Siganto Foundation Medal
Congratulations to Dr Doug Morrison who was awarded the 2022 Siganto Foundation Medal at Graduation.
The Siganto Foundation Medal was established by the late Dr Bill Siganto AM and his wife Dr Marie Siganto AM, to recognise excellence in early career research and to support outstanding QUT Doctor of Philosophy graduates in engineering disciplines.
Dr Doug Morrison’s thesis title “Robotic Grasping in Unstructured and Dynamic Environments” received a $10,000 award to allow him to undertake multidisciplinary professional development, and local and international research activities.
Doug is currently working at Amazon in Berlin and was unable to be present, but his parents accepted the award.
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In QUT News
Stephen Hausler, Ming Xu, Sourav Garg and Michael Milford collaborated with Ford’s Punarjay Chakravarty, Shubham Shrivastava and Ankit Vora have found a way to tell an autonomous vehicle which cameras to use when navigating.
Based on newly published IEEE RA-L + IROS2022 paper
>READ MORE
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PhD Ceremony
Congratulations Dr James Mount
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PhD Ceremony
Congratulations Dr Stephen Hausler
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PhD Awarded
Congratulations to Dr Faris Azhari for being awarded his PhD with a thesis on “Automated Crack Detection and Characterisation from 3D Point Clouds of Unstructured Surfaces”. Faris was supervised by Thierry, Michael and Charlotte Sennersten (CSIRO).
Faris is now Research Engineer at CSIRO
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PhD Awarded
Congratulations to Dr. Benjamin Moshirian who has been awarded a PhD for for his thesis titled: “Aerodynamically Efficient Arrangements for Aerial Modular Reconfigurable Robots”. Benjamin was supervised by Sarath Kodagoda, Justin Lipman and external supervisor Pauline Pounds.
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Paper Accepted
Paper accepted to WACV2023:
(IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision)
“Hyperdimensional Feature Fusion for Out-of-Distribution Detection”
By Samuel Wilson with Tobi, Feras, Niko
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Achievement
Congratulations to our Adjunct and Associate Investigator Nicole Robinson on being appointed to the CSIRO Artificial Intelligence Centre Think Tank
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Achievement
Peter Corke has just submitted the final manuscript of his updated book to the publisher. This is the MATLAB® version of the Robotics, Vision & Control third edition. It will be available early in 2023.
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Baby News
Congratulations to Thomas and his wife! Welcome to Theodore Thomas Tilley
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Baby News
Congratulations to Tobi and his wife! Welcome to Matthew Fischer
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New HDR Reps
Connor Malone and Jordan Gleeson will be joining Scarlett as HDR Reps! A big thank you to Jesse for being a fantastic representative and for his contributions to the Centre as HDR Rep.
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New Portfolio Lead
Dimity will now co-lead the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Portfolio with Jon Roberts
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QCR 2022 ECR/MCR Funding Scheme - now open
Closes COB Fri 2 September. (Deadline extension)
Any postdocs or academics from Level A to C are eligible to apply.
2 rounds, supportive / constructive process
Contact Ilana if you have questions.
Direct result of retreat feedback
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Research in Focus 2022
Want to share $3,500 in prizes? Entries are now open for the Research in Focus competition, which uncovers the most surprising, beautiful, and technically innovative visuals of important QUT research. QUT staff and students are invited to enter original, visually striking images, video or XR that tell a story of QUT research. All fields of research are eligible, not just microscopy or science.
Entries close 16 September. Register now to attend the finalist exhibition and award ceremony and see the winners announced live in The Cube on 27 October
>READ MORE
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ATSE Elevate – Boosting Women in STEM Scholarships
The scholarships provide financial support with the aims of addressing gender inequities in STEM through fostering more women-led industry-academia collaborations in applied research and business, growing professional skills of women in STEM and by propelling women into leadership. Scholarships are available for undergraduate, postgraduate and leadership categories for people who plan to commence studies in 2023.
The faculty is keen to see applications from our staff and students – please consider and / or pass this opportunity on to people that you think will have an interest in applying. Applications close 30 September 2022.
>READ MORE
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Simplifying the Technical Support Process
Need help? Click this link
Click the green button, add details, done! Need GitHub account: can still request support via Teams & Email.
Able to help? Use the ticket to report has been done, ask for more info, etc. This is open to all QCR; anyone can provide support.
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New Merch
QCR now has business card size stickers, great for laptops – please see Ilana or Vicki if you would like some.
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Mental Health First Aid
Mental health is important for personal wellbeing, relationships, work success and life satisfaction
-Useful for learning about mental health illnesses
-Free training for QUT Staff (HDR’s should use their staff account?)
-Help make QCR a safe, inclusive and supportive work/study space
https://wiki.qut.edu.au/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=399712946
QUT Allies, trained to understand sexuality and gender issues, and are committed to promoting a safe, inclusive and diverse university:
Jon Roberts
Will Browne
Vicki Johnson
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Mental Health First Aiders:
Serena Mou
Guilherme Fróes Silva
Niko Suenderhauf
Julian Andres Galvez Serna
Will Browne
Fernando Vanegas Alvarez
Thierry Peynot
Dorian Tsai
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Wear it Purple Day
Wear it Purple Day was on Friday 26 August and was a day to celebrate the LGBTIQA+ community. You can complete the LGBTIQA+ Awareness self-paced module and/or sign up for an Ally Network Seminar
>READ MORE
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PARENTS ROOM - S1152
Guidelines:
Parents room is for QCR/EER staff and HDR students only and you must complete the S11 floor induction prior to seeking access to the room. Available for all staff regardless of gender to support parenting responsibilities and an adult must be present with any children on the floor.
Access: Please contact Ilana or Vicki for the key
To ensure the room is available please add a booking through outlook to gp-s1152@qut.edu.au
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Acting PM / Deputy PM / Defence Minister Visit
Thank you to everyone who participated in the visit by the Acting Prime Minister on Monday 8 August.
He was suitably impressed with the breadth of robotics and clean tech and clean energy activities we displayed
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Past Events
Amazon Challenge
We celebrated the 5th Anniversary of the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision’s win in the Amazon Challenge on 30th July 2017 in Nagoya, Japan. Many current and former QUT robotics folk played a role in this and many were able to attend in person.
Guest speakers included Juxi Leitner (our team leader), Doug Morrison and Adam Tow. All have gone on to successful roles in industry, building on their experience in this competition.

