Overview
Background
I am the Lock Family Chair in Applied Mechatronics at the University of Queensland Robotics Design Lab. I am passionate about developing novel robots that fuse smart electromechanical design with innovative approaches to solve challenging real-world problems. My specialty is in drone dynamics, stability, control, propulsion and design. My work has been seminal in the development of fundamental technology in modern quadrotors, establishing core technologies in aircraft drive trains and stabilisation. I cofounded the field of aerial manipulation – grasping and interacting with objects in flight – and performed the first outdoor retrieval and delivery of unstructured cargo from a drone. My research explores horizons in drone design, robotic sensors and actuation, and their application to real-world industry and defence. My projects range from my advanced rotor force sensing and velocimetry technology, to bipedal robots that balance with control moment gyroscopes, to drone rotor safety technology, to disposable drones for bushfire monitoring, to rail system monitoring networks for improving Australia's logistics backbone, to robotic surgical training tools, and beyond. I am passionate about using robotics and drones to help people and save lives.
Availability
- Professor Pauline Pounds is:
- Available for supervision
- Media expert
Fields of research
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Engineering, Australian National University
- Doctor of Philosophy, Australian National University
Research interests
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Drone design
How do we make drones that fly longer? Farther? More efficiently? Carry heavier payloads? Quieter? Safer? All of the above?
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IoT Infrastructure sensing
How do we keep essential logistics chain services that Australia relies on (rail, road, structures) safe/robust/working? How do we know when failure occurs far from established infrastructure? How do we practically monitor such systems under energy/bandwidth/compute constraints?
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Bipedal Robot Locomotion
How can we build bipedal robots with the advanced capabilities shown by cutting-edge walking machines, but at a fraction of the cost?
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Mechatronic intelligence
How do we build robots that use the nature of their electromechanical construction to do innately smart things but without a big brain? Can we make drones that passively avoid obstacles and reject gust disturbances? Can we make sensors that connect to very low-level control to allow robots to perform tasks safely without expensive processing?
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Disposable drones
How can we build drones cheaply enough that you could throw them away when you're done with them? How do we deploy them or steer them to their target without expensive systems onboard? How do we make those drones biodegrade or break down to avoid polluting the environment when they're done their mission?
Research impacts
I'm an unusual academic: beyond my publications, my true impact is in the patents I've had awarded and the companies I've spun-off. I have over 30 patents in markets around the world, and helped found seven start-up companies: Olaeris, Drummer, Adivo, Metron, SNOHDY, <unnamed company>, Rapide Fins, and Burl Aerospace. These companies work in fields as diverse as advanced drones, mining sensing, swimmer safety, and urban air mobility.
Works
Search Professor Pauline Pounds’s works on UQ eSpace
2026
Conference Publication
EarthDrone: autonomous geomagnetic depth sounding
Micklethwaite, Steven, Heinson, Graham, Jarvis, Craig, Williamson, Reilly, Pounds, Pauline and Harpley, Dale (2026). EarthDrone: autonomous geomagnetic depth sounding. 2nd ASEG DISCOVER Symposium, Cairns, QLD, Australia, 26-30 October 2026. Clayton South, VIC, Australia: CSIRO. doi: 10.63929/22020586.2026.1.066
2026
Journal Article
Act-Exo-Rehab: an adaptive active exoskeleton for upper limb rehabilitation in real-time environments
Mallampalli, Shyam Sundar, Kansal, Sachin, Pounds, Pauline, Shaukat, Kamran and Alam, Talha Mahboob (2026). Act-Exo-Rehab: an adaptive active exoskeleton for upper limb rehabilitation in real-time environments. Scientific Reports. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-61368-y
2026
Conference Publication
Lightweight depth-based locomotion framework for embedded biped robots using multi-zone ranging sensors
Mittal, Nishit, Sharma, Sahil, Kansal, Sachin and Pounds, Pauline (2026). Lightweight depth-based locomotion framework for embedded biped robots using multi-zone ranging sensors. The 2026 IEEE 35th International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Kitakyushu, Japan, 24–28 August, 2026. Piscataway, NJ, United States: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/ro-man72286.2026.11714600
2026
Journal Article
Design and development of 19-DOF responsive SMA-based exoskeleton for rehabilitation
Kansal, Sachin, Yadav, Udayan, Kumar, Tanmay, Gaira, Devansh, Kansal, Priya, Dhiman, Gaurav and Pounds, Pauline (2026). Design and development of 19-DOF responsive SMA-based exoskeleton for rehabilitation. Scientific Reports. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-56602-6
2026
Conference Publication
Quantization of DRL models for embedded microcontrollers
Bohm, Peter, Pounds, Pauline, Moghadam, Peyman, Chapman, Archie and Chung, Jen Jen (2026). Quantization of DRL models for embedded microcontrollers. 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Vienna, Austria, 1-5 June 2026. IEEE. doi: 10.1109/icra57385.2026.11696305
2025
Conference Publication
Design and development of active exoskeleton for the rehabilitation of amputees in the real-time environment
Mallampalli, Shyam Sundar, Kansal, Sachin and Pounds, Pauline (2025). Design and development of active exoskeleton for the rehabilitation of amputees in the real-time environment. The 7th International Conference on Advances in Robotics (AIR 2025), Jodhpur, India, 2 - 5 July, 2025. New York, NY, United States: ACM. doi: 10.1145/3787370.3787418
2025
Conference Publication
Whisker-like sensors: effective design
Routray, Prasanna Kumar, Subudhi, Debadutta, Pounds, Pauline and Manivannan, M. (2025). Whisker-like sensors: effective design. 2025 13th International Conference on Control, Mechatronics and Automation (ICCMA), Paris, France, 24-26 November 2025. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/ICCMA67641.2025.11369557
