Three Australian-US scientific teams will set their sights on minimising the impact of health pandemics, harmful environmental emissions and drought using AI approaches. Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic welcomed the announcement that the US National Science Foundation and Australia's national science agency CSIRO have awarded grants under their Collaboration Opportunities in Responsible and Ethical AI initiative. The grants total $1.8 million on the US side and $2.3 million on the Australian side, and include researchers from the University of NSW, RMIT University, University of Technology Sydney and the University of Melbourne. "These grants will support valuable research in ethical artificial intelligence, while strengthening relationships between US and Australian research organisations," Minister Husic said. "The NSF-CSIRO initiative will bring the best Australian and US researchers together from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, to share knowledge and learn from each other. "AI is an important driver of new scientific discoveries and economic prosperity, while also safeguarding national wellbeing.

As part of its successful transformation from photographic film manufacturer to a company contributing to resolving social challenges with advanced technologies in a wide-range of business fields, Fujifilm Australia has expanded its range of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions into the healthcare industry – one of its core businesses. Fujifilm's latest foray into the AI sphere is in partnership with Australian-based medical imaging specialists annalise.ai Ryuichi Matoba, CEO of Fujifilm Australia Pty Ltd. said, "Fujifilm has been supplying X-ray film to the healthcare industry since 1936, shortly after the foundation of Fujifilm in Japan. Since then, Fujifilm has expanded its Medical Systems business with some significant milestones along the way, such as developing Fuji Computed Radiography, applying the world's first digital method for digitising X-ray images. In short, Fujifilm wants to create a society where people can live healthily for longer and Fujifilm's AI technology and our new partnership with annalise.ai As part of its successful transformation from photographic film manufacturer to a company contributing to resolving social challenges with advanced technologies in a wide-range of business fields, Fujifilm Australia has now further expanded its range of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions into the healthcare industry – one of its core businesses. Fujifilm's latest foray into the AI sphere is in partnership with Australian-based medical imaging specialists annalise.ai Fuji Computed Radiography, invented by Fujifilm. Ryuichi Matoba, CEO of Fujifilm Australia Pty Ltd. said, "Fujifilm has been supplying X-ray film to the healthcare industry since 1936, shortly after the foundation of Fujifilm in Japan.

Research led by Monash University, RMIT and the University of Adelaide has developed an accurate method of controlling optical circuits on fingernail-sized photonic integrated circuits. The development, published in the prestigious international journal Optica builds on the work by the same team who recently created the world's first self-calibrated photonic chip. Photonics, or the use of light particles to store and transmit information, is a burgeoning field, supporting our need to create faster, better, more efficient and more sustainable technology. Programmable photonic integrated circuits (PICs), offer diverse signal processing functions within a single chip, and present promising solutions for applications ranging from optical communications to artificial intelligence. Whether it's downloading movies or keeping a satellite on course, photonics is radically changing the way we live, revolutionising the processing capability of large scale equipment onto a chip the size of a human fingernail.

Titomic has been awarded a CoBRAIN grant for its Titomic Europe division as part of the European Union's (EU) Horizon Europe initiative. Titomic will receive €260,000 ( A$400,000) in CoBRAIN funding, to research and develop applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning within cold spray applications. The outcomes of the research will assist Titomic in optimising cold spray processes for manufacturing with new and existing materials and metals. The CoBRAIN program will develop novel hard metals for corrosion and wear resistance and validate an integrated computational-experimental material engineering workflow. Ultimately, the grant funding will further assist Titomic in undertaking research and development to further heighten Titomic's technological competitive edge.

BrainBox AI announced its agreement with the Brisbane Airport Corporation Pty Limited (BAC) to expand its revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) technology across multiple precincts of Brisbane International Airport. This follows a successful trial of BrainBox AI's technology in a select area of the Brisbane Airport property (BNE). The results yielded from the pilot were significant with a 12% decrease in HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system energy usage, 17% reduction in building equipment run-time, and zero comfort-related customer complaints during the six-month pilot. These impressive results bolstered BAC's confidence in BrainBox AI's core product, enabling the AI's installation in other areas of the airport. Brisbane Airport Corporation, the operator of Brisbane Airport (BNE), is committed to 2030 Sustainability Targets to address carbon, energy, water, and waste impacts. Derek Boo, Head of Asset Optimisation of Brisbane Airport Corporation, spoke about the airport's approach to innovation.

