Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Centre for Robotics are working on a new research project with Ford, looking at the development of improved localization and perceptions techniques for autonomous vehicles.
According to QUT, the project will investigate how cameras and lidar sensors can better understand the world around them. QUT’s professor Michael Milford will lead the two-year, US$200,000 (A$271,000) project and its research team, which includes QUT research fellow Dr Sourav Garg and PhD candidate Ming Xu.
“QUT’s Centre for Robotics has extensive experience in the areas of robotic vision and navigation, and this research project is a terrific opportunity to bring that expertise to a project with a leader in the automotive industry,” Professor Milford said.
“We’ll dive deep into research developing the algorithms and artificial intelligence systems that could improve the capabilities of autonomous vehicles. In particular, we’ll be looking at the synergistic relationship between autonomous vehicles and the world around them.
“If vehicles are able to understand the environment they are in such as in an urban environment, the vehicle can better understand its surroundings such as a pedestrian crossing. We can take that understanding of what is in the environment to then help the vehicle better understand where they are located in it.”
Dr Punarjay (Jay) Chakravarty will lead the project on behalf of the Ford Autonomous Vehicle Future Tech group and the two teams will work together to understand how to best decrease the cost of autonomous vehicle technology adoption, primarily by lowering the cost of sensing and computing using deep learning techniques.