Find Michael Milford on
PhD (University of Queensland)
I conduct interdisciplinary research at the boundary between robotics, neuroscience and computer vision and am a multi-award winning educational entrepreneur. My research models the neural mechanisms in the brain underlying tasks like navigation and perception in order to develop new robotics and computer vision-related technologies, with a particular emphasis on challenging application domains where current techniques fail such as all-weather, anytime positioning for autonomous vehicles. I currently hold the position of Professor at the Queensland University of Technology, as well as Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow and Chief Investigator at the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision.
My research has attracted more than twenty-two million dollars in research and industry funding, both in the form of sole investigator fellowships and large team grants from organizations including the Australian Research Council, Queensland Government, Microsoft, Caterpillar Corporation, Mining3 and the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (US Air Force). Our papers have won or been finalists for 11 best paper awards including winning the 2012 Best Vision paper at ICRA2012.
I have given more than 80 plenaries, keynotes and presentations at international conferences, top universities, major industrial and technology corporations (including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Toyota, OpenAI) and scientific meetings across thirteen countries to audiences of up to 2000 people. I have collaborated with dozens of universities and corporations around the world including Harvard University, Boston University, Oxford University, MIT, Edinburgh University, Imperial College London, Caterpillar, the US Air Force and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and regularly co-organize international robotics and deep learning-related events including regular workshops at ICRA, RSS and CVPR. I was recently a finalist (top 3 nationwide) in the 2016 Australian Museum Eureka awards for Outstanding Early Career Researcher.
As an educational entrepreneur, I have written and produced innovative textbooks for K-12 students for seventeen years. My new company Math Thrills Pty Ltd combines mass market entertainment and STEM education, and is rolling out in more than 200 schools around Australia. Math Thrills has received pre-seed funding on Kickstarter, seed funding from QUTBluebox and further funding from the AMP Foundation. The initiative has led to honours including the 2015 Queensland Young Tall Poppy of the Year Award and a 2015 TedXQUT talk.
I have dual citizenship between Australia and the United States, and have lived and worked in locations including Boston, USA and Edinburgh and London in the UK.
Projects (Chief investigator)
Projects
- An infinitely scalable learning and recognition network
- Superhuman place recognition with a unified model of human visual processing and rodent spatial memory
Additional information
I conduct interdisciplinary research at the boundary between robotics, neuroscience and computer vision and am a multi-award winning educational entrepreneur. My research models the neural mechanisms in the brain underlying tasks like navigation and perception in order to develop new robotics and computer vision-related technologies, with a particular emphasis on challenging application domains where current techniques fail such as all-weather, anytime positioning for autonomous vehicles. I currently hold the position of Professor at the Queensland University of Technology, as well as Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow and Chief Investigator at the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision.
My research has attracted more than twenty-two million dollars in research and industry funding, both in the form of sole investigator fellowships and large team grants from organizations including the Australian Research Council, Queensland Government, Microsoft, Caterpillar Corporation, Mining3 and the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (US Air Force). Our papers have won or been finalists for 11 best paper awards including winning the 2012 Best Vision paper at ICRA2012.
I have given more than 80 plenaries, keynotes and presentations at international conferences, top universities, major industrial and technology corporations (including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Toyota, OpenAI) and scientific meetings across thirteen countries to audiences of up to 2000 people. I have collaborated with dozens of universities and corporations around the world including Harvard University, Boston University, Oxford University, MIT, Edinburgh University, Imperial College London, Caterpillar, the US Air Force and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and regularly co-organize international robotics and deep learning-related events including regular workshops at ICRA, RSS and CVPR. I was recently a finalist (top 3 nationwide) in the 2016 Australian Museum Eureka awards for Outstanding Early Career Researcher.
As an educational entrepreneur, I have written and produced innovative textbooks for K-12 students for seventeen years. My new company Math Thrills Pty Ltd combines mass market entertainment and STEM education, and is rolling out in more than 200 schools around Australia. Math Thrills has received pre-seed funding on Kickstarter, seed funding from QUTBluebox and further funding from the AMP Foundation. The initiative has led to honours including the 2015 Queensland Young Tall Poppy of the Year Award and a 2015 TedXQUT talk.
I have dual citizenship between Australia and the United States, and have lived and worked in locations including Boston, USA and Edinburgh and London in the UK.
