Tobias Fischer

I am an ARC DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer (US: Associate Professor) in QUT’s Centre for Robotics and the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics. I conduct research at the intersection of robotics and computer vision, with an emphasis on bio-inspired methods including neuromorphic sensing and processing. I am the Principal Investigator of the “Active, adaptive & predictive robot localization” grant funded by Intel’s Neuromorphic Computing Lab.

I am a Lecturer in QUT’s Centre for Robotics and the School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics. I conduct research at the intersection of robotics and computer vision, with an emphasis on bio-inspired methods including neuromorphic sensing and processing. I am the Principal Investigator of the “Active, adaptive & predictive robot localization” grant funded by Intel’s Neuromorphic Computing Lab, and Associate Investigator of an Amazon Research Award on “Complementarity‐Aware Multi‐Process Fusion for Long Term Localization”.

I was QUT’s lead Research Fellow working on the MURI project “Neuroscience-Inspired Perception, Navigation, and Spatial Awareness for Robots”. The goals of this joint US/Australian interdisciplinary effort is to develop next-generation autonomous vehicles, capable of learning and on-the-fly adaptation to environmental novelty, by leveraging deep neurophysiological insights from biological organisms. In particular, I contributed neuro-inspired algorithms for visual place recognition and localisation, with a focus on neuromorphic vision sensors.

I was a post-doc working on the MURI project “A Closed-Loop Multisensory BCI for Enhanced Decision Accuracy”. The goals of this joint US/UK interdisciplinary effort are to model the neural mechanisms underlying multisensory processing and decision making and to design closed-loop adaptive algorithms for brain-computer communication. In particular, we contributed algorithms that detect and respond to users’ mental workload in simulated driving environments based on their eye gaze.

In my PhD thesis entitled “Perspective Taking in Robots: A Framework and Computational Model” I conducted research on perceptional algorithms for cognitive robotics using the iCub humanoid robot. The thesis has been awarded with two best thesis awards. My supervisor was Professor Yiannis Demiris.

• UK Best PhD in Robotics Award
• Eryl Cadwaladr Davies prize

I graduated with a M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. I specialised in Computational Vision; selected courses include Robotics Science and Systems, Advanced Vision, and Cognitive Vision. As a course representative, I strove to promote equality and ensure fairness for all students. I graduated with distinction, equivalent to GPA of 4.0/4.0.

• Distinction

I was a visiting research scholar in John Tsostos’ Lab for Active and Attentive Vision. During this time, I proposed an approach for obstacle detection and avoidance for autonomous mobile robots based exclusively on stereo vision.

I graduated with a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering (Ingenieurinformatik) from the Ilmenau University of Technology. My major was in Cognitive Technical Systems. Some selected courses include Artificial Intelligence, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition, Database Systems and Softcomputing. From 2011-2013, I had been a study affairs committee member and a student representative. I graduated top of class with first class honours, equivalent to a GPA of 3.7/4.0.

• Top of class

My first author paper Computational Modeling of Embodied Visual Perspective Taking co-authored with Yiannis Demiris has received the 2023 IEEE Transactions on Cognitive & Developmental Systems Outstanding Paper Award.

My student Scarlett Raine won the Faculty of Engineering SAGE Publication Prize for her paper entitled Point Label Aware Superpixels for Multi-Species Segmentation of Underwater Imagery co-authored with Ross Marchant, Brano Kusy, Frederic Maire and myself.

I was the senior author of the winning contribution (Hausler et al. CVPR2021) at the ECCV 2020 Workshop on Long-Term Visual Localization under Changing Conditions.

The QUT Centre for Robotics award for Emerging Leader is awarded to the individual who provides guidance and inspiration to their peers and has displayed promising leadership skills.

My thesis has been recognised with the Eryl Cadwaladr Davies prize for the best thesis 2017-2018 in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at Imperial.

The QUT Centre for Robotics award for Best Collaborative Paper is awarded to researchers who conducted collaborative research in robotics, as evidenced by this publication (Hausler et al. CVPR2021).

Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has deemed me to be a Distinguished Talent for my “internationally recognised record of exceptional and outstanding achievement”.

I have been awarded the renowned Queen Mary UK Best PhD in Robotics Award 2018. The competition is open to all PhD students in the field of robotics within the UK.

Our Cortacero, Fischer and Demiris 2019 paper won the best poster award at the ICCV Gaze Estimation and Prediction in the Wild workshop.

Our paper presented at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (Choi et al. 2018) won the best poster award at the Samsung AI Forum 2018.

I managed a team of 8 that won 4,000 Euro prize money in the Ferchau Challenge 2.0 themed “IT in everyday lives” by designing a university campus app.

I was awarded the prize for being top of class sponsored by the School of Computer Science and Automation, Ilmenau University of Technology.