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering, the Smart Services CRC and the CRC for Advanced Composite Structures. Every year from 2004 to 2009 he has been cited as one of the most Influential 100 Engineers in Australia. He was Chair of the Judging Panel for the 2009 Australian Construction Achievement Awards. He was the Sir John Holland 2007 Civil Engineer of the Year and 2007 Entrepreneurial Educator of the Year of the Business and Higher Education Roundtable. He is a former President of the Australian Council of Engineering Deans.

Bob Jackson has been a specialist journalist, having been employed by Engineers Media over the past 20 years. He retired from Engineers Media at the beginning of this year.

by Bob Jackson

Autonomous robotics bring unique leadership challenges

2010-05-12T12:00:00.008+10:00

Engineering has often changed the way humans operate, has influenced cultures and has regularly changed the course of history and civilisations.

While many such changes are initiated by engineers themselves, they are perhaps too rarely controlled or even directed by them.

One of the latest and most significant waves of engineering innovation that will change the way human beings operate is gathering huge momentum right now. Autonomous systems are a new area of field robotics that could lead us into an era of change like that brought on by the internet.

Autonomous systems amount to much more than mere robots. They are increasingly being sent to do the dangerous, dirty and extreme work as well as those highly specialised tasks of human endeavour. And autonomous systems will be able to do much more; as they will have specialised sensors well beyond human senses, as well as greater physical stamina and operational capabilities.

The ramifications of these systems will be significant and the consequences far reaching, with a wide diversity of crucial policy implications throughout all fields of human endeavour.

It is perhaps reassuring then to know that Australian engineers and researchers are world leaders in autonomous systems. That leadership however comes with lots of responsibilities as well as ongoing challenges.

Australia’s leading alliance in this area is the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems which was established in January 2003 under the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence Program.

The Centre brings together three leading research groups: the Australians Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) at the University of Sydney; the Artificial Intelligence and Mechatronics Groups at the University of New South Wales; and the Mechatronics and Intelligent Systems Group at the University of Technology in Sydney (UTS). It is funded by the ARC, the NSW State Government and the three partner institutions.

According to Research Director Hugh Durrant-Whyte, the vision for the Centre is for it to be a world leader and a national focus for research development and commercial application of intelligent autonomous systems. Key objectives include:

• undertaking innovative research

• providing high quality teaching and training in autonomous systems

• engaging industry in the commercial development of autonomous systems

• delivering the benefits of these systems to society.

Four key areas of endeavour cover perception, control, learning and systems.

The Centre now comprises over 250 staff and research students and has earned a global reputation as a world leader in the field, with many productive industry partnerships in Australia and internationally.

Just two of these include the Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation (now a global centre of excellence for research in robotics for the mining industry); and the BAE Systems Centre for Intelligent Mobile systems (CIMS). In addition to these, the Centre now has over 20 industry supported projects putting robotics research to work in a wide diversity of applications, such as agriculture, cargo handling, infrastructure maintenance, environmental monitoring, marine exploration and much more.

Of particular note has been the development of new areas of research expertise in human-robot interaction and persistent autonomy and of the growing importance of new applications in social robotics and in the use of autonomous systems in environmental monitoring. This has resulted in a growing number of projects and collaborations applying robotics in areas such as marine surveying, invasive weed monitoring and medical care. Such partnerships are opening up possibilities for many new directions, with possibilities well beyond current industry needs.

The above is but the briefest glimpse into a not too distant future increasingly populated by highly capable autonomous systems. Such systems will challenge engineers in many ways, not just in terms of design, building and operating such systems, but also in getting more involved in providing the broader social and policy leadership that will be essential to deal equitably with the potentials of such futures.

For further information see http://www.cas.edu.au/ and http://www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/ .

by Dan Stojanovich

Dan Stojanovich, BE MBA, is a freelance journalist and publicist. He can be contacted at spark@creativeasylum.com.au.

Professor Durrant-Whyte is presenting The Warren Centre's 2010 Innovation Lecture in capital cities around Australia in June – The Robots are Coming. Click here for more information.

Demonstrating far reaching engineering leadership

2010-05-12T11:59:00.019+10:00

The Warren Centre’s “Professional Performance, Innovation and Risk” (PPIR) project is an outstanding example of professional leadership that could have a significant impact well beyond the engineering profession itself.

