Welcome

drawing Welcome to my page. I am an Associate Professor, researcher, and educator in autonomous perception, machine learning, and robotic vision at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), Adelaide University. My research focuses on developing trustworthy perception systems for autonomous robots, enabling them to operate safely and reliably in complex, uncertain environments. I lead the Embodied AI and Robotic Vision Group and serve as deputy director of the French-Australian CROSSING Lab (CNRS IRL), where we advance research in human–autonomous teaming and the development of intelligent, adaptive robotic systems.

Academic Career

2026 - present: Associate Professor, Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), Adelaide University
2022 - 2025: Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), University of Adelaide
- 2025 - present Co-Director, CROSSING (French-Australian Laboratory for Human-Autonomous Agents Teaming).
- 2024 - present The AI Theme lead - University of Surrey/University of Adelaide partnership.
- Senior Lecturer, Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), University of Adelaide.
- CI and Project Lead - Centre for Augmented Reasoning (CAR)
- Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering, Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
2019-2022 Senior Lecturer - School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics, QUT.
- CI on the following projects:
  - Novel autonomous robotic weed control (CRC-P project)
  - Robotic Crop Management for Vertical Farming Systems (QUT CAB)
  - Intelligent Robotic Systems for Real-Time Asset Management, ARC Research Hub (ITRH)
2020-2022 Chief Investigator - QUT Centre for Robotics (QCR).
- My roles in QCR:
  - Co-Lead - Visual learning and understanding program
  - Portfolio Lead - Early to Mid-career cohort
2016-2020 The ARC Australian Center for Robotic Vision (ACRV).
- 2019 Chief Investigator
  - Deputy project leader - Robotics Vision Evaluation and Benchmarking (ACRV project).
  - Deputy program leader - Robot Learning Program (ACRV research program).
- 2018 Associate Investigator
- 2016 Research Fellow
2019-2022 Associate Investigator - QUT Centre for Data Science.
2012-2016 Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Science and Engineering Faculty, QUT.
- During my role as a research fellow in QUT I worked on the following projects:
  - Autonomous Unsupervised Weed Scouting - Primary project supervisor.
  - Semi-automated power pole inspection (CRC-SI project) - Research Fellow.
  - RangerBot, a low-cost AUV - Research fellow.
  - Human Cues for Robot Navigation (ARC DP project) - Research fellow - PhD thesis supervisor.
  - Crown-of-thorns starfish bot (COTSBot) - Perception lead.
  - QUT Agricultural Robotics Program - Research fellow - PhD thesis supervisor.
  - Lifelong robotic navigation (ARC DP project) - Research fellow - PhD thesis supervisor.
2009-2012 Tutor at the University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

Awards and Award Finalist

2024 Best Paper Honourable Mention, IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV 2024).
2020 Australian Centre for Robotic Vision award for best-profile raising event in robotics and CV communities.
2019 Australian Centre for Robotic Vision award for Best Team Project.
2019 Australian Centre for Robotic Vision award for Best Centre Citizen.
2019 Certificate of appreciation in recognition of outstanding contribution to the 2019 QUT STEM Camp.
2018 Australian Centre for Robotic Vision award for best-profile raising event in robotics and CV communities.
2017 Finalist for Best Automation Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
2016 Google X challenge, Popular vote award, RangerBot project.
2016 Finalist for the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, Environmental Research.
2016 Award for being a Magnet for the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science QUT.
2015 Vice-Chancellor’s Award, Queensland University of Technology.

Research Degree Completions

PhD completions

Jad Abou-Chakra (2026) — Co-supervisor
Realtime Structured and Visually Correctable Representations for Robotic Manipulation
Nicolas Chapman (2025) — Co-supervisor
Adapting Vision-Language Models for Robotic Object Detection
Dong Yuan (2025) — Co-supervisor
Ground-to-Aerial Cross-View Image Matching for Robot Localization
Samuel Wilson (2024) — Co-supervisor
Post-hoc Feature-based Out-of-Distribution Detection for Real-World Conditions
Quazi Marufur Rahman (2022) — Primary supervisor
Performance Monitoring of Deep Learning Vision Systems During Deployment
Jesse Haviland (2022) — Co-supervisor
Control Strategies for Reactive Manipulation
Dimity Miller (2021) — Primary supervisor
Epistemic Uncertainty Estimation for Object Detection in Open-Set Conditions
Olga Moskvyak (2021) — Co-supervisor
Learning from Limited Annotated Data for Re-Identification Problem
David Hall (2018) — Primary supervisor
A Rapidly Deployable Approach for Automated Visual Weed Classification without Prior Species Knowledge
Ben Talbot (2018) — Co-supervisor
Integrating Symbolic Spatial Information in Robot Navigation

MPhil completions

Xiangyu Shi (2025) — Primary supervisor
Domain Adaptation Object Detection for Mobile Robots
Renjie Wu (2024) — Co-supervisor
Towards Pedestrian Safety Augmented Reality System

Workshops and Summer Schools

Conference workshops and challenges

2025 · ICLR, 7th Robot Learning Workshop: Towards Robots with Human-Level Abilities.
2021 · CVPR, Robotic Vision Scene Understanding Challenge, at the Embodied AI Workshop.
2020 · IROS, Reliable Deployment of Machine Learning for Long-Term Autonomy.
2020 · ICRA, Scene Understanding and Semantic SLAM: Progress, Applications, and Limitations.
2019 · CVPR, The Robotic Vision Probabilistic Object Detection Challenge.
2019 · IROS, The Importance of Uncertainty in Deep Learning for Robotics.
2018 · ICRA, Long-Term Autonomy and Deployment of Intelligent Robots in the Real World.
2018 · CVPR, Real-World Challenges and New Benchmarks for Deep Learning in Robotic Vision.
2018 · RSS, New Benchmarks, Metrics, and Competitions for Robotic Learning.

