Biography

Robert Mahony is a Professor in the School of Engineering at the Australian National University, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering, and a fellow of the IEEE.  He leads the Systems Theory and Robotics Group that undertakes research in non-linear systems and control with applications in robotics and computer vision.  He played a pioneering role in developing non-linear filters for attitude estimation, an enabling technology in the early development of aerial robotic vehicles that underpins the modern multi-billion-dollar drone industry. He did seminal work on the control of quadrotor vehicles and was one of the champions in their early development and worldwide adoption. In other work he developed geometric optimization algorithms for eigenspace computation, developed algorithms for visual state estimation, and did fundamental work in designing asynchronous algorithms for processing event camera data. 

Research

Professor Mahony's main research interests are in non-linear systems theory with applications in robotics, geometric optimisation techniques and systems theory.

Interests

Robot vision, cameras, mobile robots, Lie groups, closed loop systems, Lyapunov methods, asymptotic stability, autonomous aerial vehicles, distance measurement, filtering theory, learning (artificial intelligence), motion estimation, nonlinear control systems, pose estimation, position control, and image analysis including reconstruction, resolution, segmentation, sensors, colour analysis, and representation.

Activities Awards

Professor Mahony is the convener for several courses, including ENGN4627/ENGN6627 Robotics.

For more information, please see Professor Mahony's publications.