2024

~~7-9 February, Keynote Speaker, International Global Navigation Satellite Systems Association conference, UNSW, Sydney.~~

~~22 February, exhibiting at CADR-RAS showcase, Adelaide Zoo Conference room, Adelaide.~~

~~24 February, Keynote Speaker, Gala Opening of the Brisbane Grammar School STEAM precinct, BGS, Brisbane~~

~~28 Feb, Keynote Speaker, QUT Business Leaders’ Forum Sponsors’ Lunch, QUT~~

~~[dates shifted to September, can no longer attend] 18-19 March, invited speaker at the FAIR- Festival of AI + Robotics, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre~~

27 March, Bridging Bio-Inspired and Introspective Positioning Systems, National Science Foundation Accelerating Research Collaboration between Artificial and Natural Intelligences (ARCANI) Meeting, Macquarie University, Sydney.

~~3 April, Tobias Fischer, “Rapid Brain-Inspired Robot Positioning & Robust Control for Autonomy”, AUSMURI Neuro-autonomy review meeting (US and Australia, online)~~

~~10 April, Using AI in your research: a panel discussion, Graduate Research Education + Development.~~

~~IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2024 Workshops~~

13 May, invited speaker at workshop on “Heterogeneous multi-robot cooperation for exploration & science in extreme environments“, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2024 (ICRA2024), Yokohama, Japan

~~13 May, co-organizer and MC, Debates on the Future of Robotics Research Workshop, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2024 (ICRA2024), Yokohama, Japan~~

13 May, co-organizer, “What does Responsible Robotics mean?: Stretching roboticists’ horizons from an academic, government and philosophical perspective” Workshop at IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2024 (ICRA2024), Yokohama, Japan

~~13-17 May IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2024 (ICRA2024) team member / collaborator paper presentations (planned presenters in bold font):~~

“VPRTempo: A Fast Temporally Encoded Spiking Neural Network for Visual Place Recognition”, Adam D. Hines, Peter Stratton, Michael J Milford, Tobias Fischer, ICRA2024 paper
~~Payam Nourizadeh, Michael J Milford, Tobias Fischer, “Teach and Repeat Navigation: A Robust Control Approach”, ICRA2024 paper~~
~~Alejandro Fontan, Javier Civera, Michael J Milford, “Adaptive Outlier Thresholding for Bundle Adjustment in Visual SLAM”, ICRA2024 paper~~
Stefan Schubert, Peer Neubert, Sourav Garg, Michael J Milford, Tobias Fischer, “Visual Place Recognition: A Tutorial”, Robotics and Automation Systems magazine

~~24 May, “How to Navigate a Path Through Exciting and Confronting Developments in Artificial Intelligence”, Queensland Country Press Association, Mooloolaba, Queensland.~~

~~24 May, Evolving Academia: How AI and Robotics Are Redefining Careers and Research, AWS Imagine: Education, Stage and Local Leaders, Brisbane, Australia.~~

28 May, “High Performance Bio-Inspired Positioning and Navigation Systems for Robots and Autonomous Systems”, with Tobias Fischer, AUSMURI Neuro-Autonomy Review Meeting with Defence Science Technology, Melbourne, Australia.

2 June (2:30 pm KST), “Introspection, localization, and terrain detection for off-road autonomous vehicles in mine sites and all terrain environments”m invited speaker at Workshop on Off-Road Autonomy at 35th IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, Jeju Shinhwa, Korea [online]

~~[not going ahead] 6 June, invited speaker at FORSATEK 2024 (Emirates Group), Dubai, United Arab Emirates.~~

~~12 June, “What’s Happening in AI and Robotics”, Australian Science Media Centre (AusSMC) Board Meeting~~

~~13 June, “A quarter century of side gigs: failures, successes, and lots of lessons learned”, talk and panel, QUT Centre for Robotics Mid-Year Retreat, Mooloolaba, Australia.~~

~~19 June, “Insights from a Yearlong Deep Dive into the Use of AI in an Academic Career”, invited keynote speaker at QUT HDR Careers Week, online~~

~~18 June, Invited speaker at proposed workshop on “Visual Perception for Navigation in Human Environments” at IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2024, Seattle~~

~~28 June, Artificial Intelligence Primer, Australian Signals Directorate, Brisbane, Australia~~

15 July, Invited speaker at Workshop on “Semantics for Robotics: From Environment Understanding and Reasoning to Safe Interaction” at Robotics: Science and Systems 2024 (RSS2024), Delft, Netherlands.

17 July, Team member / collaborator presentation, “AnyFeature-VSLAM: Automating the Usage of Any Feature into Visual SLAM”, Alejandro Fontan, Javier Civera, Michael Milford, at Robotics: Science and Systems 2024 (RSS2024), Delft, Netherlands.

