Professor Gordon Wyeth

Broad Area of Research: Smart Systems

Main Areas of Research

Biologically Inspired Navigation

We have developed biologically inspired robot navigation algorithms that outperform state-of-the-art algorithms for vision based navigation. Recent results in outdoor experiments demonstrated our system mapping an entire suburb in real time from a single webcam, while indoor experiments have demonstrated autonomous operation of an office delivery robot over a two week period. Not only does the research offer technology breakthroughs for robotics, it also provides valuable insight into the nature of navigation in biological organisms.

Domestic and Office Robots

We are pursuing new ideas that enable robots to operate as cooperative partners in domestic setting. Building on our work with navigation, we have developed systems for intelligent communication and reasoning about space and objects. The emerging generation of domestic and office robots also require new thinking for mechatronic systems that enhance the safety, efficiency and utility of manipulation and movement. Our research is producing new deployable technologies for domestic robotics, and offering key insights into the science of robotics and artificial intelligence.

Grants

2009 – 2012

• $200,000 – Talking with Robots: Evolving Grounded Language for Embodied Agents, ARC Discovery.

2008 – 2009

• $18,000 – Robotics for Musical Instruments, NICTA.

2006 – 2011

• $4.75 million – Thinking Systems: Navigating Through Real and Conceptual Spaces, ARC SRI.

2006 – 2007

• $72,000 – Robotics Education for Regional and Rural Queensland, ASISTM.

2005 – 2007

• $207,000 – Enhancing Intelligent Robot Navigation with the Evolution of a Robot-Friendly Language, ARC Discovery.

2005 – 2007

• $33,000 – Vision Techniques for Outdoor Robots, CSIRO.

2005

• $156,000 – Robot Arm for Video Screen Manipulation, SAP.
• $26,000 – Travel Support for RoboCup 2005, RoboCup Federation.

2004 – 2006

• $33,000 – Humanoid Robot Pose Estimation using Inertial Measurement and Machine Vision, CSIRO.

2004 – 2005

• $14,000 – Active Seat Suspension for Mining Trucks,Chaseling –McGiffin.

2003 – 2004

• $90,000 – Robot Navigation From Nature: Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping Based On Hippocampal Models, ARC Discovery.

2002 – 2004

• $33,000 – Machine Learning for Autonomous Helicopters, CSIRO.

2001

• $70,000 – Infrastructure Support for Mobile Robots, RIBG.

Awards and Recognitions

Paper Awards

• 2008: Best Paper: Maddern W. and Wyeth G. “Development of a Hemispherical Compound Eye for Egomotion Estimation,” Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA 2008), Canberra, Australia, December 2008.
• 2007: Runner-up Best Paper: M. J. Milford and  G. Wyeth, “Spatial Mapping and Map Exploitation: a Bio-Inspired Engineering Perspective”, International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2007), Melbourne, Australia,  September 2007.
• 2003: Best Paper: Prasser D. and Wyeth G.F. “Laboratory Vision System for Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping,” International Conference on  Autonomous Minirobots for Research and Edutainment (AMiRE2003) Brisbane, Australia, February 2003.

Career History

2010 – Present: Professor, Queensland University of Technology

2007: Visiting Professor, University of Nottingham

2000 – 2009: Senior Lecturer, University of Queensland

1994 – 1999: Lecturer, University of Queensland