Graham Mann

The need for software applications that can assist with mental disorders has never been greater. Individuals suffering from mental illnesses often avoid consultation with a psychotherapist, because they do not realize the need, or because they cannot or will not face the social and economic consequences, which can be severe. Between ideal treatment by a human therapist and self-help websites lies the possibility of a helpful interaction with a language-using computer. A practical model of empathic response planning for sentence generation in a forthcoming automated psychotherapist is described here. The model combines emotional state tracking, contextual information from the patient’s history and continuously updated therapeutic goals to form suitable conceptual graphs that may then be realized as suitable textual sentences.

Electronic discovery (also written as e-discovery or eDiscovery) and digital forensics are processes in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and processed with the expectation that it may be used as evidence in legal proceedings. Electronic evidence plays a fundamental role in many aspects of litigation (Stanfield, 2009). However, both eDiscovery and digital forensic approaches that rely on the creation of an index as part of their processing are struggling to cope with the huge increases in hard disk storage capacity. This paper introduces a novel technology that meets the existing and future data volume challenges faced by practitioners in these areas. The technology also addresses the concerns of those responsible for maintaining corporate networks as it does not require installation of ‘agents’ nor does it have any significant impact on network bandwidth during the search and collection process, even when this involves many computers. The technology is the embodiment of a patented process that opens the way for the development of new functionality, such as the detection of malware, compliance with corporate Information Technology (IT) policies and IT auditing. The technology introduced in this paper has been incorporated into a commercial tool called ISEEK that has already been successfully deployed in a variety of environments.

There are good reasons to believe that small (< 5kg), highly manoeuvrable rotorcraft may be valuable to human explorers on Mars. They could be used for scouting, aerial photography, maintenance inspection, hoisting antenna or guy wires, locating science targets and rapid transportation of small tools or regolith samples. Low atmospheric pressures and temperatures near the Martian surface present severe challenges to the design of rotorcraft. To provide sufficient lift, even allowing for lower gravitational acceleration (3.71m/s2), rotors need to be larger and turn faster than their terrestrial counterparts, thus imposing high mechanical stresses. This, combined with poor battery efficiency at low temperatures, could impose serious restrictions on the endurance of such aircraft. Extremely fine and abrasive particulate matter would also be problematic for reliable functioning of any exposed bearings, sensors and cameras. In this paper we study the use of both conventional and modified low pressure propellers for the use in a small quadrotor at low pressures. We modelled the rotors computationally and our simulations show the need for a thrust of approximately 5N per motor for a 4kg quadrotor at Mars. Blade element theory calculations have suggested that it is possible to meet these requirements. As a baseline, conventional propeller designs were tested in a vacuum chamber down to 6 mbar. As the pressure was reduced the thrust dropped significantly from approximately 6N to 0.05N. However, the power consumption also dropped from 120W to 16W due to the much lower drag on the propeller. Tests on propellers based on our simulations also demonstrated a decrease in thrust. While this system is not yet optimised, it demonstrated only a 60% decrease in thrust which compares favourably with conventional propellers, with a 40% reduction in power consumption. This suggests that correctly optimised propellers may indeed be able to be used as propulsion for lightweight multirotor aircraft on Mars. Since our vacuum chamber tests are complicated by ground effects and limited freedom to move, we intend to drop a 4kg automated test vehicle from a balloon at 120,000 feet, where atmospheric conditions approximate those at Mars, and record performance data onboard during programmed manoeuvres. The decent of the rotorcraft could also be used to correct the results for the greater acceleration due to gravity near Earth.

Confronting the expected rise of dementia as a major health care problem raises many questions about the best ways to adapt the health system to deal with it. To the extent that intelligent assistive technologies can help, there seems to be value in comforting fabric artifacts enhanced by electronic games and activities designed to support, engage and entertain people with dementia. Local cottage industries which now support the creation of textile crafts should be empowered to scale up to meet the growing demand for such products. New design concepts are required to accomplish this in the face of rising costs and limited resources. This paper proposes a four-step design process that meets this need, and provides practical suggestions about how it could be applied in this context. A number of examples are included.

The remote control of robots, known as teleoperation, is a non-trivial task, requiring the operator to make decisions based on the information relayed by the robot about its own status as well as its surroundings. This places the operator under significant cognitive load. A solution to this involves sharing this load between the human operator and automated operators. This paper builds on the idea of adjustable autonomy, proposing Assigned Responsibility, a way of clearly delimiting control responsibility over one or more robots between human and automated operators. An architecture for implementing Assigned Responsibility is presented.