Summer schools

2026 — Robotic Vision Summer School.
2025 — Robotic Vision Summer School.
2024 — Robotic Vision Summer School.
2023 — Robotic Vision Summer School.
2018 — Workshop, The Great Escape, Robotic Vision Summer School.

Editorial Roles

Conferences

2025 — Associate Editor, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
2023 — Associate Editor, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

Journals

2018–2019 — Associate Editor, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L).
2018 — Associate Editor, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters special issue on Precision Agricultural Robotics and Autonomous Farming Technologies.

My Research Themes

Autonomous Robots Perception Systems Monitoring and Failure Detection

This theme encompasses research on real-time monitoring and failure detection methods for autonomous robotic perception systems. These studies aim to ensure the robustness, safety, and reliability of autonomous systems, particularly under dynamic and complex environmental conditions.

Reliable deep learning for robotics: Uncertainty Handling, Out-of-Distribution Detection and Open-Set Recognition in Object Detection

This research theme explores techniques to improve object detection algorithms, particularly in open-set conditions commonly found in robotic vision.

Computer Vision and Machine Learning Applications

This research theme focuses on leveraging computer vision and machine learning techniques to tackle various challenging applications.

Place Recognition and Semantic Mapping in Robotics

This research theme centres on employing Machine Learning methodologies for enhancing robotic navigation capabilities.

Teaching

Adelaide University

2026 - Present
- Computer Science Honours Research Project - Supervision
- Master Capstone Project - Supervision

The University of Adelaide

2022 - 2025:
- COMP_SCI_1102 - Object-Oriented Programming - Course Coordinator/Lecturer (2022,2023).
- COMP_SCI_3317 - Using Machine Learning Tools (2022,2023)
- COMP_SCI_7327 - Concepts in Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning - Course Coordinator/Lecturer (2022).

QUT

2016-2021:
- EGB439 - Advanced Robotics - Unit Coordinator/Lecturer (2017-2021).
- CAB202 - Microprocessors and Digital Systems - Unit Coordinator/Lecturer (2016-2021).
- EGB419 - Mechatronics Design 3 - Lecturer (2020).

Publications

Full and up-to-date list found here

Deepfruits: A fruit detection system using deep neural networks I Sa, Z Ge, F Dayoub, B Upcroft, T Perez, C McCool sensors 16 (8), 1222

On the performance of convnet features for place recognition N Sünderhauf, S Shirazi, F Dayoub, B Upcroft, M Milford 2015 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems …

Place recognition with convnet landmarks: Viewpoint-robust, condition-robust, training-free N Sünderhauf, S Shirazi, A Jacobson, F Dayoub, E Pepperell, B Upcroft, … Robotics: Science and Systems XI, 1-10

Place categorization and semantic mapping on a mobile robot N Sünderhauf, F Dayoub, S McMahon, B Talbot, R Schulz, P Corke, … 2016 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA), 5729-5736

Evaluation of features for leaf classification in challenging conditions D Hall, C McCool, F Dayoub, N Sunderhauf, B Upcroft IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), 797-804

Dropout sampling for robust object detection in open-set conditions D Miller, L Nicholson, F Dayoub, N Sünderhauf IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

An adaptive appearance-based map for long-term topological localization of mobile robots F Dayoub, T Duckett 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems …

Long-term experiments with an adaptive spherical view representation for navigation in changing environments F Dayoub, G Cielniak, T Duckett Robotics and Autonomous Systems 59 (5), 285-295

Peduncle detection of sweet pepper for autonomous crop harvesting—combined color and 3-D information I Sa, C Lehnert, A English, C McCool, F Dayoub, B Upcroft, T Perez IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 2 (2), 765-772

Robot for weed species plant‐specific management O Bawden, J Kulk, R Russell, C McCool, A English, F Dayoub, C Lehnert, … Journal of Field Robotics

Probabilistic object detection: Definition and evaluation D Hall, F Dayoub, J Skinner, H Zhang, D Miller, P Corke, G Carneiro, … IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision 2020

Visual detection of occluded crop: For automated harvesting C McCool, I Sa, F Dayoub, C Lehnert, T Perez, B Upcroft 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2506-2512

Evaluating Merging Strategies for Sampling-based Uncertainty Techniques in Object Detection D Miller, F Dayoub, M Milford, N Sünderhauf IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

Vision-only autonomous navigation using topometric maps F Dayoub, T Morris, B Upcroft, P Corke IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems November …

Varifocalnet: An iou-aware dense object detector H Zhang, Y Wang, F Dayoub, N Sünderhauf Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern …

Robotic detection and tracking of Crown-Of-Thorns starfish F Dayoub, M Dunbabin, P Corke IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Hamburg …

Robot navigation using human cues: A robot navigation system for symbolic goal-directed exploration R Schulz, B Talbot, O Lam, F Dayoub, P Corke, B Upcroft, G Wyeth 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 1100-1105

Multiple map hypotheses for planning and navigating in non-stationary environments T Morris, F Dayoub, P Corke, G Wyeth, B Upcroft IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2014 1 …

Find my office: Navigating real space from semantic descriptions B Talbot, O Lam, R Schulz, F Dayoub, B Upcroft, G Wyeth 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 5782-5787

Semantics for Robotic Mapping, Perception and Interaction: A Survey S Garg, N Sünderhauf, F Dayoub, D Morrison, A Cosgun, G Carneiro, … arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.00443