Vamplew, Peter (Prof) - Research

Research interests and current research projects

My primary research focus over the last 15 years has been the extension of reinforcement learning methods to problems involving multiple conflicting objectives. While reinforcement learning has proven to be a very powerful means of creating autonomous AI systems, we contend that scalar rewards are inadequate for many real-world problems, and particularly for any attempts to create Artificial General Intelligence. Therefore my research has focused on the development, evaluation and application of more efficient multi-objective reinforcement learning algorithms (MORL).

More recently this work has extended to cover the application of MORL to addressing issues in creating human-aligned AI, including to areas such as explainability and safety of autonomous AI systems. This interest is reflected in my co-leadership of the Australian Responsible Autonomous Agents Collective (ARAAC) which spans several Australian universities, as well as my membership of the Future of Life Institute’s Existential AI Safety Research Community

Publications

For up-to-date publication details please refer to my online research profiles at Google Scholar and ORCID.

Research funding

I have been a member of investigatory teams receiving in excess of $4.2m in research funding support, including more than $650,000 as a lead or key investigator. Significant funded projects include:

Analysis of Human-Machine Teams in Adversarial Environments, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Defence Science and Technology Group Australian Autonomy Initiative
Modelling Adversary Intent Using Multiobjective Reinforcement Learning, Science and Technology Group Operations Research Collaboration
Investigating Multi-Agent Learning with Multiple and Uncertain Objectives, Defence Science and Technology Group AI for Decision-Making Initiative
Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning in Dynamic Team Based Adversarial Games, Science and Technology Group Scholarship (Project-Based) Funding Agreement
Applying Machine Learning to identify Online Sexual Predators, Collaborative Research Program
Multiobjective reinforcement learning for control of local battery storage for solar power systems, CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Fund

Graduate research supervisions

I have supervised more than twenty students to successful PhD and Masters completions in topics including artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning, video games and cybersecurity.

Current students:

Nik Goodger	PhD	Language representations for generalization in Reinforcement Learning.
Haddie Harland	PhD	AI Apology: Beyond Explainable Reinforcement Learning
Adrian Ly	PhD	Addressing the deadly triad in deep reinforcement learning
Gavan Muller	PhD	Enabling Safe Behavior in Dynamic Environments through Responsibility Awareness
Charlotte Young	PhD	Measuring the effectiveness of explanations of the decisions of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms

Past students:

Budi Kurniawan	2022	PhD	Single- and Multiobjective Reinforcement Learning in Dynamic Adversarial Games
Alastair Lansley	2020	PhD	Adventures in software engineering : plugging HCI & acessibility gaps with open source solutions
Ansam Khraisat	2020	PhD	Intelligent Zero-Day Intrusion Detection Framework for Internet of Things
Paul Black	2020	PhD	Techniques for the reverse engineering of banking malware
Ikram ul Haq	2020	PhD	Fraud detection for online banking for scalable and distributed data
Adam Bignold	2019	PhD	Rule-based interactive assisted reinforcement learning
Julie Ross	2017	PhD	Video game classification in Australia : Does it enable parents to make informed game choices for their children
Nathan Robinson	2016	PhD	Assessing productive soil-landscapes in Victoria using digital soil mapping
Rosemary Torney	2015	PhD	Application of psycholinguistic features to authorship profiling for first language, gender and age group
Leigh Achterbosch	2015	PhD	Causes, magnitude and implications of Griefing in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games
Omaru Maruatona	2014	PhD	Internet banking fraud detection using prudent analysis
Oana Ureche	2014	PhD	Static code analysis of data-driven applications through common lingua and the Semantic Web technologies
Cameron Foale	2011	PhD	The Directional Propagation Cache: Real-time Acoustics Simulation for Immersive Computer Games
Armita Zarnegar	2011	PhD	Regulatory network discovery using heuristics
Mofakharul Islam	2008	Masters	Unsupervised Colour Texture Segmentation Using Markov Random Fields
Subhasis Mukherjee	2008	Masters	Reinforcement Learning on the AIBO Robot
Adam Berry	2008	PhD	Escaping the Bounds of Generality: Unbounded Biobjective Optimisation
Robert Ollington	2007	PhD	A Biologically-Inspired Model for Robot Navigation
Jonathan Pugh	2001	Masters	Multi-user virtual reality
Uwe Rosebrock	2000	Masters	The influence of specific entry devices for navigation in virtual environments on the ability to gather spatial knowledge
Carl Lewis	1999	PhD	The construction of training signals from incomplete information for use with sequential input classifiers
Tim Freeman	1998	Masters	Application of Neural Network Classifiers to Electrocardiographic Body Surface Mapping