This paper introduces Mars Society Australia’s Marsobot project, and describes the performance of robots during engineering testing at Arkaroola, South Australia. Two teleoperated rovers, one four-wheeled (Little Blue) and a larger eight wheeled machine (Miner), have been built using off the shelf components as part of the project in order to characterise strengths and limitations of different size machines. Both rovers underwent standardised DHS-NIST-ASTM tests over the period 5 – 12 July, 2014. The tests were conducted in controlled conditions and were designed to provide useful engineering data on the rovers’ range and mobility, as well as highlight potential flaws and limitations in design. Both Little Blue and the Miner performed well in the tests, though specific limitations in design robustness and endurance were observed. Lessons learned from these tests will be incorporated into future improvements of the rovers, and refining of the Marsobot project overall.

Goal accomplishment tracking is the process of monitoring the progress of a task or series of tasks towards completing a goal. Goal accomplishment tracking is used to monitor goal progress in a variety of domains, including workflow processing, teleoperation and industrial manufacturing. Practically, it involves the constant monitoring of task execution, analysis of this data to determine the task progress and notification of interested parties. This information is usually used in a passive way to observe goal progress. However, responding to this information may prevent goal failures. In addition, responding proactively in an opportunistic way can also lead to goals being completed faster. This paper proposes an architecture to support the adaptive planning of tasks for fault tolerance or opportunistic task execution based on goal accomplishment tracking. It argues that dramatically increased performance can be gained by monitoring task execution and altering plans dynamically.

Project Marsupial is an R&D effort initiated by the Mars Society Australia to decide on the requirements, design and operational procedures for a crewed, pressurized, long-range surface exploration vehicle for Mars exploration (Mann, 2006). Such a vehicle would be capable of carrying up to four persons away from the base camp at a Mars landing site for days to weeks at a time. This research draws on experience during pressurised vehicle simulations at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah (Mann, et al., 2004) and on extensive conceptual design studies (Mann, 2005; Clarke, Mann & Willson, 2008). The main deliverables of the project are the Starchaser Rover, the working prototype, together with development notes and performance data recorded during a series of simulated test operations in Mars-like desert regions. As a medium-fidelity prototype that must be practically and legally drivable over long distances on Australian roads, the Starchaser Rover cannot address certain technical issues, such as power plant, transmission and man-rated life support equipment engineering. Instead, the Starchaser strives to approximate the living and working facilities required for long duration excursions into the Martian environment. Nevertheless some important questions may be addressed including i) what is the optimal crew size for vehicle exploration? ii) what equipment is needed for successful exploration work? iii) what are the optimal exploration strategies that must be adopted for safe operation of a crewed vehicle? iv) how far from a Mars habitat can a crewed vehicle safely travel? and v) does the vehicle need to be completely pressurized? The purpose-built machine is presently undergoing construction in Tasmania and is principally funded by Starchaser Industries, a UK aerospace company. The aim is to empirically explore design options that add to the body of knowledge available for the construction of future flight hardware.

It is common practice to break down plans into a series of goals or sub-goals in order to facilitate plan execution, thereby only burdening the individual agents responsible for their execution with small, easily achievable objectives at any one time, or providing a simple way of sharing these objectives amongst a group of these agents. Ensuring that plans are executed correctly is an essential part of any team management. To allow proper tracking of an agent's progress through a pre-planned set of goals, it is imperative to keep track of which of these goals have already been accomplished. This centralised approach is essential when the agent is part of a team of humans and/or robots, and goal accomplishment is not always being tracked at a low level. This paper presents a framework for an automated supervision sys- tem to keep track of changes in world states so as to chart progress through a pre-planned set of goals. An implementation of this framework on a mobile service robot is presented, and applied in an experiment which demonstrates its feasibility.

As we move along the scale of adjustable autonomy for the control of robots from direct teleoperation at one extreme to full automation at the other, several opportunities for improvement in control quality, user feedback and machine learning suggest themselves. We describe three experiments, in telerobotics, the provision of situational awareness, and the acquisition of knowledge for automation from the human operator, and explain our concept of explicit, assigned responsibility as an organising principle for flexible work-sharing between humans and robots. A novel design for an interface based on this principle is outlined.