AIML professor convenes world-class thinkers to bring AI to new heights
The space sector is experiencing significant growth, both in Australia and globally. An April 2024 McKinsey and Company report estimates that the global space economy will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035 (accounting for inflation), up from $630 billion in 2023.
AI4Space focuses on the role of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly computer vision and machine learning, in future space missions to achieve scientific and technological feats that will help humans better understand the universe.
AIML Professor Tat-Jun Chin, Director of Machine Learning for Space and the SmartSat CRC Professorial Chair of Sentient Satellites, organises the AI4Space workshop that has occurred every year since 2021. The workshop is held in conjunction with major AI conferences, most recently the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), and is designed to highlight AI capabilities that will contribute to future space missions, outline the unique difficulties presented by space applications to vision and learning, and discuss recent advances towards overcoming those obstacles.
“A major goal [of AI4Space] is increased autonomy,” said Professor Chin. “Increasing AI’s role in space missions increases agility, responsiveness, and scalability. It also enables the exploration of further reaches of the solar system, which will need to be accomplished using robotic platforms with high levels of autonomy for the foreseeable future.”
AIML Professor Tat-Jun Chin
This year’s workshop was held in June in Seattle, Washington USA and covered areas such as vision and learning for space robots, mapping of planetary bodies, and space debris monitoring and mitigation. The workshop’s primary goal is to bring together some of the world’s top minds to develop algorithms that will create autonomous space systems operating in Earth’s orbital regions and planetary bodies (e.g., the moon, Mars, and asteroids). The algorithms not only must be able to revolutionise humanity’s ability to create and analyse space frameworks, they're also required to align with a clear purpose; calls for papers for the workshop state that all submissions “must be aimed towards the peaceful usage of AI for space."
AI4Space Committee members, speakers, and participants come from government agencies, space research and development organisations, and universities from around the globe and are some of the world’s leading thinkers on how best to utilise AI in current and future space capabilities. Professor Chin notes that through his AI4Space work at AIML and at Sentient Satellites Lab, a SmartSat CRC-funded laboratory embedded in AIML that utilises AI and machine learning techniques to address the needs of AI4Space, he is part of a truly global consortium.
“We collaborate with AI4Space researchers from around the world,” said Professor Chin. “Even though the ultimate goal of AI4Space is to reduce the number of humans needed to carry out a space mission, right now we need humans to conduct the research and implement the process.”
“And we’re very fortunate to have some of the best working with us right now on this important work.”
For more information on the AI4Space workshop, please visit https://aiforspace.github.io/2024/ and https://www.ai4space.group/
AIML PhD student Sofia McLeod presents at the AI4Space conference, 2024