Intelligent Industrial Information Technologies (I3T)

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Program Leader: Professor Heinrich Schmidt

The objective of the Intelligent Industrial Information Technologies (I³T) research program is to develop innovative platform technologies for improving the systems performance of manufacturing and power engineering processes to meet surging demands for efficiency, quality and safety in an integrated and environmentally sustainable way.

Key research activities:

  • Investigating intelligent machine systems and controls that deal with dynamic information in a manner that is simple, effective, efficient and receptive to industry users.
  • Developing networked embedded software architectures and automation technology for industrial systems to better manage parallel real-time information processing and control.
  • Providing an innovative decision-support platform technology that facilitates performance improvement of human centred systems.

The I³T program focuses on automation solutions and processes using its strengths across a combination of control theory, computer and software architecture, software engineering, parallel distributed processing and artificial intelligence.

The Australian manufacturing industry is the largest sector of Australian economy, currently accounting for over 12% of annual value-added activities in advanced technologies and engineering services. It must compete on high value. Global competition has led to increasing software intensity to accelerate time to market and enable flexibility in differentiating products and services.

The Federal Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Action Agenda recognises the pivotal role of world-class capabilities in this sector as a driver for growth, not only for the booming resources and energy sectors, but across advanced technologies (such as nanotechnology) and knowledge-intensive services (e.g. biomedical and aerospatial). Improving Australia’s energy efficiency and sustainability has the potential to deliver substantial economic and environmental benefits. There is a great need to develop smart monitoring, automation and management systems for improving Australia’s energy efficiency performance under increasing sustainability constraints.

This program aims at establishing a world– leading centre of excellence recognised internationally for its cutting edge applied research in ‘next generation’ industrial information platform technologies.

Other research programs in the Platform Technologies Research Institute are:

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