Dr Tobias Fischer

Biography

Profile Snapshot

Dr Tobias Fischer is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology and a Chief Investigator in the QUT Centre for Robotics. His research develops perception and localisation systems that enable robots to operate autonomously in complex environments, with applications in underwater robotics, environmental monitoring, and resource-efficient autonomous systems.

Research Areas

• Robot localisation and visual place recognition
• Event-based and neuromorphic vision for robotics
• Underwater robotics and environmental monitoring
• Resource-efficient AI for autonomous systems

Research Overview

Dr Tobias Fischer is a Senior Lecturer (US equivalent: Associate Professor) and ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He is a Chief Investigator in the QUT Centre for Robotics and leads research on robotic perception and localisation for real-world environments.

His work focuses on enabling robots to understand where they are and how to navigate reliably in complex and changing environments. Combining robotics, computer vision, and artificial intelligence, his research develops perception systems that allow autonomous robots to operate under real-world constraints such as limited power, bandwidth, and compute.

A key theme of his work is the development of efficient perception systems inspired by biological sensing and neuroscience. His research explores event-based vision, neuromorphic sensing, and multi-sensor fusion to support long-term robot autonomy.

These technologies support applications in environmental monitoring, underwater robotics, and autonomous systems operating in remote or challenging environments. In particular, his work contributes to robotic systems capable of monitoring and protecting marine ecosystems, including coral reefs.

Dr Fischer has secured more than AUD $3 million in competitive research funding. He currently holds an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship and is a Chief Investigator in the $1.3M Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program and the $700k Queensland Quantum Technologies Talent Building Program. He is also Chief Investigator of a $750k CRC-P project in collaboration with Emesent and EPE Oceania, alongside earlier grants from Intel Labs and Amazon.

He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in leading venues including Science Robotics, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, IJCAI, ICRA, and IROS. His research has received several best paper and best poster awards, and his PhD thesis received the UK Best PhD in Robotics Award.

Dr Fischer serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and regularly contributes to major robotics conferences such as ICRA, IROS, and RSS as an Area Chair. He is also Co-Chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Women in Engineering Committee, where he promotes diversity and inclusion in robotics and engineering.

Tobias Fischer's DECRA project
The project "Adaptive and Efficient Robot Positioning Through Model and Task Fusion" is funded through the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme.

The project develops next-generation robot localisation systems that combine model-based reasoning with machine learning to improve navigation reliability in complex environments. The fellowship supports a team of PhD researchers and provides funding for equipment, research infrastructure, and international collaboration.

Selected Awards and Honours

ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow, Australian Research Council
UK Best PhD in Robotics Award (Queen Mary Robotics Best Thesis Award)
Eryl Cadwaladr Davies Prize for the best PhD thesis in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London
Queensland Top 40 Under 40, recognising outstanding young leaders across industry and academia
IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems Outstanding Paper Award (2023)
Multiple Best Paper and Best Poster Awards at leading international conferences including CVPR and the Samsung AI Forum
Facebook Mapillary Visual Place Recognition Challenge Winner (2020)
German National Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) Scholarship

Career History

Dr Fischer joined the Queensland University of Technology in 2020 and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Personal Robotics Lab at Imperial College London.

He received his PhD from Imperial College London in 2018 with the thesis Perspective Taking in Robots: A Framework and Computational Model. The thesis received the Queen Mary UK Best Thesis in Robotics Award and the Eryl Cadwaladr Davies Prize for the best thesis in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

He holds an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh and a BSc in Computer Engineering from Ilmenau University of Technology in Germany.

From February 2012 until August 2014, he was a scholarship holder at the prestigious German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes).

Web Links

• Personal website
• Google Scholar profile
• LinkedIn
• Twitter @TobiasRobotics