“It would appear to be a world first in terms of a professional body setting out a code of professional performance,” says PPIR team member Ian Dart.

In codifying professional performance across the engineering profession, the PPIR project does not seek to raise the bar for normal professional engineering practice across the board; rather it aims to clarify what is acceptable best practice by setting out protocols to achieve the desired level of performance.

“One of the first tasks undertaken by the project team was to survey the engineering world to see if anyone had developed a profession-wide performance code. We could not find one,” says Dart. The medical profession has a code of practice, but it does not specifically address “performance”, or what it is that the professional should be giving mind to in performing professional work.

“So what we are developing here is in many ways a world first,” says Dart.

The project puts a series of fundamental questions: about the climate in which engineers currently operate; about professional performance and the complex minefields of law and liability that govern everyday engineering; about engineering risk and responsible risk-taking; and about the relationships between professional performance, innovation and risk.

While the motivation for the project may have been in small part to make the profession more “palatable” and easier to understand for the Professional Indemnity insurers and others who had to deal with issues of risk in engineering projects, the project is indeed far more wide reaching.

The aim is to codify “professional performance” in engineering and to change the liability and legal frameworks that govern everyday engineering, so that there:

• is recognition of engineering professionalism in the law

• is greater recognition of engineering issues (and engineering innovation) in contractual frameworks

• are fewer professional liability issues arise and liability outcomes are more predictable

• are resulting benefits to all parties to the engineering endeavour: the client, the financier, the consulting engineer, the employed engineer, the engineering employer, third parties such as insurers, suppliers etc, and the community as a whole – that is, everyone involved in buying, selling or using engineering products or services.

It is a wide and diverse brief. One of the more difficult challenges has been to succinctly articulate what the project is about and what its multifarious benefits are, so that the consequences are better understood by all. Another challenge has been to distil into a relatively concise document all that the professional engineer needs to consider in their work.

Equally difficult has been ensuring that the project’s wording will allow this codification of professional performance to apply and make practical sense across all parts of the engineering industry as well as to society in general – to all people and firms involved in buying, selling or using engineering products or services.

A prime consideration has been that the codification make consistent sense, both in prospect and in retrospect, and encapsulate just what it is the Professional Engineer should expect of himself or herself, and what engineering professionals should expect of each other, in a wide variety of circumstances of engineering practice.

The Report has now been published and is available at: http://www.warren.usyd.edu.au/PPIR/report/full_report.pdf

PPIR2: implementing the change program

PPIR2 is about implementing the change program set out in the initial PPIR report. This means:

• continuing the widespread dissemination of the report

• developing and offering (with partners) a major program of basic professional education on the PPIR™ Protocol

• developing and offering a specific program to encourage early adoption of the proposals in the report by leading companies in the engineering industry and profession

• promoting the ratification and endorsement of the protocol by the engineering industry and profession

• establishing the AS.PPIR™ and gaining relevant Standards Australia approvals

• running a coordinated campaign for the engineering industry and profession to undertake initiatives outlined in the report to make more effective use of expert testimony

• arranging for the custody and maintenance of the PPIR Protocol and AS.PPIR, possibly as part of a unified national voluntary registration system.

PPIR 2 is expected to run over a three year period, with the dissemination of the report and the development of AS.PPIR completed in 2010, the industry early adoption program completed in 2011 and all other steps completed in 2012.

The PPIR 2 project will be funded through sponsorship from both public and private organisations. Whilst a significant portion of the required funding has been secured, sponsorship opportunities remain available; anyone interested in sponsorship or other aspects of the project is encouraged to contact the Project Director Christine Kanellakis on 0411 191 761 or via e-mail at christine@ckonsult.com.au

PPIR is a long term project with a big vision. It is a world first and it demonstrates social and professional leadership by the engineering profession.

(™: Professional Performance, Innovation and Risk™, PPIR™ and AS.PPIR™ are trademarks of The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering Ltd)

by Dan Stojanovich BE MBA

An intelligently engineered grid for Australia

2010-05-12T11:59:00.010+10:00

The engineering is do-able. Policy and regulatory frameworks need considered thought and leadership. All energy market stakeholders need to be engaged and educated. The Intelligent Grid Report is the culmination of a three year CSIRO research program which examined the social, technological, environmental and economic value of widespread distributed energy use in Australia.

