About Us

1. Introduction

The Centre for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CINS) was established in 2008 to provide a focus for university research in the general area of intelligent and networked systems and to establish strong and sustainable research relationships with both regional industry and external research organisations. As such, it has four key research programs:

1. Autonomous Systems
2. Pattern Recognition
3. Data Mining
4. Networked Systems

led by Associate Professor Jarvis and Professors Verma, Tickle and Han respectively. There are currently 15 academic staff aligned with CINS.

CINS staff have an enviable record in terms of the production of quality research outputs, producing 11 publications in A* an A ranked journals in 2008. However, the challenge that CINS now faces is to translate research excellence into sustainable research collaborations. In this regard, a key strategy identified by CINS is to work closely with other University research centres to exploit potential synergies. Areas that have been identified for potential collaboration include  sensor networks (Centre for Environmental Management), feature recognition (Centre for Railway Engineering, Centre for Plant and Water Science) and power grid management (Power Engineering).

2. Expertise

Collectively, CINS has the capability and experience to tackle significant problems arising in industry that require multi-disciplinary research teams to achieve resolution. Generally, a solution will be provided as prototype software. While CINS has experience in commercial product development, the expectation is that separate arrangements will need to be made for ongoing maintenance. Particular skills that CINS can draw upon include 

• Simulation
• Computer Science
• Robotics
• Automated Reasoning
• Classification Techniques
• Control Theory
• Mathematical Modeling
• Optimisation
• Business Process Modeling
• Software Engineering
• Project Management

 CINS personnel have been involved in a wide range of collaborative projects with industry, such as 

• Agent-based control of manufacturing systems (University of Cambridge, Holden Engine Operations, Daimler-Chrysler)
• Diagnosis of assembly line stoppages (Holden Vehicle Manufacturing Operations)
• Facility Layout (Boeing, Ford Motor Company, Hardie Irrigation, Holden Vehicle Manufacturing Operations)
• Supply Chain Management (Mitsubishi, Holden Engine Operations)
• Scheduling of sugar cane trains (Sugar Research Institute)
• Power management modeling for UAVs (Rolls Royce)
• Modeling of variability in soldier behavior (UK MoD, USAF-RL)
• Intelligent virtual adversaries for soldier training (ADSO)
• Use of Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality for the training of assembly line workers (General Motors)
• Product development (Agent Oriented Software, Toshiba)
• Web site development (various commercial sites)

 Planned future projects include 

• Automated fruit crop yield estimation (Integrated Spectronics, Colour Vision Systems)
• Distributed Power System Automation
• Automated video analysis of railway level crossing traffic
• Smart Grid management using intelligent agents