Neuroscience-based algorithms for robotics and autonomous vehicles

Overview

Increasingly, researchers are looking to neuroscience and the brain for inspiration in how they design their deep learning network architectures for robotics and artificial intelligence tasks.

This project will design innovative new neural network-based learning approaches to make breakthroughs in robotic and autonomous vehicle capabilities in:

• sensing
• scene understanding
• visual place recognition
• navigation
• Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM)
• other key capabilities.

In doing so you will gain invaluable experience and skills in one of the most exciting fields in the world today, along with opportunities for international travel and collaborations.

Our PhD students have gone on to work at companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon as well as top universities including the University of Oxford and ETH Zurich.

Research activities

Research activities will include:

• writing academic research papers for submission to top tier academic conferences and journals
• preparing and giving high quality research presentations
• collaboration with fellow students, postdocs and academics
• potential collaboration with top international universities and major international companies working in this space.

Outcomes

Some of the primary outcomes include:

• new camera-based positioning technologies for robots, drones and autonomous vehicles
• new insights into neuroscience and how the brain functions
• new neural network models
• research papers in top international conferences and journals
• research presentations at international conferences and in research organizations like QUT
• technology demonstration videos showing the system in action performing positioning on challenging real world robot and autonomous vehicle datasets, and on actual platforms
• significant experience and expertise in highly topical areas such as machine learning, robotics and autonomous vehicles
• incredible exposure to the high tech and exciting world of robotics, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence.

Skills and experience

You will need to have a high GPA (above 6) with significant experience and skills in the tasks set in the research activities as well as:

• neural networks
• computational neuroscience
• coding
• algorithms
• machine learning
• deep learning
• data processing
• image processing
• sensor processing
• mapping
• localisation
• Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM)
• interface design
• GUIs.

Scholarships

You may be able to apply for a research scholarship in our annual scholarship round.

Annual scholarship round

Keywords

• robotics
• neural networks
• neuroscience
• deep learning
• artificial intelligence
• autonomous vehicles
• technology

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.