The Value Proposition is plain - the present value of cost savings of wide-scale deployment of distributed energy solutions could be as much as $ 130 billion by 2050, as well as helping reduce water usage associated with energy generation by up to 75% should Australia adopt the Garnaut 450ppm emission trajectory.

The water savings derive from a combination of distributed energy technologies and renewables, taking water usage associated with energy generation down to a fraction of what would otherwise be the case.

Distributed energy is a collective term used to describe technologies and systems which provide local generation of electrical power, energy efficiency and management of when and how energy is used (demand management). Everyday examples include solar hot water and solar PV on your roof, converting agricultural waste into electricity or heat, energy management products that can optimise the timing of when devices are used, or simply more efficient buildings and appliances.

CSIRO's Intelligent Grid project set out to evaluate the impact distributed energy use could have for satisfying Australia's future energy needs in a carbon constrained economy using a combination of economic modelling, technology simulations and real world case studies. To understand how to realise this value, we examined the social, regulatory and policy factors that influence uptake of distributed energy.

We found that in meeting the Garnaut 450ppm scenario, distributed energy technologies could save Australian consumers $ 800 billion by 2050, or $ 130 billion in today's money. The water intensity of energy supply could also be reduced by up to 75%.

A wide range of low emission distributed energy technologies are already available in the market place and so provide an immediate and cost effective way to substantially reduce carbon emissions.

Of the distributed generation technologies, we find in the short term that biomass and natural gas fired cogeneration provide good value in rural and industrial sectors, with trigeneration emerging in the commercial building sector. Longer term, solar PV may be likely to dominate growth in the distributed generation market across residential and commercial sectors, though this hinges on assumptions about technology development over time.

A wide range of energy efficiency and demand management opportunities provide significant value in the short and long term, from more efficient lighting, heating and cooling, to smarter management of interruptible loads like refrigeration and space conditioning.

CSIRO research sought to understand the many issues that can hold back or enable distributed energy solutions. Our work included case studies, consumer surveys, energy market stakeholder interviews and a literature review.

We found that long-term policy and regulatory uncertainty, as well as a lack of understanding of how distributed energy works were important hurdles which need to be overcome to realise the potential of wide-scale adoption of distributed energy.

We found a real need for education of consumers, energy companies, policy makers and regulators to help ensure energy market incentives are aligned with efficient energy service provision and that consumers make informed energy choices.

While distributed energy may still be perceived as an emerging industry in Australia, it is likely to rapidly evolve as efforts to reduce emissions from the stationary energy sector increase.
Continued technological development, business innovation and an increasing commitment to developing skills in the workforce will help drive the industry's development and ensure the transition to a low carbon future can occur most efficiently in Australia.

The report: Intelligent Grid: A value proposition for the wide-scale distributed energy solutions in Australia is available at www.csiro.au / resources / IG-report.html.

by Tosh Szatow

Headlines

2010-02-17T09:47:00.004+11:00

Mining is something Australians do well – very well, with global leadership demonstrated by our top mining companies. Less well known are the many nimble technology innovators with well established businesses exporting around the world. It can be done; it is being done...

This edition of our E-bulletin focuses on Australian engineering innovation in the resources sector and presents just a few of Australia’s internationally successful mining innovators. We do know of others, but if you know of others please let us know!

Australian Robotics Innovation Transforming Mining Industry Globally
Robotics is transforming mining around the world and Australia’s Centre for Field Robotics, led by 2010 Innovation Lecturer Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte, is a global leader in highly efficient increasingly automated mines with intelligent supervision from a remote office, often with few or no people in the mine itself.

Serial mining industry equipment innovator exhorts others to give it a go!
From Toowoomba (and now a couple of other international locations), a husband and wife team are changing mining around the world. And the story didn’t start all that long ago….

Gekko’s “Python”: at the Forefront of “Lean Mining”
Engineering innovation is a key differentiator for Gekko Systems an international mining equipment business in Ballarat, Victoria. Their new Python System is a novel and effective step into the future.

From Inspiration to Production – Innovation at CRC Mining
CRCMining has the track record and the right networks to help maintain Australia’s global leadership in mining technology development, and to keep delivering an extensive range of innovations to mine sites around the world.