2025
Book Chapter
Intelligent swarming narratives: situating ‘noise’ within interacting information fields
Cardier, Beth, Back, Andrew D., Korte, Jessica and Pounds, Pauline (2025). Intelligent swarming narratives: situating ‘noise’ within interacting information fields. Thinking Swarms. (pp. 127-149) edited by Simon Ng, Jason Beaufort Scholz and Hussein A. Abbass. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-82790-7_8
2024
Journal Article
Separating intrinsic and extrinsic responses of whisker sensors using accelerometer
Routray, Prasanna K., Subudhi, Debadutta, Sakcak, Basak, LaValle, Steven M., Pounds, Pauline and Manivannan, M. (2024). Separating intrinsic and extrinsic responses of whisker sensors using accelerometer. IEEE Sensors Journal, 24 (21), 34635-34644. doi: 10.1109/jsen.2024.3452206
2023
Journal Article
Pose-graph attentional graph neural network for lidar place recognition
Ramezani, Milad, Wang, Liang, Knights, Joshua, Li, Zhibin, Pounds, Pauline and Moghadam, Peyman (2023). Pose-graph attentional graph neural network for lidar place recognition. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 9 (2), 1182-1189. doi: 10.1109/lra.2023.3341766
2023
Conference Publication
Feature extraction for effective and efficient deep reinforcement learning on real robotic platforms
Böhm, Peter, Pounds, Pauline and Chapman, Archie C. (2023). Feature extraction for effective and efficient deep reinforcement learning on real robotic platforms. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), London, United Kingdom, 29 May - 2 June 2023. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/icra48891.2023.10160862
2022
Conference Publication
Training directional locomotion for quadrupedal low-cost robotic systems via deep reinforcement learning
Böhm, Peter, Chapman, Archie and Pounds, Pauline (2022). Training directional locomotion for quadrupedal low-cost robotic systems via deep reinforcement learning. Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA 2022) , Brisbane, QLD Australia, 6-8 December 2022. Australasian Robotics and Automation Association.
2022
Conference Publication
Low-cost real-world implementation of the swing-up pendulum for deep reinforcement learning experiments
Böhm, Peter, Pounds, Pauline and Chapman, Archie C. (2022). Low-cost real-world implementation of the swing-up pendulum for deep reinforcement learning experiments. Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA 2022), Brisbane, QLD Australia, 6-8 December 2022. Australasian Robotics and Automation Association.
2022
Conference Publication
Rotor array synergies for aerial modular reconfigurable robots
Moshirian, Benjamin and Pounds, Pauline E.I. (2022). Rotor array synergies for aerial modular reconfigurable robots. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Kyoto, Japan, 23-27 October 2022. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/iros47612.2022.9982034
2022
Conference Publication
Non-blocking asynchronous training for reinforcement learning in real-world environments
Bohm, Peter, Pounds, Pauline and Chapman, Archie C. (2022). Non-blocking asynchronous training for reinforcement learning in real-world environments. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Kyoto, Japan, 23-27 October 2022. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/iros47612.2022.9981333
2022
Other Outputs
Wondrous Machines Opening Event
McWilliam, Janette, Keenan-Jones, Duncan, Gerolemou, Maria, Galluzzo, Gabriele, Boden, Marie, Pounds, Pauline and Mann, Charlotte (2022). Wondrous Machines Opening Event. Brisbane, Australia: The University of Queensland, R.D. Milns Antiquities Museum.
2022
Other Outputs
Wondrous Machines: Hero of Alexandria's Ancient Automata
McWilliam, Janette, Keenan-Jones, Duncan, Pounds, Pauline, Donaldson, James, Mann, Charlotte and Boden, Marie (2022). Wondrous Machines: Hero of Alexandria's Ancient Automata. Brisbane, Australia: The University of Queensland, R.D. Milns Antiquities Museum.
2022
Other Outputs
Force sensing device
Pounds, Pauline, Davis, Edwin and Bruenig, Michael (2022). Force sensing device. AU2017365703B2.
2022
Conference Publication
Towards multidimensional textural perception and classification through whisker
Routray, Prasanna Kumar, Kanade, Aditya Sanjiv, Tiwari, Kshitij, Pounds, Pauline and Muniyandi, Manivannan (2022). Towards multidimensional textural perception and classification through whisker. 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Robotic and Sensors Environments (ROSE), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 14-15 November 2022. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. doi: 10.1109/ROSE56499.2022.9977409
2021
Other Outputs
Gyroscopically stabilised legged robot
Pounds, Pauline Edith Iyan (2021). Gyroscopically stabilised legged robot. 17299213.
Funding
Current funding
Supervision
Availability
- Professor Pauline Pounds is:
- Available for supervision
Looking for a supervisor? Read our advice on how to choose a supervisor.
Available projects
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Guide to applicants
Only email me regarding PhD applications if you are seeking an RTP or UQ international graduate scholarship, or otherwise have your own scholarship/funding. Any funded PhD, post-doc or technician positions will be posted on UQ Jobs, and applications for them should be made there. International interns are only accepted form UQ's partner universities; domestic internships are by arrangement.
Supervision history
Completed supervision
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2018
Doctor Philosophy
Aerodynamic Force Interactions and Measurements for Micro Quadrotors
Principal Advisor
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2024
Doctor Philosophy
Training Robust Deep Reinforcement Learning Policies in the Real World
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Associate Professor Archie Chapman
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2023
Doctor Philosophy
Development of sensory framework using drones and embedded systems specialized for the mining industry
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Associate Professor Mehmet Kizil
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Media
Enquiries
Contact Professor Pauline Pounds directly for media enquiries about:
- automation
- drones
- mechatronics
- robotics
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