What’s the Problem? Challenges in Multirotor Research
Dr. Pauline Pounds
Professor of Mechatronics – University of Queensland
President of Australian Robotics and Automation Association
Abstract
Ever since their inception, quadrotors and multirotors have posed interesting technical challenges for research engineers across diverse domains such as control theory, aerodynamics, power systems, and more. Today, these platforms have migrated from laboratory curiosity to invaluable tool, but there is still work to be done. This talk looks at the challenges of making multirotors fly, problems solved and problems still to come. How do we squeeze the most of out small rotorcraft, and where could similar thinking take us in the future?
Biography of the speaker
Professor Pauline Pounds is Professor of Mechatronics at the University of Queensland. She is an aerial robotics researcher, engineer, and serial entrepreneur. She completed her undergraduate in systems engineering in 2002 and PhD in robotics at the Australian National University in 2008. She completed a post-doc at Yale in 2011 before taking a faculty position at UQ in 2012. She specialises in unmanned aerial vehicle dynamics, propulsion, stability and control, with recent advances in legged locomotion and sensor module technology. She is a 2013 ARC DECRA Fellow, 2020 TASDCRC Fellow, 2015 Queensland Science Young Tall Poppy winner, and 2020 ATSE Batterham Medal winner. She is President of the Australian Robotics and Automation Association and was Senior Editor for RAS IEEE Robotics and Automation-Letters in Aerial and Field Robotics 2021-2023. She has six start-up companies; over 30 patents licensed to industry; and an Erdos Number of 5. She is a founding member of Marko’s Legacy, a charitable organisation supporting the medical costs of people in need.