Brendan graduated from QUT in 2017 with a Bachelor of Engineering majoring in Mechatronics, achieving first class honors. In 2016 Brendan developed a tethered underwater vessel as part of QUT’s entry to the Robotx Maritime challenge and travelled with the team to Hawaii. TeamQUT competed against 13 universities from around the world, and took out second place.
Brendan joined the Centre in late 2017 under supervision of Dr Juxi Leitner and Distinguished Professor Peter Corke, with Dr Nicholas Hudson from Data61 at CSIRO joining his supervisory team in 2018. Brendan’s work uses visual perception with reinforcement learning to control dynamic legged robots in challenging environments. This topic lead him to work with CSIRO as part of a team funded by DARPA in their latest robotics competition, a subterranean challenge, where a team of robots (including tracked, legged and flying robots) commanded by a single operator must enter an underground scenario and localise target artefacts.