“Invest or die” in mining industry innovation is the message from CSIRO
Mining promises huge payoffs if we get innovation right. The CSIRO is spearheading a diversity of amazing research programs across various alliances. The message is we have to innovate more, or risk losing out…. and that has happened to significant mining nations before …

Have something to say? Post your comments here.

Australian Centre for Field Robotics Transforming Mining Industry Globally

2010-02-17T09:39:00.026+11:00

Robotics is transforming mining around the world and Australian R&D is a global leader in this new vision of highly efficient mines with intelligent remote supervision from an office many thousands of kilometres from site, often with few or no humans in the mine itself.

From Hugh Durrant-Whyte
(Warren Centre 2010 Innovation lecturer)

It’s an idea whose time has finally come - mines with intelligent remote supervision from an office many thousands of kilometres from site. And Australia is at the forefront globally, of R&D into this vision of robotic mining.

Fully automated robotic mining means mines with automated material movement vehicles, trucks and loaders; smart drills for both production and for material characterisation; precise automatic movement and positioning of all forms of equipment, comprehensive management systems – and remote control.

Much of this vision already exists today or is being developed by research teams in Australia.

Robotics (machines which sense and reason about their environment) is the logical continuation of ongoing automation initiatives. Made possible by increased computing power; new algorithms for signal processing, perception and control; new sensing technology including GPS, radar and laser systems; automation and robotics will have an increasing impact on the safety, predictability, precision and efficiency of mining. Separating people from potentially hazardous environments is a major driver.

The ability to accurately locate, control and coordinate robotic machines also delivers much better predictability. When equipped with sensors able to provide real-time estimates of material geometry and geology, the operation of such machines can be controlled in a near optimal manner. Using this information to plan and schedule the actions of many robotic mining machines working in concert vastly increases utilisation, precision and overall efficiency.

Until recently, robotics in mining has seen piecemeal progress. Specific innovations include examples like automated surface haul trucks, automated underground Load-Haul-Dump (LHD) vehicles, and autonomous drills. In some cases, only components of automation have been developed, for example, automatic swing control for drag-lines, heading control for coal shearers, or proximity warning and safety systems for trucks. Such developments reflect the relatively conservative nature of the industry in developing and adopting robotics. Experience shows it is difficult to derive the full benefit when only part of a system is automated.

Recently however, this piecemeal approach has changed substantially with recognition that robotics and automation must encompass the whole mining process; from ore-body delineation through rock breakage, and from material excavation to transport, plant and stock-pile.

A holistic view has the potential to deliver the many benefits from planning, coordination, and control of many robotic mining platforms, and to enable best use of information between platforms to provide increased predictability and precision of the entire process. Many large mining companies are now getting very interested.

Australia has three main centres for mining automation.
- CRC Mining
- CSIRO
- Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation (RTCMA) based at The University of Sydney

These three groups have been engaged in the development of robotic mining technology for at least the past decade, sometimes in collaborative projects, supported by a range of Australian and global mining companies.

Notable projects include the development of robotic LHDs for underground mining, automated functions for excavation including on drag-lines, rope-shovels and hydraulic excavators, autonomous blast-hole drilling, the development of sensor technology including lasers, mm-wave radar and computer vision for monitoring mine geometry, and the development of stand-alone safety systems for various semi-automated mining activities.

These and other projects have placed Australia at the forefront of robotic mining R&D. Substantial research challenges in areas such as sensing, data fusion, navigation and control, have helped established Australian researchers as leading players on the world stage.

However, major mining equipment suppliers have been remarkably slow on the uptake, possibly because few major equipment manufacturers have research or development divisions in Australia. This has made the transition of technology from research into products of value to the Australian mining industry, sometimes a difficult and dispiriting process.

So in Australia, a significant number of smaller technology-oriented automation companies have come to the fore, ranging from companies specialising in remote control, to those providing sensors, information processing, control and planning software.

Many of these companies are spin-outs from various robotics research groups around Australia. A possible industry development scenario in Australia is that one or more of these companies will turn into a systems-engineering house for mining robotics, able to source and integrate individual items of equipment and technology into a fully supported automated mine. This draws on the view that the benefits of automation will only be fully realised through an integrated system, recognising the role that large Australian-based miners play in the global resource industry. There are parallels between this and the changes witnessed in the aerospace sector in the past decade.

