It's been a big final month of the year for the Robotic Imaging Lab!

We received an NVIDIA Academic Grant for our project "Physics-Based Simulation for Robotic Vision in Extreme Environments". The GPUs they're sending will help us leverage NVIDIA's cutting-edge ray-tracing and deep learning capabilities.

Congrats to PhD candidate Bina Rajan who received first prize for her submission to the SafetyCulture Spot Competition along with Michael Somerfield. Take a moment to watch their fantastic video! The Spot Mini they've been awarded will come in handy in our ARIAM Hub infrastructure inspection and management research.

Our student Jack Naylor has been awarded a Fullbright Future Scholarship! Jack will be visiting my colleague and friend Matthew O'Toole and his group at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute developing exciting new ideas using radiance fields for multi-modal sensing.

We have received an ARC Discovery Grant on "Introspection for Resilient Robotic Perception in Challenging Environments", with Stefan Williams at USyd and Thierry Peynot at QCR. This 3-year program will advance how robots reason about and adapt to their own perceptual limitations, enhancing resilience in challenging environments such as murky water and extreme weather where state-of-the-art approaches fail.

Finally, the group have received a bit of an early Christmas present in the form a new Agilex Scout Mini robot. It's a pretty capable and nimble platform, and we look forward to making it see and interact with the world in new ways, from photons to actions!

Check it out, our work appears in Blender 4.3! The new features are covered in this video.

Alexandre Cardaillac lead this work introducing new physics-based volume scattering phase functions into Blender 4.3. This was driven by our need to accurately simulate imagery from underwater robots. As you can see in the video, it has utility in all sorts of scattering environments including fog, clouds, and even interstellar dust! We hope it's useful in a wide range of scientific as well as artistic applications!

This work was conducted as part of the ARIAM Research Hub in collaboration with industry partner Advanced Navigation.

Congrats Jack Naylor @nackjaylor for being one of five speakers at the #IAC2024 NextGen Plenary in a few days! https://t.co/trUrwXxP2m

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) October 14, 2024

We were featured in a set of ABC news articles exploring aspects of robot vacuum security: Radio piece "Robot vacuums spying on Australians", article "We hacked a robot vacuum...", and article "...robot vacuums collect photos and audio to train AI".

Welcome to our new team member, James Gray. James is a postdoctoral researcher working with ARIAM Hub member Trendspek on robotic vision for high-fidelity drone-based 3D reconstruction. Watch this space for more as his work develops!

A big welcome to our two latest team members, Jason Lai and Connor Langford, starting their PhDs in change detection and exoplanet detection. Watch this space for more as their work develops!

Closing 10th Jun Sydney time: 3-year Postdoctoral Research Associate in 3D reconstruction of reflective objects. Details at the University Job Site here.

ICRA 2024 in Yokohama was a blast, great to see such strong attendance from Australian robotics colleagues. If you missed us, here are the links to BuFF Burst Feature Finder (RA-L/ICRA), Adaptive Keyframe Selection for Online Iterative NeRF Construction (RoboNerF workshop), and Towards Event-Based Satellite Docking: A Photometrically Accurate Low-Earth Orbit Hardware Simulation (HERMES workshop).

We're excited to introduce TaCOS: Task-Specific Camera Optimisation with Simulation. We combine procedural environments with clever optimisers to design better cameras, supporting continuous, discrete, categorical & interdependent variables. Preprint/code: https://t.co/AgLDbe1PEp pic.twitter.com/GCfTEs2WFR

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) April 24, 2024

Our privacy-preserving camera was featured on @Channel9 news https://t.co/ZlmB4M3X24, featuring myself and Adam Taras @ak_taras @SIRISRobotics. This was a collaboration with Niko Suenderhauf @nikoSuenderhauf and Peter Corke @QUTRobotics. Project page: https://t.co/L4QPlYg212

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) April 2, 2024

Check out the latest collaboration between Adam Taras and myself from USyd and Niko Suenderhauf and Peter Corke from QUT: "Inherently privacy-preserving vision for trustworthy autonomous systems: Needs and solutions", accepted to the Journal of Responsible Technology. We argue for a class of cameras that are more like optical-analogue computers: they protect your privacy by never measuring images. Preprint, dataset, and a reconstruction challenge are at the project page here.