Pangiam, in collaboration with Google Cloud, has announced details of Project DARTMOUTH, an initiative to transform airport security operations by looking for threats concealed within baggage and other shipments at the airport. This technology will be tested within the security facilities of AGS Airport Ltd, owners and operators of Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Southampton Airports in the UK. Project DARTMOUTH is intended to make air travel safer by integrating AI into airport baggage security and screening operations. The technology will in the first instance be focused on rapidly identifying potential threats in baggage, providing increased throughput at security checkpoints, addressing critical friction points in air travel as well as supporting security teams. In later phases the technology will scale to help tackle other pressure points in security and wider airport operations.

Researchers from the Curtin Institute for Computation (CIC) will use the latest in data science to develop an automated fish detection and counting solution that offers exciting economic and ecological benefits. The CIC is part of a consortium that has been awarded $1 million in Federal funding to continue developing the AFID (Automated Fish Identification) system, which uses machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automatically gather information about fish, including species and size. Project lead and CIC Lead Data Scientist Dr Daniel Marrable said the technology aimed to accurately, efficiently and more cost-effectively gather data in order to gauge marine and coastal ecosystem health, which would benefit Australia's multi-billion dollar fisheries and aquaculture industries. "AFID operates via a remote underwater video station and runs machine learning methods over video footage to count, classify and calculate the length of all visible fish," Dr Marrable said. "Fish biodiversity and biomass are the best non-invasive indicators of marine and coastal ecosystem health, however the current methods of measuring these are manual and very labour intensive. "Working closely with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and Curtin's own Fish Ecology Lab, by using machine learning and AI we can speed up the process of data collection and analysis, which will allow policy decisions that affect fish stocks and quotas, environmental impact assessment and ecological protection to be better informed." CIC Director Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt said AFID will use data science to help reduce the cost and manual labour required to monitor Australia's sensitive marine ecosystem. "The value of the project for fish ecology and the $2.7 billion fisheries industry highlights the important real-world, industry-aligned outcomes of the work being done in the area of data science at Curtin University," Professor Johnston-Hollitt said. "The CIC has been working in this domain for some time now, with Dr Marrable having done the vast majority of the technical work devising a system to identify, count, and measure fish from underwater imagery.

Everything from a new accessibility toolkit for smart cities, to an AI assistant, to a patrol car prototype were part of Microsoft's presentations at Smart Cities NYC '17. First on the agenda was Microsoft's announcement about its Smart Cities for All Toolkit to help city officials and urban planners design cities with inclusive features to assist people with disabilities. The toolkit was developed by G3ict and World Enabled as part of the Smart Cities for All initiative to give city leaders a strategic guide to benefit all citizens, including the approximately 1.2 billion people in the world with disabilities. The toolkit is the first step toward what Microsoft plans to be a long road to help cities become more inclusive. It's comprised of four new tools to address priority challenges and alleviate the top barriers for disabled individuals in smart cities. "The toolkit is meant to be guidance for city leaders to think about how to make the business of becoming a smart city accessible to everyone. They don't know where to start," said Kathryn Wilson, director of cities solutions worldwide public sector for Microsoft.

Everything from a new accessibility toolkit for smart cities, to an AI assistant, to a patrol car prototype were part of Microsoft's presentations at Smart Cities NYC '17. First on the agenda was Microsoft's announcement about its Smart Cities for All Toolkit to help city officials and urban planners design cities with inclusive features to assist people with disabilities. The toolkit was developed by G3ict and World Enabled as part of the Smart Cities for All initiative to give city leaders a strategic guide to benefit all citizens, including the approximately 1.2 billion people in the world with disabilities. The toolkit is the first step toward what Microsoft plans to be a long road to help cities become more inclusive. It's comprised of four new tools to address priority challenges and alleviate the top barriers for disabled individuals in smart cities. "The toolkit is meant to be guidance for city leaders to think about how to make the business of becoming a smart city accessible to everyone. They don't know where to start," said Kathryn Wilson, director of cities solutions worldwide public sector for Microsoft.