Grant
Prof Mahen Mahendran, Felipe Gonzalez CI, Dr Anthony Ariyanayagam and Dr Ian Weir have been awarded a Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants $290K
Title: Assessment and Resilient Design of Buildings against Bushfires
This project will undertake pre-bushfire assessments of buildings in the Scenic Rim Regional Council. It will first study the buildings damaged in the 2019/20 bushfires, understand why they were damaged, investigate their resilience in future bushfires and propose evidence-based retrofitting solutions. It will conduct detailed surveys of buildings and analyses of building materials in bushfires using advanced drone-based technology and computational heat transfer models together with lab testing and field studies. The project will then be extended to other buildings in the bushfire prone areas. Findings will be disseminated to the community to enable adaptation of solutions that minimise building damage and enhance community resilience.
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VRES Student Success
This year we had fifteen EER undergraduate students participating in this program. The students who successfully completed their projects had their project presentations on Friday 18th February. All the presentations were of very high quality.
EER student Andrew Stopa with a project titled “Investigating and improving Incremental Sheet Forming processes with low cost and sustainable materials” was among the winners for the best VRES project award. Andrew’s project was supervised by Jonathan Roberts.
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Australian Space Agency Program
Moon to Mars Trailblazer Program - Stage 1 Submission. Well done to the team for putting together a (massive*) proposal to Stage 1 of the Trailblazer Program… to develop an Australian Rover to go the Moon!
*Main document: 275 pages
Core QUT Team: Ali Buchberger, Garima Samvedi, Guenes Minareci, Dorian Tsai, Niko Suenderhauf & Thierry Peynot + input from Michael, Peter and numerous partners
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Queensland Women in STEM Prize
Queensland women working in STEM fields are invited to submit entries for the 2022 Queensland Women in STEM Prize. The prize recognises the vast contribution that Queensland women in STEM are making to their communities and aims to inspire and mobilise future generations of young women to take up careers in STEM fields. A prize pool of $15,000 is on offer for outstanding female role models. The award categories are:
● Judges' Award - presented to the most meritorious applicant
● Breaking Barriers Award - presented to the most meritorious Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander applicant, applicant with a disability, or applicant who is a carer
● Highly Commended Award(s) considered to be meritorious, as determined by the judges
Anyone working or studying in a STEM field for less than 12 years is eligible to apply. To enter, applicants are required to provide a written application and a two-minute video. Applications close on the 1 April 2021, at 4:00 PM (AEST). Please contact Ilana Bolingford for support in applying for this prize.
For eligibility guidelines see here
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Win $2500 USD Prize Money!
We're excited to release the latest Robotic Vision Scene Understanding (RVSU) challenge in the Embodied AI workshop at #CVPR2022.
We have $2,500 USD in cash prizes on offer, & there's also 11 other great challenges to try!
Click here for further information
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OPPORTUNITY
2 days per week project
●manager for the Masters of Robotics & AI.
●Wrangling deadlines, keeping things on track, creating PDs to help academics in creating the online units, and helping to finesse unit outlines.
○Email to Peter, subject line: Masters of Robotics & AI
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Diversity
An inspirational video on Women in STEM, which will be useful for outreach activities: see link to video here
Recommended Guidelines for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Terminology can be found here
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International Women's Day
Tuesday 8 March was International Women’s Day – it was a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marked a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. Further information here
International Women's Day webinar with keynote Professor Marcia Devlin. Some great advice for women and men about improving gender equality in lots of different ways that are achievable and important. Click here for the webinar link
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International Maritime RobotX Challenge 2022
-2018: 2nd place!
-Where: Sydney!
-When: November 11-17th 2022
-Help build & code an autonomous boat and drone!
-Website & graphic design
-Increase technical proficiency
-Network and exposure
-Compete and collaborate at a world-class level
-Get involved: contact :Matt Dunbabin, Duane Johnston or Dorian Tsai
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QCR Funding Policy Update
Updates are now available on the QCR Wiki page for QCR Funding 2022 and will be updated regularly so please check the Wiki page when you require funding support. All applications must be sent to Ilana via email or Vicki (whilst Ilana is on leave) outlining the amount requested and the purpose for the funds. Click here for further information
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Travel Updates
Travel updates are now on the Wiki – please click here for further information. Information will be updated regularly so please check this page if you are considering business travel.
