Australian Centre for Robotic Vision

The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Robotic Vision will allow robots to see, to understand their environment using the sense of vision. This is the missing capability that currently prevents robots from performing useful tasks in the complex, unstructured and dynamically changing environments in which we live and work. Robots with visual perception – that can see, learn and respond as humans do – are the key enabling technologies for an array of emerging applications in robotics and automation. The Centre has four research objectives: • Robust Vision will develop new sensing technologies and robust algorithms that allow robots to use visual perception in all viewing conditions: night and day, rain or shine, summer or winter, fast moving or static. • Vision and Action will create new theory and methods for using image data for control of robotic systems that navigate through space, grasp objects, interact with humans and use motion to assist in seeing. • Semantic Vision will produce novel learning algorithms that can both detect and recognise a large, and potentially ever increasing, number of object classes from robotically acquired images, with increasing reliability over time • Algorithms and Architectures will create novel technologies and techniques to ensure that the algorithms developed across the themes can be run in real-time on robotic systems deployed in large-scale real-world applications. The Centre has been funded for $25.6M over 7 years, of which $19.0M is from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence program. The Centre comprises 13 chief investigators and 6 partner investigators from 10 organisations spanning robotics and computer vision across the globe. The Centre's Director is Professor Peter Corke, Queensland University of Technology.