Ultimately, what will robotics mean for mining?

Most importantly, robotics and the effective use of real-time information provided by robotic equipment, will change the mining process in to a much more precise and predicable operation; a rock factory indeed. As one of my mining colleagues exclaimed; “you mean we will be able to mine to plan!”

Secondly, robotics will minimise human operators on site, especially in repetitive and potentially hazardous activities such as truck driving and drilling. Skilled operators, geologists and mine planners will increasingly be located remote from the site itself.

Thirdly, it will become possible to mine in areas which would otherwise be unviable. It is possible to envisage the use of robotics to mine much more selectively with lower environmental impact than is currently possible. It is also possible to envisage the use of advanced robotics, coupled with other technologies, to mine at much greater depths and with much greater selectivity than is possible with existing mining practice. In turn, these will open up enormous opportunities for Australian resource companies and for the development of a new robotics industry in Australia.

Collision Avoidance System installed in Andina, Codelco, Chile

image courtesy AcuMine. Click on this image to link to many relevant videos on the AcuMine website

Practical Mine Automation The Focus Of Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation (RTCMA)
The RTCMA comprises 50 research staff and students and is now the largest university-based group working in the mining automation field world-wide.

Wholly funded by Rio Tinto for an initial period of five years, The RTCMA is the largest single investment by a company in any Australian University research group, and builds on a fifteen year relationship between Rio Tinto and the ACFR.

Over the past two and a half years, it has focused on the development of a “total mine automation” system. This includes system architectures, safe operating principles for automated mines, techniques for integrating information from the mining process, development of automated control systems and delivery of specific items of autonomous mining equipment.

An insight to some of the vision and the priorities can be gained from Rio Tinto’s Head of Innovation, John McGagh’s vision for automation in 2030 set out in a recent CSIRO publication, in which he described a mine site where:

- Automated blast-hole drill rigs perfectly position every hole, conduct analysis during drilling, and dictate to the explosives delivery vehicle the explosives load and blend to be charged for each hole

- An excavator can ‘see’ the difference between ore and waste in the muckpile and can separate the two and automatically load the driverless haul truck before dispatching it

- Haul trucks safely navigate around the mine landscape to move waste and ore in a precisely choreographed/optimised manner with no human intervention

- Haul trucks automatically report to the workshop when maintenance is due

- Driverless trains are fitted with an array of sensors that enable them to ‘see’ beyond the horizon

- People on-site are predominantly essential service and maintenance staff

- A remote operations centre oversees the running of the mine while experts working in a capital city fine-tune and drive the processes for maximum added value, 24x7

- A master supervisory system combines data flows and updates the orebody knowledge in real time

- Real time AI (artificial intelligence) coordination takes place across all mine working faces and coordinates all aspects of the mine orebody-to-port supply chain in a manner that ensures that quality controlled correctly-blended product arrives at the port ready for shipment to customers.

The RTCMA is making a major contribution to establishing and keeping Australia at the forefront of global mining industry innovation.

Automation: taking people out of dirty, dangerous and dull environments.

Image courtesy CSIRO

Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte (FIEEE, FTSE, FAA), is an ARC Federation Fellow, Research Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems, the Australian Centre for Field Robotics and the Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation; all in the Faculty of Engineering, The University of Sydney.

Hugh will be delivering The Warren Centre’s 2010 Innovation Lecture at Capital cities around Australia in June … see www.warren.usyd.edu.au/events/IL2010.html for details

Have something to say? Post your comments here.

Serial Australian mining industry equipment innovator just can’t help it… and exhorts others to give it a go!

2010-02-17T09:26:00.015+11:00

In 1971, Mars passed unusually close to Earth and Dr John Russell (then 16 years old) could not afford a telescope capable of seeing its thin icecap. So he made one.

He’s been “making things” ever since. Fast forward to 2008 and he is one of the Warren Centre’s Innovation Heroes. Today Russell Mineral Equipment (RME), founded in the mid-1980’s with his wife, Dr Felicity Rea and based in Toowoomba, employs 180 people with sales of $A40m, 80% of which is international. RME designs and manufactures an extensive suite of technologies for the global mining and mineral processing industry and now has in-country operations in the United States and Chile with further expansions pending. “Why stop when there’s so much more to do!” could well be their catchcry.