- Type
- Fellowships
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, $110,000
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Ray Jarvis Best Paper Award "Towards Bio-inspired Place Recognition over Multiple Spatial Scales," Zetao Chen, Adam Jacobson, Ugur Murat Erdem, Michael Hasselmo and Michael Milford
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Best Paper Finalist "Towards Condition-Invariant, Top-Down Visual Place Recognition," Michael Milford, Walter Scheirer, Eleonora Vig and David Cox
- Type
- Membership of Review Panels on Prestigious Grant Applications
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Czech Science Foundation reviewer for Research Grants
- Type
- Membership of Review Panels on Prestigious Grant Applications
- Reference year
- 2013
- Details
- Israeli Ministry of Science & Technology reviewer for Brain Research Infrastructure program grant reviewer
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2012
- Details
- Best Robot Vision Paper Award at the 2012 International Conference on Robotics and Automation
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2016
- Details
- Best Paper Finalist Robotics Science and Systems Conference: Milford, M., "Visual Route Recognition with a Handful of Bits", Sydney, Australia, 2012.
- Type
- Membership of Review Panels on Prestigious Grant Applications
- Reference year
- 2012
- Details
- Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Reviewer for Discovery Grants
- Type
- Membership of Review Panels on Prestigious Grant Applications
- Reference year
- 2016
- Details
- Australian Research Council for Discovery Projects and Discovery Early Career Outstanding Researcher Fellowships
- Type
- Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes
- Reference year
- 2006
- Details
- Queensland Young Achiever of the Year (Science and Technology) The aims are objectives of the program are to: Acknowledge & highlight the achievements of young Australians. Educate the general public with examples of youth achievement. Encourage & motivate young Australians at all levels in their chosen field of endeavour. Develop a sense of pride in being an Australian. Build self-confidence through rewards for excellence. Provide role models & mentors for our youth by highlighting their achievements and the pursuit of excellence. Develop and encourage leadership and life skills in young Australians.
- Milford MJ, (2013) Vision-based place recognition: how low can you go?, The International Journal of Robotics Research p766-789
- Ball DM, Heath S, Wiles J, Wyeth GF, Corke P, Milford MJ, (2013) OpenRatSLAM: an open source brain-based SLAM system, Autonomous Robots p149-176
- Maddern W, Milford M, Wyeth G, (2012) CAT-SLAM: probabilistic localisation and mapping using a continuous appearance-based trajectory, The International Journal of Robotics Research p429-451
- Maddern W, Milford M, Wyeth G, (2012) Capping computation time and storage requirements for appearance-based localization with CAT-SLAM, Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation p822-827
- Milford M, Wyeth G, (2012) SeqSLAM: Visual route-based navigation for sunny summer days and stormy winter nights, Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation p1643-1649
- Milford M, (2012) Visual route recognition with a handful of bits, Robotics: Science and Systems VIII - Proceedings of the 8th Robotics: Science and Systems Conference p1-8
- Milford MJ, Wiles J, Wyeth GF, (2010) Solving navigational uncertainty using grid cells on robots, PLOS Computational Biology p1-14
- Milford M, Wyeth G, (2010) Persistent navigation and mapping using a biologically inspired SLAM system, International Journal of Robotics Research p1131-1153
- Milford M, (2008) Robot navigation from nature: Simultaneous localisation, mapping, and path planning based on hippocampal models p1-196
- Milford M, Wyeth G, (2008) Mapping a suburb with a single camera using a biologically inspired SLAM system, IEEE Transactions on Robotics p1038-1053
- Title
- Superhuman Place Recognition with a Unified Model of Human Visual Processing and Rodent Spatial Memory
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- FT140101229
- Start year
- 2015
- Keywords
- Place Recognition; Spatial Memory; Bio-Inspired Robot Navigation
- Title
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Robotic Vision (ACRV)
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- CE140100016
- Start year
- 2014
- Keywords
- Robotic Vision; Robotics; Computer Vision
- Title
- Visual Navigation for Sunny Summer Days and Stormy Winter Nights
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- DE120100995
- Start year
- 2012
- Keywords
- Vision-Based Navigation; Robot Navigation; Change-Invariant
- Biologically-inspired Place Recognition with Neural Networks (2016)
- Visual Sequence-Based Place Recognition for Changing Conditions and Varied Viewpoints (2016)
- Continuous Appearance-Based Localisation and Mapping (2014)
- Visual Place Recognition for Persistent Robot Navigation in Changing Environments (2014)