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QUT Council Member Tour
Peter hosted a tour for the QUT Council members and Faculty executive members on Thursday 25 August. Thanks to everyone who participated!

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UPCOMING EVENTS
EER HDR Workshop: Thinking Resiliently as a researcher
The following half-day workshop organised by EER is open to all HDR and ECRs.
Please register your interest by COB 19th September to reserve your place.
Register at: bit.ly/3OP0sOd

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Missed a seminar? Catch up here
Date: 26 July 2022
Title: Philanthropic funding and robotics research
Speaker: Prof Matthew Dunbabin
Download here
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Date: 2 August 2022
Title: So – you're finishing your PhD in uncertain times … what’s next?
Speaker: Prof Inger Mewburn
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Date: 9 August 2022
Title: End-to-end Design and Control of Snake-like Robots for Keyhole Surgery
Speaker: Andrew Razigaev
Download here
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Date: 16 August 2022
Title: Why are spiking neural networks so far behind deep learning, and is there anything we can do about it?
Speaker: Peter Stratton
Download here
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Date: 16 August 2022
Title: Seminar: NASA SPHERES on the ISS
Speaker: Mark Micire
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Date: 23 August 2022
Title: Berlin’s Robotics Summit
Speaker: Prof Michael Milford
Download here
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New Position
Jesse has started as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in a joint QUT/CSIRO project on mobile manipulation for complex outdoor environments
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Welcome to Son Tung Nguyen
Son commenced his PhD on 12 August with Michael
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… with Dimity Miller
What do you do in the Centre and what are you currently working on?
I am a chief investigator with the Centre. Two things I'm excited to be exploring at the moment -- how class imbalance affects object detection performance metrics, and how large language models can be used in object detection.
What’s on your desk?
Too many things... a coffee cup, tea mug, headphones, laptop, pistachios, printed papers, green hippo, orange robot... the list goes on.
How would you describe your work to a child?
I help robots see, and try to make them smarter and safer.
Three words to describe your work.
Fun, fascinating, fast-moving
What’s your dream travel destination?
I'd really love to visit Iceland
Please finish these sentences:
I'm currently reading:
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (not yet finished, but strongly recommend!)
And currently wishing
that I'll have good weather for my upcoming holiday
My last meal would be
chocolate pudding
Final question! Tea, coffee or no caffeine?
Tea AND coffee!
Who do you nominate for next month?
Helen Carson 🙂
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Design and Flight Test of an Aerial Manipulator for Applications in GPS - Denied Environments
M Ng, F Vanegas, K Morton, J Sandino, F Gonzalez – 2022 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9836060
Design and Flight Testing of a Two DOF Decoupled Pantograph Aerial Manipulator for Commercial UAVs
C Luxton, J Sandino, F Vanegas, F Gonzalez – 2022 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9836224
Sequence-Based Filtering for Visual Route-Based Navigation: Analysing the Benefits, Trade-offs and Design Choices
MA Tomita, M Zaffar, B Ferrarini, M Milford – IEEE Access 2022
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9849680
Predicting to Improve: Integrity Measures for Assessing Visual Localisation Performance
H Carson, JJ Ford, M Milford
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9830823
Evolving polydisperse soft robotics jamming grippers
SG Fitzgerald, GW Delaney, D Howard, F Maire - GECCO 22: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3520304.3529072
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