Study level

PhD

Master of Philosophy

Honours

Vacation research experience scheme

Faculty/Lead unit

Science and Engineering Faculty

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Supervisors

Professor Michael Milford
Position
Professor in Electrical Engineering
Division / Faculty
Science and Engineering Faculty

Overview

Knowing where you are is a fundamental capability for robots and autonomous vehicles moving through an environment.

Increasingly, technologies in this area are based around camera sensors, performing a process known as Visual Place Recognition (VPR).

VPR becomes challenging in the real-world when conditions or viewpoints change: for example in conditions of inclement weather, changing seasons or day-night cycles.

Robots and autonomous vehicles must also be able to localise across viewpoint changes: for example driving down the same road but in the opposite direction, or a drone entering a building through a different window to previously.

In this project you'll dive deep into the world of algorithms, machine and deep learning, computer vision and robotics to develop new state-of-the-art solutions to these challenging problems.

In doing so, you'll 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 Google, Facebook 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
  • 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'll need to have a high GPA (above 6) and significant experience and skills in:

  • coding/programming
  • 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

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.