Some of the Centre’s many achievements in 2020
Centre Director receives prestigious IEEE leadership award
Centre Director, Distinguished Professor Peter Corke was awarded the prestigious IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation, for foundational research on robot vision and for leadership and innovation in robotics education.
Photo credit: Xavier Montaner, Corporate Photography Brisbane
COTSbot attracts attention at the Guggenheim
The Centre’s COTSbot robot was on display in New York’s Guggenheim Museum as part of an exhibition titled ‘Countryside, The Future’. An exhibition addressing urgent environmental, political, and socioeconomic issues through the lens of architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal.
COTSbot was developed by Professor Matthew Dunbabin to kill the destructive crown-of-thorns starfish in the Great Barrier Reef
ARC Future Fellowship worth $2M awarded to Centre Professors
Chief Investigators Professor Stephen Gould and Professor Dana Kulic were both awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, worth $2M collectively.
Centre Researchers build a virtual zoo
Centre researchers built a virtual zoo to test the ability of robots to navigate real-world environments by seeing if it could track down the king of the jungle using symbols and an abstract map. Dr Ben Talbot and a team of Centre researchers considered how robots might be able to navigate using the same navigation cues that people subconsciously use in built environments.
They did this by programming an Adept GuiaBot robot with the ability to interpret signs and directional information using an abstract map, a novel navigation tool they developed to help robots navigate in previously unvisited spaces.
Centre Start-up wins Unicorn Cup international pitch competition
Centre start-up LYRO Robotics won first place in the 2020 Unicorn Cup, the world’s largest start-up pitch competition against 2,000 companies from 125 countries. LYRO was founded by Centre Research Fellows Dr Jürgen ‘Juxi’ Leitner, Dr Nicole Robinson and Norton Kelly-Boxall.
Centre Research Fellow wins prestigious Fellowship
Centre Research Fellow Dr Yizhak Ben-Shabat was awarded the prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie individual global fellowship.
Yitzak’s research proposal was selected from over 7000 applications and ranked within the top 10% of the global scheme and field of research.
The project, titled 3D in Action, aims to understand human action from unstructured 3D point clouds using deep learning and includes funding of over 250,000€ for a period of three years, two of which will be spent at the Australian National University and one at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
Photo credit: Bradley Cummings, Bradley Cummings Photography
Centre Researchers helping secure Antarctica’s environmental future
Centre Director, Distinguished Professor Peter Corke, Chief Investigator Professor Matthew Dunbabin and Associate Investigator Associate Professor Felipe Gonzalez have been invited to partipate in an ARC Special Research Initiative that will create advanced robotic systems that fly, swim and drive in the hostile Antarctic environment to gather data that will inform scientific models of how the continent is responding to climate change.
Photo credit: Ashley Cooper, The Image Bank, Getty Images
Social Robots redefining the delivery of healthcare
Centre Research Fellow, Dr Nicole Robinson, has found that small interactive robots are proving useful in helping people develop and implement healthy lifestyle plans, that support weight loss and healthy eating habits. The trial also found that information delivered by an autonomous robot may be as effective as a human clinician delivering a similar intervention. This important discovery could lead to such technology being used routinely to extend the reach of the clinician, resulting in greater support to both patients and practitioners.
Photo credit: Zaharoula Harris, ZedPhotography
Centre Professor recognised as a global leader in AI and machine learning for space applications
Centre Chief Investigator, Professor Tat-Jun Chin received one of nine Professorial Chair positions, a $1.5 Million investment, awarded by the SmartSat CRC, in the new frontier of research in artificial intelligence for satellite systems.
Professor Chin, Centre Chief Investigator Professor Rob Mahony and Centre Alumni Professor Anders Eriksson were also successful in a SmartSat CRC Grant of $600,000 in ‘Ultra-fine Attitude Control via Event-based Star Tracking and Piezoelectric Stabilisation’.
Feature image photo credit: Urupong, iStock/Getty Images Plus