Dr John Russell

Working for some 5 years at Mount Isa very early on, John Russell remembers being astonished at how much mining and processing equipment was imported. Surely, he thought there have to be some opportunities here. The idea of creating an Australian mining industry technology company was born then and has been a core motivator ever since. The opportunity was there, but not without a lot of hard work of course…

The opportunity was in grinding mill relining. Relining used to be one of those must-be-done processes that just took as long as it took, and was done when it had to be done, irrespective of the maintenance schedules of the rest of the processing train.

The profitability of a grinding mill can be anywhere from $50,000 to $250,000 per hour, and RME recognised that grinding mill liner life and liner exchange rates during maintenance dictated when and for how long mills were shut down. RME’s vision was to create a suite of complementary technologies that halved mill relining time (RME’s RUSSELL Twin 8-axis Mill Relining Machine has reduced it by three-quarters for some of the world’s largest mills) and allows the use of more efficient liners. With the first Mill Relining Machine commissioned in 1990, the world of grinding mill maintenance changed forever. Now mill managers can control the timing of shutdowns to match other maintenance demands so plant downtime can be minimised.

RUSSELL 8 Mill Relining Machine shown here lifting an 8,800lb/4,000kg shell liner for fitting to the Newcrest Cadia 40’/12.19m SAG mill.

Permission to publish this photograph by Newcrest Mining Ltd is acknowledged by Russell Mineral Equipment Pty Ltd.

RUSSELL TWIN 8 Mill Relining System. These machines, each of 11,000lb/5,000kg capacity, were designed and manufactured for CITIC’s Sino Iron Project in Western Australia.

Since then, RME has enhanced the safety and efficiency of grinding mills on more than 160 mine sites in over 40 countries and RME’s Mill Relining System is now the standard in most world mining markets including Oceania, Africa, South America, North America, Asia and Europe.

John strongly encourages other Australians innovators to take on the challenge. “Mining is such an important industry for this country, and yet we don’t make much of the gear or the services - we still import the vast majority of equipment – which is just stupid.”

“We have world class natural resources and world class mining companies as well as world class educational and business infrastructure. There is support from universities, government and organisations like CSIRO… so there are fantastic opportunities for innovative and nimble technology companies to use Australia as a base to leapfrog onto the global stage.”

There are plenty of technology niches according to John Russell, and these do not necessarily mean tiny little backyard companies. Mining is a big global business and success even in a single niche market can result in substantial international commercial enterprise.

For example there are four big grinding mill manufacturers in the world – plus one Chinese operation coming on stream now. RME does not manufacture grinding mills, but provides a set of technologies, tools and equipment that facilitate replacing liners and assisting with other process maintenance.

RME’s approach has been to keep refining an integrated suite of technologies that facilitates efficiencies across a variety of processes. Refining existing solutions and developing new ones is an ongoing endeavour. Mining processing often includes a complexity of steps, providing numerous opportunities for innovation, without necessarily replacing the entire process.

One example is the RME Thunderbolt Recoilless Hammer which drives the liners from the mill shell. THUNDERBOLTs save 20 to 40 hours per reline compared with sledge hammering. RME’s innovative O-ZONE lifting tools help shift these worn liners from the mill. While saving a minute per piece, this adds up to another 5 hours saved in a 300 liner reline.

And then there is RME’s feed chute transporter technology – a feed chute full of rocks can weigh 80 tonnes… so a quicker and more elegant method of dealing with feed chutes saves more time as well making operations safer.

These are a few examples of focused initiatives that result in making the whole processing chain more efficient.

RME now provides a suite of complementary products and services for mining companies for a global client base, and the compulsion to keep making things work better does not seem to have waned. No wonder John Russell’s career is full of various awards and achievements, including many export awards. In 2007 the Canadian Mineral Processors awarded John the Art McPherson Medal for contribution to ‘comminution’ (the science of particle size reduction, including mineral grinding); one measure of the effectiveness of RME’s Mill Relining System and its effect on the production of metals worldwide.