Travelling soon? You may need to check your CTM profile before booking.
Now that travel has opened up for QUT staff again, Corporate Card holders may have their transactions declined if their details are outdated in their CTM profile.
Cardholders should please review their details to ensure that they have a balance available on the card, and that the expiry date of the card is correct.
International Travel
From 21 March 2022, you will be able to book international travel for QUT work-related purposes to destinations with a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) advice level of 1, 2 or 3.
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Completed PhD
Congrats to Dr Artur Banach on a completed PhD
Thesis title: “Visual Navigation in Minimally Invasive Surgery”
Principal supervisor: Aaron McFadyen
Associate supervisors: Ross Crawford, Cameron Brown
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Completed PhD
Congratulations to Dr John Skinner for passing his PhD!
Thesis Title: “Simulation for Robot Vision”.
Principal Supervisor: Peter Corke
Associate Supervisor: Michael Milford
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Paper Published
Congrats to the BenchBot team for having their IJRR data paper published!
Title: BenchBot Environments for Active Robotics (BEAR): simulated data for active scene understanding research
Authors: David Hall, Ben Talbot, Suman Raj Bista, Haoyang Zhang, Rohan Smith, Feras Dayoub and Niko Sünderhauf.
Journal: International Journal of Robotics Research Link
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Final Version PhD submitted
Congrats to Vibhavari (Vibha) Dasagi for submitting the final version of her PhD Manuscript (after minor revisions from Examiners) and congrats to her principal supervisor Juxi (and team)
PhD Title: Efficient and Stable Reinforcement Learning for Robotics
Supervisors: Juxi Leitner, Thierry Peynot and Jon Roberts
Vibha is now a Research Scientist at DeepMind in London!
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Confirmation Seminar
Congrats to Somayeh for a great presentation and passing her confirmation seminar!
Title: Bio-inspired Neural Networks for Visual Place Recognition
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Accepted Papers
Congratulations to PhD candidate Narmilan Amarasingam on his two papers in a row in Q1 journals including ‘Remote Sensing’ (MDPI Publisher) and ‘Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment’ (Elsevier Publisher).
Title: Predicting Canopy Chlorophyll Content in Sugarcane Crops Using Machine Learning Algorithms and Spectral Vegetation Indices Derived from UAV Multispectral Imagery. Link here
Title: A review of UAV platforms, sensors, and applications for monitoring of sugarcane crops. Link here
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PhD Thesis Submitted
Congrats to Faris Azhari who submitted his PhD Thesis for examination!
Title: Automated Crack Detection and Characterisation from 3D Point Clouds of Unstructured Surfaces”
Sponsor: Mining3
Supervisors: Thierry Peynot, Michael Milford & Charlotte Sennersten (CSIRO) Faris is now Research Engineer at CSIRO
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Past Events
Robotics Club and QCR Event
On Wednesday 23 February QCR and the Robotics Club ran and event to attract students to thesis projects for EGH-400-1.
Was a very successful event with lots of networking and pizza.
We are excited to work with the QUT Robotics Club for future events.
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Past Events
Agtech Event - 8 March
The AgTech event which was held online on 8 March was a big success. Guest speakers from @ConnectedFarms, @agtechlogistics and Stacked Farm were part of the online Webinar event. The event was a platform to learn more about how #robotics and #agriculture can work together to put #Farmers first.
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Robotics Seminar Series Catch Up
Missed a seminar? Catch up here.
Seminars from 1 March 2022 to
Avoiding resource bottlenecks – Concurrency, threading and multiprocessing
Date: 8 March 2022
Speaker: Gavin Suddrey
Link
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Interpetable Fusion of Deep Features for Out-of-Distribution Detection
Date: 22 March 2022
Speaker: Samuel Wilson
Link
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Deep Learning, Data Mining and Robotics
Date: 22 March 2022
Speaker: Fangyi Zhang
Link
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Welcome to Therese Joseph
Welcome to Therese Joseph who started her PhD with Michael and Tobi, on bio-inspired neural networks for robot navigation.
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Welcome to Nic Chapman
Nic is a new HDR student and is working with Chris, Will and Feras (remotely) on active computer vision under uncertainty.
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… with Sophie Taylor
What do you do in the Centre and what are you currently working on?
