QUT Centre for Robotics Monthly Newsletter

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A monthly newsletter by the QUT Centre for Robotics

November 2021 Table of Contents

Directors Message
Centre News & Achievements
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Robotics Seminar Series Catch up
New Faces
Behind the Scenes
Diversity
Publications

Directors Message

Welcome to the ever so slightly late November issue of our newsletter. There will be a proper December issue just before we break for holidays later in the month.

For many of us it’s the end of teaching for another year, a chance to reflect on how that went, and what we can usefully change for next year. I for one have found the hybrid teaching challenging from an engagement perspective, but the interactions with the smart and enthusiastic students is rewarding and I guess the reason why we are driven to teach.

Staff wise we have sad news and good news. We’ve heard this week that Feras is leaving to take up a senior lecturer position at the University of Adelaide. We have many colleagues there from ACRV days, they have a very strong group and huge momentum in AI, all of which presents a great opportunity. Feras started with me as a postdoc in 2011, straight out of his PhD at Lincoln. He has made great contributions to many projects, supervised a number of PhD students, and co-taught EGB439 with me for a number of years. I will miss interesting his interesting conversation on diverse topics and his constructive contributions as a lab member. I wish him success in his new role and a good life in the city of churches. We will properly celebrate Feras’ contributions and friendship, and bid him farewell, at an event in coming weeks.

Balancing the ledger I am happy to mention that Fangyi Zhang has started as a postdoc researcher in the Physical Interaction program of the Centre. Fangyi was a former PhD student in ACRV, and returns to us after a few years in industry in China. Please reacquaint, or introduce, yourself to Fangyi and make him welcome.

Enjoy the issue.

peter

Centre News & Achievements

Citations

The #Stanford most-cited scientists list has just been updated: the QUT Centre for Robotics has at least four academics who feature in the various lists:

In the overall career lists, which aren't normalized by career stage:

💠 Peter Corke appears at #93 out of 96,361 researchers in the Industrial Engineering & Automation field, top 0.1%!

💠 Michael at #888 out of 96,361 researchers in the Industrial Engineering & Automation field, in the top 0.9%. And #376 based on 2020.

Felipe Gonzalez and Niko Sünderhauf also appeared in the 2020 citation rankings list, which recognizes citations in recent times.

Citations are obviously just one of many, imperfect, and sometimes misused measures of research impact - but generally do indicate that your work is widely used and referenced by the research community.

Paper reference: https://lnkd.in/ezggQYC

QCR in CSRankings

QCR is at the top of the Robotics list in Australia on www.CSRankings.org

All caveats from the previous slide apply. CSRankings only considers IROS, ICRA and R:SS

A new QCR baby!
Congratulations to David Hall and his wife on the birth of their new baby Ronald George Hall born 15 November!

Promotion
Congratulations to Chris Lehnert who has been promoted to Senior Lecturer!

NeurIPS Workshop paper
NeurIPS Workshop paper accepted, for poster & oral presentation.

Workshop on Deployable Decision Making in Embodied Systems

New book and membership
Congratulations to Felipe Gonzalez who has published a new book UAV or Drones for Remote Sensing Applications in GPS/GNSS Enabled and GPS/GNSS Denied Environments.

He has also been elected as Member of Standards Australia Committees and Joint Standards Australia/Standards New Zealand Committees : SV-001 Aircraft and Space Systems ISO/TC 20/SC 14. This committee looks after Space Systems and drones Sub technical committees and allows Australian representation at an international level.

A new role for Tobi
Tobias Fischer has accepted an ongoing (permanent) role in the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics, commencing in 2022. Tobi’s position will be primarily funded by an ARC Laureate Fellowship grant for the next 5 years. His role will include helping lead a large research team and research program creating bio-inspired alternatives to GPS, working with Michael Milford and other colleagues / collaborators over the next 5 years.

Tobi will commence initially as research intensive academic, move to a lighter teaching load in year 2, before transitioning to a normal teaching-research-service role at the conclusion of the 5 years (pending other funding developments like new fellowships).

IEEE Publication
Congrats to Tobi and other whose paper was accepted to the IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

CRC Project
Congratulations to both Chris Lehnert and Feras Dayoub who have been awarded a Future Food Systems CRC Project worth $122k!

Title: Robotic Task Automation in Protected Cropping Systems: Enabling autonomous pollination in elite Australian greenhouses using mobile robots.

New position at Oxford
Congrats to Jack Collins who has submitted his PhD for examination as had a Post-doc position at the University of Oxford!

New Membership
Congratulations to Thierry Peynot whom was elected Chair of the IEEE QLD CS/RAS joint societies for 2022.

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics HDR Awards

Congratulations to HDR students who were recognised in the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics HDR Awards:

2021 3MT and VYT Success award - Somayeh Hussaini

2021 EER Women HDR student of the year award - Dimity Miller
2021 Engagement and leadership award - Serena Mou
2021 Postgraduate Research Industry Engagement award - Valtteri Kallinen
2021 Postgraduate Research Publication award - Guilherme Fróes Silva
2021 Postgraduate Research Publication award - Stephen Hausler

In the media - Manufacturer's Monthly
Congratulations to Will Browne for being featured in Manufacturer's Monthly!

Upcoming Events

Retreat

The QCR End-of-Year retreat is set for Monday 13 December 12-5pm in the QUT Gibson room (Level 10 Z Block). There will be plenty of exciting talks including from Keynote speaker Prof Jason Mattingley (UQ). There is a social event after the retreat at the Southbank Beet Garden from 5.30pm. If you have not yet RSVP’d, please email Vicki by no later than COB Mon 6 December.