Dr Juxi Leitner
Faculty of Engineering,
School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics
Biography
Jürgen "Juxi" Leitner is founder and managing director (CEO) of LYRO Robotics, a Brisbane-based, deep-tech company creating the brain, the eyes and the hands for smart robotic systems.
Juxi is a Senior Research Fellow at QUT (part-time) contributing to the Australian Space Agency sponsored Intra-vehicular Robotics Project.
Juxi is a researcher at the intersection of #Robotics, #RoboticVision and Artificial Intelligence (#AI). He is working on creating autonomous robots that 'can SEE and DO stuff' in real-world environments and has authored more than 100+ publications. Previously he was the lead for the Vision and Action programme of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Robotic Vision leading a growing group of students and post-docs at QUT focussing on creating robotic grasping and manipulation solutions. He was also leading Team ACRV the winner of the Amazon Robotics Challenge 2017. Before coming to Australia he worked and studied at various research institutes in Europe and Japan. From 2010-2014 he was working at the Robotics Lab of the Dalle Molle Institute for AI (IDSIA) in Lugano, Switzerland. Prior to IDSIA he worked at the European Space Agency's Advanced Concepts Team for a year. Juxi obtained a PhD for his work on the iCub humanoid robot from the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland. He also holds a Joint European Master Degree in Space Science and Technology (SpaceMaster) which includes a Master of Science (Space Science and Technology) from the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden and a Master of Science in Technology (Space Robotics) from the Aalto University (formerly TKK) in Finland. During his diploma project, he also was a short-term visiting student at the Intelligent Space Systems Lab at the University of Tokyo, Japan. His background in computer science includes a Bachelor of Science (BSc) from the Vienna University of Technology, Austria and graduating from a vocational high-school in informatics.
Personal details
Positions
- Senior Research Fellow
Faculty of Engineering,
School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics
Keywords
Robotics and Automation, Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Robotic Vision, Autonomous Robots, Machine Learning, Manipulation, Humanoid Robots, Developmental, Evolutionary and Cognitive Robotics, Grasping
Discipline
Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- PhD (Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI))
Professional memberships and associations
Teaching
2018:
- Guest Lecture on (Deep) Reinforcement Learning, CAB420 Machine Learning (QUT, undergrad)
- Guest Lecture and Workshop on Space Robotics, SEB104 Grand Challenges in Science (QUT, undergrad)
2017:
- Guest Lecture on (Deep) Reinforcement Learning, CAB420 Machine Learning (QUT, undergrad)
- Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Lecture (Brisbane.AI)
- QUT Workshop on (Deep) Reinforcement Learning in Robotics (international participation)
2016:
- 2 Day Hands-on Workshop: Robot Operating System (ROS) (academic and industry participation)
- Guest Lecture and Tutorial on Project Management and the Amazon Picking Challenge, ENB329 Mechatronics Project 2 (QUT, undergrad)
- Guest Lecture and Workshop on Space Robotics, SEB104 Grand Challenges in Science (QUT, undergrad)
- Guest Lecture and Baxter Presentation, IFB101 Impact of IT (QUT, undergrad)
previously:
- 2015 IEEE QLD CIS Invited Talk (Griffith University)
- 2015 Guest Lecture and Workshop on Space Robotics, SEB104 Grand Challenges in Science (QUT, undergrad)
- 2015 Baxter demonstrations, IFB101 Impact of IT (QUT, undergrad)
- 2011-2014 Systems Programming Lab (Università della Svizzera Italiana, undergrad/BSc)
- 2007 Usability Engineering (Vienna University of Technology, graduate students/MSc)
- 2006 User Interface Design Practical/Lab (Vienna University of Technology, undergrad/BSc)
Experience
Workshop Organization Conference Workshop Theme Organizers R:SS 2016
Limits and Potentials of Deep Learning in Robotics Juxi Leitner, Niko Sunderhauf Peter Corke, Ben Upcroft, Michael Milford (QUT, Brisbane), Pieter Abbeel (UC Berkeley), Wolfram Burgard (Uni Freiburg) ACRA/AusAI 2015 Deep Learning and its Applications in Vision and Robotics Juxi Leitner, Sareh Shirazi (QUT), Anoop Cherian (ANU)
Publications
- Leitner J, (2016) A bottom-up integration of vision and actions to create cognitive humanoids. In H Samani, Cognitive robotics, CRC Press p191
- Leitner J, Harding S, Forster A, Corke P, (2016) A modular software framework for eye-hand coordination in humanoid robots, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 3 (MAY) p1
- Zhang F, Leitner J, Milford M, Upcroft B, Corke P, (2015) Towards vision-based deep reinforcement learning for robotic motion control, Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation 2015 p1
- Frank M, Leitner J, Stollenga M, Forster A, Schmidhuber J, (2014) Curiosity driven reinforcement learning for motion planning on humanoids, Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 7 () p1
- Frank M, Leitner J, Stollenga M, Kaufmann G, Harding S, Forster A, Schmidhuber J, (2012) The modular behavioral environment for humanoids and other robots (MoBeE), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO), Volume 2 p304
- Leitner J, Harding S, Frank M, Forster A, Schmidhuber J, (2013) Humanoid learns to detect its own hands, Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation p1411
- Leitner J, Chandrashekhariah P, Harding S, Frank M, Spina G, Forster A, Triesch J, Schmidhuber J, (2012) Autonomous learning of robust visual object detection and identification on a humanoid, Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL 2012) p186
- Leitner J, Frank M, Forster A, Schmidhuber J, (2014) Reactive reaching and grasping on a humanoid: Towards closing the action-perception loop on the iCub, Proceedings of the 2014 11th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO), Volume 1 p102
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Juxi, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Simulation to Reality and Back: A Robot's Guide to Crossing the Reality Gap
PhD, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Distinguished Professor Peter Corke - Efficient and Stable Reinforcement Learning for Robotics
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Associate Professor Thierry Peynot, Professor Jonathan Roberts