Still buzzing from #rvss2024 last week. Congrats to Robotic Imaging Lab member Bina Rajan and team for winning the workshop challenge! pic.twitter.com/tlcqFdDiT7

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) February 15, 2024

Welcome to our latest team member, Jesse Mehami who has started his Postdoctoral role in the SmartSat CRC ISAM project. Jesse joins us from the Robotics Institute at UTS where he worked with noval and multi-camera systems.

A great way to close off 2023 was by attending SIGGRAPH Asia. Always a stimulating time!

We're recruiting a 3-year Postdoctoral Research Associate in robotic vision for high-fidelity drone-based 3D reconstruction. Position closes Jan 8th, 2024 Sydney Time. Details at the University Job Site here. This is one of multiple postdoctoral and PhD roles that are part of the ARIAM Research Hub. All postings will be available at the ARIAM Hub website.

We're recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher in Robotic Imaging for In-Orbit Satellite Servicing, closing 22 Nov, 2023 Sydney Time. Details at https://t.co/aSZO200Bvw. @SIRISRobotics@SmartSatCRC @Eng_IT_Sydney

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) October 26, 2023

A warm welcome to our two latest team members, Bina Rajan who is starting her PhD, and Alexandre Cardaillac who has started a postdoctoral appointment. Both are working in novel imaging systems as part of the ARIAM Research Hub.

We're recruiting a 3-year Postdoctoral Researcher in robotic vision for high-fidelity drone-based 3D reconstruction, closing 16 Oct, 2023 Sydney Time. Details at https://t.co/aSZO200Bvw. More roles coming, see https://t.co/Z7hdzCsgOV. @SIRISRobotics @ariam_hub @Eng_IT_Sydney

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) September 15, 2023

Congrats to Dr Avie @girlinrobotics who has completed the requirements for the award of a PhD! Avie did a fantastic job in her work on low-light imaging, culminating in mililux-level drone-based mapping with standard off-the-shelf hardware. Watch for a few more papers soon... =)

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) September 5, 2023

Join us for a (southern-hemisphere) Summer Research Internship! https://t.co/sEHES5CIl2 Use the link on the right to Engineering summer projects, then look for the satellite docking, active depth estimation and privacy-preserving robotic vision projects.

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) August 9, 2023

Lab hike today, Coogee to Bondi, great to unwind ahead of the new semester! pic.twitter.com/i7HXmAlje2

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) July 21, 2023

Congrats Adam Taras and our collaborators Peter Corke and Niko Suenderhauf from QCR on winning the ICRA23 MACTAS workship best poster award. Poster here, paper here.

Congrats to Ahalya Ravendran for successfully defending her thesis on Robotic Burst Imaging!

We're recruiting a 3-year Postdoctoral Research Associate in Underwater Computational Imaging, closes 16 May, 2023 Sydney Time. Details at the University Job Site here. This is one of multiple postdoctoral and PhD roles opening soon as part of the ARIAM Research Hub. All postings will be available at the ARIAM Hub website.

Welcome to our latest team member, Dr Danish Khan, who will be working in novel imaging systems with ARIA, Augmented Reality in Audio for the vision impaired.

Thrilled to be a part of this https://t.co/bK3vh17yoK Tech Central Human Augmentation Laboratory (HAL) with USYD, UTS, ARIA, and others: https://t.co/28nlrzDIuj

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) January 23, 2023

Congrats to Ryan Griffiths and Jack Naylor whose work has been accepted to ICRA 2023. Toward interpreting novel imaging devices, we jointly learn view synthesis, odometry, and camera model. Preprint, code and data are here.

Two fully funded PhDs in underwater robotic imaging with the ARIAM research hub, details here. The two roles advertised here are part of a larger opportunity that will hire and bring together tens of PhD students and multiple Postdocs. For more on ARIAM, our partners, and opportunities to join the hub please watch this site and the ARIAM Research Hub website.

