Dr Jasmin Martin is giving engineering students first-hand project experience that could guide future research on vision-detection technologies.

Martin supervises final-year students for their capstone project on vision-based detection through the QUT School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics.

The project is closely related to her work on an algorithm that enables unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to detect aircraft at a range of more than 2km.

“In my research, I’ve taken a control systems approach to detecting aircraft in image sequences, but students take a machine and deep learning approach, which is something I’d like to investigate more,” Martin said.

QUT researchers have used a complex maths model to develop an algorithm that enables unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to replicate a human pilot’s ability to visually detect aircraft at a range of more than 2km.

Professor Jason Ford, who was awarded the inaugural Australian Defence Industry Award of Academic of the Year in 2019, said developing the visual detection system had tackled the key barrier to fully achieving the global commercial market of unmanned aerial vehicles.

“We’ve been working on this problem for 10 years and over that time 50 people or more have been involved in this project,” said…

QUT physics student, David Sommers has discovered diamond can generate strong electrical current when exposed to visible light, a finding that could lead to a new species of optoelectronics.

Sommers made the discovery while working with Associate Professor Dongchen Qi from the QUT School of Chemistry and Physics, who recently proved diamonds could become conductive by modifying the surface with metal oxide.

As part of an undergraduate physics capstone research project, Qi gave Sommers a diamond chip with an electronic circuit already formed on the surface so he could investigate if diamond had photocurrent properties.

QUT is leading major defence projects as part of Rheinmetall’s new research and technology program to develop advanced Australian-made robotics and automated vehicle technologies.

Under the Autonomous Combat Warrior (ACW) program, QUT researchers are working alongside Rheinmetall’s Australian, German and Canadian development teams, and research teams from Defence Science and Technology (DST) group, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

QUT and CSIRO teams will work together to develop systems that enable the new Army vehicles to autonomously detect and recognise soldier commands and traverse terrains to execute those commands.

Rheinmetall Defence…

Robotic systems are becoming better at navigation all the time, especially when integrated with GPS and other supporting technology — but how can robots find their way around unmapped, unknown spaces, like office buildings, university campuses, and hospitals?

Dr Ben Talbot from QUT’s Centre for Robotics has developed wayfinding robots that can read signs, understand directions and contextual clues, and navigate complex environments relying on cues and signposts rather than detailed maps.

Choosing a novel way to test their systems, Talbot’s team set up an abstract zoo on the floor of the robotics lab, and asked the robot to find…

Georgia Hartzenberg is on a mission to understand the physical processes that govern galaxies far, far away — back to when the universe was about 1.5 billion years old.

Hartzenberg is a postgraduate student studying astrophysics, a popular undergraduate study area at QUT where opportunities for research degrees have recently emerged.

She is investigating 60,000 galaxies to determine the role of environment in the evolution and ultimate fate of galaxies.

“The lifetime and evolution of a galaxy depends on the type of environment it resides in, but one of the many mysteries in astrophysics is how different galaxies came into…

Diamonds could be everyone’s best friend with new research unlocking hidden properties for next-generation electronics.

Associate Professor Dongchen Qi from the QUT Centre for Materials Science led research that transformed the intrinsically inert diamond into a powerful semiconductor capable of sustaining very high-power and withstanding conditions too extreme for silicon devices.

What do autonomous cars and robots designed to navigate inside your body have in common? A lot, according to Artur Banach, a PhD Researcher with the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision and QUT Centre for Robotics. Artur is focused on surgical robotics and currently undertaking an exchange at Boston’s Harvard Medical School.

Q: Tell us a little bit about life in Boston, what you’re doing there and how it came about?
A: I commenced an exchange at Harvard Medical School in February. It’s exciting to be at one of the world’s top research-oriented medical schools, in a city that is…