What's new at the ACFR?

• Congratulations to Sarah McDonald, a mechatronics undergraduate student, who was awarded the John Pether Memorial Prize for the most outstanding Mechatronics Thesis in 2011
• The January/February 2012 issue of the Journal of Field Robotics features an ACFR robot (The Argo) on the cover
• Congratulations to Ariell Friedman, an ACFR postgraduate research student, who recently won the Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CISRA) Extreme Imaging Competition. Ariell's submission covered the work completed in Greece in June 2011, on surveying submerged neolithic settlement sites
• Congratulations to Dr Mitch Bryson for being awarded funding through the Faculty's ECR program for his project “Techniques and Algorithms for Enabling Low-cost, Ultra-high Spatial and Temporal Resolution Mapping”.
• Andrew Szomor, an Engineering MIPPS student, is currently doing an internship at Qantas. The project, in conjunction with Permagard Australia, is to boost fleet aesthetics and reduce carbon emissions through the application of Permagard coating to aircraft.
• Congratulations to Associate Professor Stefan Williams for being awarded an ARC Future Fellowship
• Congratulations to Dr Fabio Ramos for being awarded an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award
• Congratulations to Professor Eduardo Nebot for winning the Don Nicklin Award for Technology Commercialisation
• ARC Linkage Results: LP120100448 to Prof Robert Heinsohn, A/Prof Salah Sukkarieh, A/Prof Shane R Raidal, Dr Tara G Martin.
  Project Title: The endangered swift parrot as a model for managing small migratory birds. Project Summary
• ARC Linkage Results: LP120100700 to Prof Eduardo Nebot, Dr Juan Nieto, Dr Graham Brooker.
  Project Title: Development of fundamental perception technology and algorithms for mining safety. Project Summary
• Congratulations to Calvin Hung, an ACFR postgraduate research student, who was recently awarded the best poster award in the category of Postgrad Space Engineering in the Research Conversazione and best AMME paper in the 2011 Student Conference
• Congratulations to Sarah McDonald, a mechatronics undergraduate student, who has been awarded several prizes recently: First prize in the Undergraduate Section of the 3rd IEEE Technologies of the Future Competition and Exhibition 2011, held at UNSW. Her project demonstration was based on her Honours Thesis - Modified pegboard test: Monitoring Parkinson’s Disease. 3rd place in the Mechatronics undergraduate thesis presentations; runner up in the Sydnovate Excellence in Innovation awards and best mechatronic thesis as judged by industry visitors and academics at the recent Research Conversazione awards
• The ACFR was awarded a research grant from QANTAS Airways for the research and development of intelligent systems to monitor and predict fuel performance. www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/research/aerospace.shtml
• A European funded exchange research program between CATEC-USE (Spain), DLR (Germany) and the ACFR will see international collaboration for the study and demonstration of long endurance multi-UAV systems. www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/research/aerospace.shtml
• The ACFR will be hosting the 2012 Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) Conference at The University of Sydney on 9-13 July 2012. Further information available at the Robotics: Science and Systems website
• The ACFR was awarded a research grant from Meat and Livestock Australia to extend its work on mapping large farmlands from robotic aircraft. www.acfr.usyd.edu.au/research/aerospace.shtml
• Congratulations to Giulio Reina, James Underwood and Graham Brooker for being awarded the Springer Best Paper Prize 2011, at the 12th Conference Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS), for their paper Short-range radar perception in outdoor environments