Calling on innovators! Test and trial products at the new Living Lab for smart sensors
Professor Peter Klinken presenting
Professor Peter Klinken, Chief Scientist of Western Australia, joined CORE Innovation Hub and more than 80 resources and energy sector stakeholders to kick off the launch of the Living Lab @ UWA - a one- stop hub for WA-based innovators who are seeking to test new smart sensing products.
Innovators in the Mining Equipment, Technology & Services (METS) sector have a new support service at The University of Western Australia (UWA) to help bridge the gap between development and deployment for Internet of Things (IoT) products through testing and trials. Companies, in particular startups and small and medium-sized enterprises, with smart sensor systems or devices can accelerate the path to their customers by utilising the equipment on campus to simulate real or near real-world testing environments.
Real World Testing Environments
This Living Lab is helping to accelerate commercialisation of Western Australian METS companies’ products, and provide a valuable link between industry and universities by making students and facilities available to assist local companies and support innovation. The lab provides a solution to one of the major obstacles preventing innovators from making gains in the sector; limited access to mine sites. The Living Lab provides a roadmap for accelerated life testing and derisking site trials.
The support team, comprising of leading engineering students from the System Health Lab at UWA and campus facilities management, design, build and execute bespoke testing equipment and tests to try and fail products by generating realistic failure modes in an accelerated time scale. The service includes procedures and legal agreement templates to enable testing and deployment.
The UWA Living Labs team
Building Capability
Prof. Melinda Hodkiewicz presenting August 20, 2020
Prof. Melinda Hodkiewicz, asset management leader, BHP Fellow for Engineering for Remote Operations at UWA and Director of the UWA System Health Lab explained at the launch,
“System testing, evaluation and validation are a vital part of a product’s development life cycle, however few organisations retain in-house capability to do this. With the Living Lab, we are establishing a community to support these tests, by connecting the university’s students, professional staff and equipment to our local METS innovators. Furthermore, we are providing our students with work-integrated learning supported by METS partners, the CORE innovation ecosystem and UWA’s professional staff. We want to share these outcomes by replicating our Living Lab model at other test sites and universities in the future.”
At the launch event the student project team presented the advanced research equipment and facilities available, the technical and commercially critical processes and challenges supported, and a recent case study where the lab completed a testing program for a major miner. Expressions of interest from companies seeking support are open via the Living Lab website.
Background:
In 2018, METS Ignited, the Australian Industry Growth Centre for Mining Equipment, Technology and Services, issued a call for interest to develop to form a network of “Living Labs” across Australia. The Living Lab @UWA is the first of these.
The Living Lab is run by engineers, coders and project managers from UWA System Health Lab, CORE Innovation Hub and UWA Facilities Management. Its development has been supported by a grant from the national Industry Growth Centre METS Ignited and the BHP Fellowship for Engineering for Remote Operations at UWA.
More Information:
Find out more about the Living Lab @UWA’s two support pathways for innovators and its custom partner roadmap process for Accelerated Life Testing & Derisking Site Trials here: https://livinglabproject.com/