18 July, “Safe, collaboration-friendly, user-acceptable and performant perception and localization for autonomous systems”, invited speaker at the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems Delft group (ELLIS, a pan-European AI network) , TU Delft, Netherlands.

~~31 July, 2:30 pm, Primer on AI, Centre for Children’s Health Research, Brisbane, Australia~~

~~12 August, National Science Week Presentation, Queensland Academy for Science Mathematics and Technology, Brisbane, Australia.~~

~~12 August, “Exciting robotics research and opportunities, and the ins and outs of organizing scientific events”, invited guest lecture, STB300 Advanced Science Symposium, QUT.~~

~~16 August, Talk: Positioning Australia for a Resilient and Prosperous Future, Spatial Information Day, Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide, Australia~~

16 August, Closing Keynote: Charting New Realms: Revolutions and Grand Challenges in Robotic and AI Mapping and Positioning Systems, Spatial Information Day, Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide, Australia

~~28 & 29 August (two talks on consecutive days), invited speaker at the Father and Son Breakfast, Brisbane Boys Grammar School, Brisbane, Australia.~~

~~[switched to other speakers] 12 September, QUT Commercialization Club Panel, Brisbane, Australia.~~

17-19 September, “Trusted introspective positioning systems for autonomous systems” – oral presentation, presented by Tobias Fischer, The Australian Defence Science, Technology and Research Summit (ADSTAR)

17-19 September, “The Three Things Wrong With Research in Positioning Systems for Robotics and Autonomous System” – poster presentation, presented by Thierry Peynot, The Australian Defence Science, Technology and Research Summit (ADSTAR)

~~14-18 October, 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024)~~

“Safe, collaborative-friendly, user-acceptable and performant perception and localization for autonomous systems”, an invited talk at the Long-term Perception and Autonomy in Human-shared Environments Workshop, organized by MIT / Stanford / KTH / ETH Amazon
Panel Member for the Workshop on Retrospective and Future of World Representations for Lifelong Robotics
~~“How to write award-winning papers in robotics”, invited talk at the IEEE Young Professionals Event, 6:30 pm, 15 October., Meeting Room 15~~
~~Panel discussion, Workshop on Label Efficient Learning Paradigms for Autonomy at Scale~~
~~Paper presentations by team and collaborators:~~
IROS2024 standalone paper: Dynamically Modulating Visual Place Recognition Sequence Length For Minimum Acceptable Performance Scenarios, Connor Malone*, Ankit Vora, Thierry Peynot, Michael J Milford
IROS2024 standalone paper: Enhancing Visual Place Recognition via Fast and Slow Adaptive Biasing in Event Cameras, Gokul B Nair*, Michael J Milford, Tobias Fischer
IEEE RA-L paper presented at IROS2024: Forward Prediction of Target Localization Failure Through Pose Estimation Artifact Modelling, Windsor, Morgan*,Fontan, Alejandro,Pivonka, Peter,Milford, Michael J
IEEE RA-L paper presented at IROS2024: Design Space Exploration of Low-Bit Quantized Neural Networks for Visual Place Recognition, Grainge, Oliver Edward*,Milford, Michael J,Bodala, Indu,Ramchurn, Sarvapali,Ehsan, Shoaib
IEEE RA-L paper presented at IROS2024: Aggregating Multiple Bio-Inspired Image Region Classifiers For Effective And Lightweight Visual Place Recognition, Arcanjo, Bruno*,Ferrarini, Bruno,Fasli, Maria,Milford, Michael J,McDonald-Maier, Klaus,Ehsan, Shoaib
~~18 October, How to Write Award-Winning Papers panel member, IEEE RAS Young Professionals Committee (YP)~~

~~23-24 October, “From Hype to Highway: Understanding and Mapping Transformative AI to Transport?”, 2024 iMove National Conference, Brisbane~~

12 November, “ICRA2024, RSS2024, and IROS2024 – highlights and insights from this year’s robotics conferences”, talk at the QUT Centre for Robotics Seminar

15 November, “Writing Papers People Love to Read”, tutorial at the QUT Centre for Robotics End of Year Retreat

26 November, invited speaker at the eGrad School Global Conference: Exploring the potential of AI in research, QUT, Australia

Nov 27 – 29, Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA) 2024

Keynote Speaker, “Trusted, privacy compliant and introspective positioning systems”
Panelist, Industry Panel

December 1 – 7, Ernst Strüngmann Forum on Unpacking the Navigation Toolbox: Multidisciplinary Insights, Frankfurt, Germany, Group 2: Group 2 Integrating across model systems (cross-species, multiple tasks, etc.)

Dec 3 – 5, Plenary Talk “Safe, collaboration-friendly, user-acceptable perception and localization for autonomous systems”, The 21st IEEE Int’l Conf. on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2024), Fiji (given remotely)

2024 Speaking Engagements

2024