Study level

  • Honours
  • Vacation research experience scheme

Faculty/School

Faculty of Engineering

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Centre for Robotics

Supervisors

Professor Michael Milford
Position
Professor in Electrical Engineering
Division / Faculty
Faculty of Engineering

Overview

Everything that moves is defined and limited by its ability to navigate the world in which it exists. Knowing where you are located in the world is a key navigational capability for people, animals, and both autonomous and human-operated platforms ranging from self-driving cars to aircraft.

But accurate and trustworthy positional knowledge has widespread potential implications beyond navigation: it can, for example, allow life-and-death decisions in defence and in tracking the spread of global pandemics. Both the potential of and problems like privacy posed by modern social media networks are due in significant part to how positional tracking information is generated, used, and shared.

With better positioning information, robotics, autonomous vehicle, and AI technologies of the future could transform and improve the competitiveness of current strategic industries like mining and agriculture. It could bring new capabilities in manufacturing and medical technologies, and re-invigorate sectors under pressure like aged care and transport.

Current positioning technologies are fundamentally incapable of meeting current and future positioning demands because they do not and will never meet the required performance, reliability and trustworthiness targets. By re-evolving the best positioning systems developed in nature to incorporate modern technologies and fulfill modern human requirements, we will create a suite of next-generation positioning technologies that address a sovereign risk and keep Australia’s industries competitive.

The overall aim of the Fellowship is to build a new generation of positioning technologies that will give Australia two crucial capabilities:

  1. A sovereign and uninterruptable positioning technology suite that gives Australian defence forces, industry, government, and society the positioning capabilities offered by current paradigms like Global Positioning Systems (GPSs) without risky dependence on satellites
  2. A new utility-maximisation approach to positioning technology development that makes these systems fit-for-purpose, interpretable, privacy-preserving, and trusted by their end-users, among them people, social networks, robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles.

Developing these two capabilities will both address a growing strategic risk for Australia and create a suite of new industrial and societal opportunities for Australia.

More information

Research activities

This project continues development of a series of prototype visual mapping devices that will eventually be deployed in the millions around the globe.

Outcomes

The overarching aim of this project is to create a universal positioning technology that serves as a complementary and redundant alternative to existing systems like satellite-dependent GPS.

Skills and experience

Desirable skillsets include:

  • embedded systems development
  • embedded coding
  • computer vision
  • prototype design
  • 3D printing.

Keywords

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.