See you at ACRA 2022 in Brisbane next week! Adam Taras will be presenting our work on time of flight fields. What happens when you make a light field camera out of time of flight cameras? We show you can get significant gains in accuracy and robustness to specular reflection. Paper, source, and dataset are available here.

The Robotic Imaging group @SIRISRobotics @Eng_IT_Sydney will present some of our recent work on Nov 17th 1pm Sydney Time. Join us online or in-person, RSVP via https://t.co/AtpbDpeR7t pic.twitter.com/cBOuBqh7Ar

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) November 10, 2022

Congrats Jack Naylor on being awarded joint Best Speaker at University of Sydney's first Engineering HDR Conference. Congrats also to our school's fantastic team of PhD students for organising this Faculty-wide event by HDRs for HDRs.

Welcome to our two latest team members, Nikolai Goncharov and Oliver Yan are both starting their PhDs with us this month.

Fully funded PhD in position in underwater robotic imaging, details here.

Multiple PhD positions opening soon as part of the ARIAM research hub, lodge your expression of interest now.

Jobs: PhD and Postdoctoral roles in Augmented Reality for the Visually Impaired. Project ARIA, Augmented Reality in Audio, seeks to endow the visually impaired with a richer sense of their surroundings using a wearable augmented reality device. Applications due 13 Aug 2022, links to posting here.

Congrats to Adam Taras on winning the top undergrad poster at the IEEE UNITE NSW event!

Congrats to Jack Naylor on receiving an SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship!

Such a pleasure to deliver a talk today at @CMU_Robotics and to reunite with my colleague and friend Matt O'Toole, fellow survivor of @Stanford and lover of computational imaging. pic.twitter.com/caInVdGa70

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) May 31, 2022

Jobs: Fully Funded PhD Position in light field imaging. The project aims to develop new visual sensing approaches for autonomous and assisted driving. Applications close Jun 19, 2022, details here.

Come to @girlinrobotics talk today at @ieee_ras_icra in room 113C at 10:40, and our poster in the poster session until 12:30, look for the 113C sign or the poster with the koalas on it (while they last =) https://t.co/M57fEqgT8p pic.twitter.com/zfaVpYo0DR

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) May 24, 2022

Accepted to Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU): Semantically Accurate Super-Resolution with GANs. We show that multi-modal learning of super-resolution and semantic labelling improves performance at both tasks, with demonstration on aerial imagery for remote sensing. Preprint here.

It was great catching up with colleagues and delivering an in-person seminar, the first in what seems like forever, @QUTRobotics! For more on the upcoming ITRH research hub, follow @ariam_hub. https://t.co/E9CqexUUnX

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) May 10, 2022

Looking for an Australian Winter (Jun-Aug) research project with us? The Robotic Imaging Lab has up to two positions in open-source robotic vision with 4D light field cameras. Deadline 24 April 2022: https://t.co/sEHES5kz6U

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) April 4, 2022

It was a pleasure lecturing on light fields the past two Sydney evenings (@TampereUni mornings) to @plenoptima, the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovation Training Network on Plenoptic Imaging. I expect to see great things from this program! https://t.co/Tu9zLQE39e

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) March 31, 2022

Jobs: Fully Funded PhD Position in Underwater Robotic Imaging. The project aims to develop new visual sensing approaches for nimble underwater drones. Applications due Jan 23, 2022, details here.

Thrilled to receive a @Sydney_Uni SUPRA supervisor of the year award! Thanks to my wonderful team for the nomination, especially @girlinrobotics. In Engineering PhD students are our stars: they do the research and are the next generation of leaders and innovators. @Eng_IT_Sydney pic.twitter.com/lSLkDNBuVf

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) December 22, 2021

Accepted to RA-L: Avie's paper on burst imaging for low-light 3D reconstruction. Preprint, dataset and code are at the project page here.

Just Announced: I could not be more excited to be part of this successful @CRCAssoc CRC-P with Project ARIA! This program will develop a visual-spatial prosthesis that lets the blind see using sound... Augmented Reality in Audio! https://t.co/KcmCUalrmF

— Donald Dansereau (@dgdvision) September 3, 2021