In 2009, John was awarded Doctor of Engineering (honoris causa) by the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), in recognition of RME’s technical and commercial performance and for long association with the USQ with respect to graduate intake, Industry/University research and co-operation and a variety of other interactions including John chairing the External Advisory Committee to the Faculty of Engineering and more recently, NEXTEP. Currently, John is also involved activities such as:

Chairs the USQ initiated Toowoomba Region NEXTEP Project, a group looking to the long term circumstances of citizens of the Darling Downs Region and including leadership via physical demonstration projects, e.g. “Ploughing the Darling Downs with natural (coal seam methane) gas from beneath the Downs”.
Member of the newly formed Toowoomba Regional Council Economic Development Board.
Board Member of the Enterprise Connect Innovative Regions (Interim Advisory Board).

"The opportunities for Australian engineering innovation to make waves throughout the global mining industry are certainly there,” he says enthusiastically. “It may not be easy, and it certainly is very competitive, but there is so much that can be done! “

And there is one more thing… revisiting his lifelong interest in Astronomy, John recently bought himself a new telescope and again observed the icecap on Mars on the instrument’s first ‘night out’.

John Russell is a member of The Warren Centre’s Governors Program.
If you are interested in Mining Automation, and want to hear more about developments in this field, come to The Warren Centre’s 2010 Innovation Lecture

Have something to say? Post your comments here.

Gekko’s “Python” At The Forefront Of “Lean Mining”

2010-02-16T16:53:00.010+11:00

Celebrating the 14th anniversary of Gekko Systems in 2010, Warren Centre Innovation Heroes of 2007, Elizabeth Lewis-Gray and Sandy Gray, continue to push engineering innovation as a key differentiator.

Their company specialises in the design, development and distribution of innovative mineral processing equipment and systems with a particular focus on gravity separation.

Headquartered in Ballarat, Victoria, Gekko operates offices in the key mining industry gateway centres of Johannesburg (South Africa) and Vancouver (Canada) and Santiago (Chile) to give the company presence and accessibility to the mining community and to serve as bases for the sale, commissioning and servicing of Gekko equipment. The company has more than 400 installations in 38 countries.

Just one of their current innovation initiatives is “Lean Mining” - the idea being to do as much ore processing as possible underground, thus avoiding the expense of bringing everything to the surface.

Their Python Lean Mining concept involves a string of modular processing equipment which can be moved along tunnels as required, to deliver the treatment required to maximise value extraction. Compact enough to operate underground yet sufficiently efficient to achieve economic recoveries, the plant also provides significant environmental benefits with reduced comminution costs and a small footprint.

The Python Lean Mining concept involves a string of modular processing equipment which can be moved along tunnels as required, to deliver the treatment required to maximise value extraction.

Images courtesy Gekko Systems.

The Python also offers fewer process steps, less stockpiles, reduced handling, high upfront waste rejection and low power usage, all resulting in higher operating margins and greater profitability.

High tech, modular and fully automated, the plant crushes, grinds and pre-concentrates ore leaving just 5-30% of concentrate for pumping to the surface. Tailings are disposed in voids, haulage, operating and processing costs are substantially reduced and environmental impacts are minimised.
Key features of the Python include a two-stage, high reduction crushing circuit, InLine Pressure Jig multi-stage gravity circuit, and high capacity flash flotation. The units can be built and shipped to site with speed and ease. The new Python 500 design is a stepping stone to a broad range of throughput options. Modular expansions can also be included, such as milling or flotation, as dictated by the variability of the ore. The key benefits of the pre-design Python modules are savings on design time and costs, as well as the low-energy flow sheet, which saves both capital and operational costs.

The concept can also have significantly positive cash flow implications owing to faster environmental permitting and reduced infrastructure investment. Modular design, fast equipment build and ease of installation all support a quick pathway to improved cash flow and better investment returns.

CSIRO is working with Gekko Systems to improve efficiencies of Gekko's gold extraction Inline Pressure Jig (IPJ).

Images courtesy Gekko Systems.

Environmental benefits are also very much part of the solution. The concept of pre-concentration using gravity and flotation minimises or eliminates the use of chemicals on site and minimises the demand for tailing facilities.

If you are interested in Mining Automation, and want to hear more about developments in this field, come to The Warren Centre’s 2010 Innovation Lecture

Have something to say? Post your comments here.