Our facilities
The Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group’s facilities housed at CSIRO’s Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies (QCAT) provides an ideal location for:
- testing field robots: unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), legged robots, and aquatic robots.
- testing in indoor, outdoor, underwater and underground environments.
We have extensive state-of-the-art robotics and mechatronics R&D facilities:
- Robotics Innovation Centre: 600-square-metre facility officially opened in early 2019, the centre provides major R&D facilities (including a motion capture system, testbeds for aquatic robotics, UGV and legged robots, etc.), as well as collaborative work environments for joint work with Australian Government agencies, industry and academia.
- Flight Operations Centre: The Flight Operations Centre is a facility approved by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority for UAV research and flight-testing. It includes a large flying field area and a building for UAV engineering work and storage; the centre is used by our group as well as by affiliates and joint ventures.
- Motion Capture Facility: Our Motion Capture system allows tracking of hundreds of markers simultaneously over a volume of 8 x 8 x 4 m3 at 1000Hz, and has a tracking accuracy of less than one millimetre. The system is reconfigurable to a footprint of 15 x 15 m2 and can be set up outdoors for motion tracking in sunlight. It is used for sensing, modelling and control of UGVs, smaller-scale indoor and outdoor UAVs, legged robots, as well as validation of SLAM algorithms.
- W Block: W Block is a large, secure industrial building with workshop setups for assembly and testing of robotic systems. The interior space is reconfigurable and includes high-bandwidth WiFi and camera tracking systems.
- Rapid prototyping and 3D printing: CSIRO Robotics operates the most diverse rapid prototyping capability in Australia, with nine 3D printers, five FDM printers, three SLA printers and a polymer jet printer. This allows our group to cover the span from production-strength parts for robotic systems to experimental soft robotics components evolved by evolutionary algorithms.
- Other facilities include state-of-the-art electronics and mechanical engineering labs, the QCAT Interactive Monitor Wall (with eight 55” high-definition resolution displays), and a distributed outdoor PTZ camera system.
Our Robotics Innovation Centre and adjacent robotics testing infrastructure are open for use through collaborative projects by industry, government and academia.