I’m currently in transit back from Philadelphia after an exhausting but exhilarating week at the 2022 International Conference on Robotics and Automation with several thousand roboticists from around the world. This has long been one of the major conferences for the robotics group – noting that we also have significant presence at control and aerospace conferences and other areas. The last time the lab was able to send a significant delegation to this conference was a whole three years ago, with the 2020-2021 incarnations being entirely online.  

The team did amazingly well – a number of research paper presentations by students spanning manipulation to deep learning to localization to bio-inspired robotics. Everyone’s presentations were top notch and it showed – with the bulk of questions and interest often going to the QUT speaker (not that we’re being competitive, but a nice thing nonetheless). Some were even interviewed. Lots of proud moments and involuntary smiling for us oldies in the audience. I’ve linked to 4 blog posts I did down below. 

The group was involved in organising several workshops, and centre researchers also presented at workshops during the week spanning climate change to construction, and reinforcement learning to localization. There were literally many hundreds of discussions and interactions with colleagues, new and old (including alumni). Overall - a resounding success and a great entry back into in-person conferences. The hybrid paper sessions, which a number of us chaired, mostly worked with a few minor technical glitches – a promising sign for the future. I also enjoyed meeting a few researchers who are incoming to the centre, postdocs and visiting PhD students – something we’ve missed over the last couple of years. 

Closer to home, a lot to celebrate. Troy was awarded his PhD, whilst Doug and Dimity picked up awards for their PhDs. Nicolas joined us as a new PhD student and Sarah as a new research assistant. The centre is running its mid-year retreat off site for the first time since its creation – a way to give those who haven’t or can’t travel at least a bit of a more substantial “travel-like” experience whilst not going too far from Brisbane. The team has been hard at work organising the event, with the help of a lot of detailed and thoughtful feedback and suggestions from throughout the centre – thanks! On a personal note, I’m looking forward to the informal launch event for my ARC Laureate Fellowship program later in June: the main purpose of which is to thank the many hundreds of individuals, collaborators, organisations and funders for everything they have done. 

In the background, the university continues to refine and tweak how it supports its centres – and robotics is in a very strong position. We have more project opportunities (in terms of grants and industry projects) than we can possibly do – a good problem to have, but nonetheless one we have to be cautious about, especially overcommitting. We continue to improve how we initiate, evaluate and pursue opportunities, and a general theme of what we’re trying to do is to move towards having a smaller number of much larger, long term projects and activities – generally speaking, a $5M grant that runs for 5 years is substantially easier to manage, resource and fulfill, than 10 x $500k grants that run for 1 year each. 

With the centre running relatively smoothly (touch wood), we are also continuing to exam more substantial forward-looking initiatives. What activities, support mechanisms or initiatives can we set in place now that will have a significant beneficial impact in the medium term? We welcome your input and ideas! 

Cheers, 

Michael 

Blog posts: note personal research group rather than whole centre focus 

• ICRA Day 1 Blog 

• ICRA Day 2 Blog 

• ICRA Day 3 Blog 

• ICRA Day 4 Blog