An autonomous shuttle bus is currently being tested at Flinders University and has now entered the second stage of its trial. Dubbed the "Flinders University Express Shuttle" (FLEX), the bus can carry 11 seated passengers. It operates on a 2.8km route and is described as a "test bed" for the future of autonomous vehicles in South Australia. In what continues to be one of Australia's only public autonomous vehicle testing programs, the Flinders University autonomous shuttle bus travels around the Tonsely innovation district, between the train station, the residential village, the university and the TAFE. It's a walking distance route, but keep in mind that it's only a trial at the moment.

In new research being undertaken by Flinders University in partnership with conservation charity Koala Life and the State Government, non-invasive koala monitoring techniques are being developed using drones and facial recognition technology to count, identify and re-identify koalas. Minister for Environment and Water David Speirs said this cutting-edge technology will be used as part of a study on koalas at Kangaroo Island and the Adelaide Mount Lofty Ranges to get a better understanding of both their numbers and their movements. "Traditionally, monitoring koala populations has involved capturing and individually marking koalas, a process that is both labour-intensive and poses potential welfare issues," Minister Speirs said. "It is very important for us to develop non-invasive techniques to help monitor animals in a safe way, and facial recognition through drone monitoring is utilising the latest technology to achieve this. "The ability to recognise individual members of a species in the wild will help to grow an understanding of individual movements as well as population estimates, and this understanding will allow the development of meaningful management strategies.

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA--Cosmos Magazine reports that Daryl Wesley of Flinders University and Mimal and Marrku Traditional Owners of the Wilton River area used machine learning to analyze changes in rock art styles in northern Australia's Arnhem Land. The computer was supplied with information of more than 1,000 types of objects and a mathematical model to determine how similar two images are to one another. The model was then applied to images of the rock art. "One amazing outcome is that the machine learning approach ordered the styles in the same chronology that archaeologists have ordered them in by inspecting which appear on top of which," said team member Jarrad Kowlessar of Flinders University. Styles of artwork that are closer to each other in age are also closer to each other in appearance, he explained.

A new flu vaccine designed by artificial intelligence has gone on trial in the United States in what researchers are claiming is a world first. Scientists at Flinders University in Australia have developed what they describe as a "turbo-charged" flu vaccine with an extra component that stimulates the human immune system to make more antibodies against the flu virus than a normal vaccine, thus making it more effective. Nikolai Petrovsky, professor of medicine at Flinders University in Australia and the lead researcher on the vaccine, said that as far as he knew this was the first time a flu vaccine had been developed using AI that had progressed to a trial in humans. He said that the use of AI had accelerated the vaccine discovery process, cut costs massively and had enabled the development of a more effective vaccine. He said using AI streamlined the vaccine development process.

For the first time ever, a human drug has been created entirely by artificial intelligence (AI). This news comes from a team at Flinders University in Australia, who claims to have created an enhanced influenza vaccine using an AI program known Search Algorithm for Ligands (SAM). Though computers have been used to make drugs before, this was the first time it was done independently by an AI system. The researchers described this drug as a flu vaccine with an added compound that better stimulates the human immune system. This addition causes more antibodies to be formed against the flu virus than with the traditional vaccination, increasing the vaccine's efficacy.

A team of researchers at Flinders University in South Australia has created a vaccine that is considered to be the first human drug to be fully designed by artificial intelligence. Drugs have been previously designed with the help of computers. However, this vaccine was independently designed by an AI software known as SAM or Search Algorithm for Ligands. Nikolai Petrovsky, professor at Flinders University who also led the development said that its name has been derived from the task it was assigned to perform which was searching the universe for all possible compounds for a good human drug also known as a ligand. Petrovsky, also a Research Director for an Australian company, Vaxine added that the AI software was first taught about the set of compounds which activate the immune system in human beings and a set of compounds which do not.

A team at Flinders University in South Australia has developed a new vaccine believed to be the first human drug in the world to be completely designed by artificial intelligence (AI). While drugs have been designed using computers before, this vaccine went one step further being independently created by an AI program called SAM (Search Algorithm for Ligands). Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky who led the development told Business Insider Australia its name is derived from what it was tasked to do: search the universe for all conceivable compounds to find a good human drug (also called a ligand). "We had to teach the AI program on a set of compounds that are known to activate the human immune system, and a set of compounds that don't work. The job of the AI was then to work out for itself what distinguished a drug that worked from one that doesn't," Petrovsky said, who is also the Research Director of Australian biotechnology company Vaxine.