I am doing a PhD in mathematics, on the philosophical foundations and limits of the mechanics of computation. I'm currently working on the algorithmic thermodynamics of artificial and digital life. On the face of it, that makes no sense, and so an example is in order. Consider the classic 1984 programming game Core War, where the goal is to essentially write a virus which overwrites all the memory of a virtual computer. What is the minimum length of code you need to write such that you can have a self-replicating organism? What is the minimum runtime? How much memory does it use up? What are the trade-offs between these three properties? More interestingly, what happens to these properties when a rival virus is introduced? If the code is allowed to purposely mutate itself, what happens to these properties over time, as the virions compete for domination? What's interesting is that, thanks to Algorithmic Information Theory, these questions can be asked for any scenario where you have computational agents in an environment --- including any AI agent, or indeed, biological life in the physical world.
What’s on your desk?
Not much, at the moment anyway. Apart from my desktop monitors, I have my laptop on a laptop stand, my portable mechanical keyboard (although I take it home every night), my tablet, a couple of books, my water bottle, and my backpack.
How would you describe your work to a child?
Poorly, as I have enough trouble explaining it to myself! I suppose it would be something like the following: "What is the smallest amount of complexity you need for something to be called life? I am trying to figure that out!"
Three words to describe your work?
Generalised Abstract Nonsense!
What’s your dream travel destination?
Mars! More realistically, Antarctica.
I’m currently reading
"Proofs from THE BOOK", a collection of incredibly short, elegant and insightful mathematical proofs.
And currently wishing
For clear skies, so I can do some astrophotography.
My last meal would be
Salmon yakisoba
Final question! Tea, coffee or no caffeine?
Pepsi Max! Failing that, iced tea.
Who do you nominate for next month?
Ilana Bolingford
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BenchBot environments for active robotics (BEAR): Simulated data for active scene understanding research
Hall D, Talbot B, Bista SR, Zhang H, Smith R, Dayoub F, Sunderhauf N
BenchBot environments for active robotics (BEAR): Simulated data for active scene understanding research - David Hall, Ben Talbot, Suman Raj Bista, Haoyang Zhang, Rohan Smith, Feras Dayoub, Niko Sünderhauf, 2022 (sagepub.com)
Point Label Aware Superpixels for Multi-species Segmentation of Underwater Imagery
Scarlett Raine, Ross Marchant, Brano Kusy, Frederic Maire, Tobias Fischer
2202.13487.pdf (arxiv.org)
Visibility Maximisation Controller for Robotic Manipulation
K He, R Newbury, T Tran, J Haviland
Visibility Maximization Controller for Robotic Manipulation
Predicting Canopy Chlorophyll Content in Sugarcane Crops Using Machine Learning Algorithms and Spectral Vegetation Indices Derived from UAV Multispectral
A Narmilan, F Gonzalez, ASA Salgadoe
Predicting Canopy Chlorophyll Content in Sugarcane Crops Using Machine Learning Algorithms and Spectral Vegetation Indices Derived from UAV Multispectral …
A review of UAV platforms, sensors and applications for monitoring of sugarcane crops
N Amarasingam, S Salgadoe, K Powell, LF Gonzalez
A review of UAV platforms, sensors, and applications for monitoring of sugarcane crops
OpenSceneVLAD: Appearance Invariant, Open Set Scene Classification
WHB Smith, M Milford, KD McDonald-Maier, S Ehsan IEEE International 2022
OpenSceneVLAD: Appearance Invariant, Open Set Scene Classification
Highly-Efficient Binary Neural Networks for Visual Place Recognition
B Ferrarini, M Milford, KD McDonald-Maier, S Ehsan arXiv preprint arXiv 2022
Highly-Efficient Binary Neural Networks for Visual Place Recognition
SwitchHit: A Probabilistic,Complementarity-Based Switching System for Improved Visual Place Recognition in Changing Environments
M Waheed, M Milford, K McDonald-Maier, S Ehsan arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.00591, 2022
SwitchHit: A Probabilistic, Complementarity-Based Switching System for Improved Visual Place Recognition in Changing Environments
Point Label Aware Superpixels for Multi-species Segmentation of Underwater imagery
S Raine, R Marchant, B Kusy, F Maire, T Fischer arXiv Preprint arXiv:2202. 13487, 2022
Point Label Aware Superpixels for Multi-species Segmentation of Underwater Imagery
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