Overview
Background
- Dr Nguyen is a Lecturer in Robotics at the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland. His research focuses on advancing autonomous robot capabilities in complex, large-scale environments through 1) principled and scalable fusion of complementary sensing modalities with distilled prior knowledge from learning processes for localisation & mapping, and 2) cooperative strategies for multi-robot systems. These research directions address challenging scenarios such as inspection, exploration, and manipulation, where robust localisation & mapping form a solid foundation upon which collaborative schemes can unlock new levels of efficiency and scalability.
- Dr Nguyen was previously a Research Assistant Professor at the Centre for Advanced Robotics Technology Innovation (CARTIN), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), following the Wallenberg–NTU Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship, where he led collaborative research efforts between NTU and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He received his PhD from the School of EEE, NTU, with the best thesis (Doctoral Innovation Award) in 2020. He graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) from Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology in 2014. He is an active member of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS), and is currently an Associate Editor of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) in the area of Localisation & Mapping.
Availability
- Dr Thien-Minh Nguyen is:
- Available for supervision
- Media expert
Fields of research
Qualifications
- Bachelor (Honours) of Automation and Control Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
- Doctor of Philosophy of Control Systems, Robotics and Automation, Nanyang Technological University
Research impacts
Dr Nguyen has been active in developing novel localization, mapping, and sensor fusion methods for robotic applications. He has also developed several high-quality datasets that support the broader research community. During his fellowship at KTH and NTU, Dr Nguyen led a collaborative effort across three universities to develop MCD, a complex, large-scale dataset spanning three distinct campuses in Eurasia. The dataset features three survey-grade prior maps, continuous-time ground truth with centimetre-level accuracy, and tens of thousands of annotated LiDAR point clouds, supporting research in SLAM and semantic segmentation. He also developed CARIC, a lightweight digital twin model designed to benchmark cooperative inspection methods for heterogeneous aerial robot swarms.
Over the years, Dr Nguyen’s work has been published in leading robotics and computer vision venues, including:
- IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO)
- IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L)
- International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)
- IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
- IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
- Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)
Dr Nguyen is a frequent reviewer for T-RO, RA-L, IJRR, ICRA, and IROS. He serves as an Associate Editor for RA-L in the area of Localization and Mapping and has held similar roles for ICRA 2025 and 2026.
Works
Search Professor Thien-Minh Nguyen’s works on UQ eSpace
2024
Conference Publication
Outram: one-shot global localization via triangulated scene graph and global outlier pruning
Yin, Pengyu, Cao, Haozhi, Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Yuan, Shenghai, Zhang, Shuyang, Liu, Kangcheng and Xie, Lihua (2024). Outram: one-shot global localization via triangulated scene graph and global outlier pruning. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Yokohama, Japan, 13-17 May 2024. Washington, DC, United States: IEEE Computer Society. doi: 10.1109/icra57147.2024.10610206
2024
Conference Publication
A cost-effective cooperative exploration and inspection strategy for heterogeneous aerial system
Xu, Xinhang, Cao, Muqing, Yuan, Shenghai, Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh and Xie, Lihua (2024). A cost-effective cooperative exploration and inspection strategy for heterogeneous aerial system. IEEE 18th International Conference on Control and Automation (ICCA), Reykjavik, Iceland, 18-21 June 2024. Piscataway, NJ, United States: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/icca62789.2024.10591842
2024
Conference Publication
MCD: diverse large-scale multi-campus dataset for robot perception
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Yuan, Shenghai, Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Yin, Pengyu, Cao, Haozhi, Xie, Lihua, Wozniak, Maciej, Jensfelt, Patric, Thie, Marko, Ziegenbein, Justin and Blunder, Noel (2024). MCD: diverse large-scale multi-campus dataset for robot perception. IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Seattle, WA, United States, 16-22 June 2024. Washington, DC, United States: IEEE Computer Society. doi: 10.1109/cvpr52733.2024.02105
2023
Journal Article
NEPTUNE: nonentangling trajectory planning for multiple tethered unmanned vehicles
Cao, Muqing, Cao, Kun, Yuan, Shenghai, Nguyen, Thien-Minh and Xie, Lihua (2023). NEPTUNE: nonentangling trajectory planning for multiple tethered unmanned vehicles. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 39 (4), 2786-2804. doi: 10.1109/tro.2023.3264950
2023
Journal Article
SLICT: multi-input multi-scale surfel-based lidar-inertial continuous-time odometry and mapping
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Duberg, Daniel, Jensfelt, Patric, Yuan, Shenghai and Xie, Lihua (2023). SLICT: multi-input multi-scale surfel-based lidar-inertial continuous-time odometry and mapping. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 8 (4), 2102-2109. doi: 10.1109/lra.2023.3246390
2023
Journal Article
SPINS: A structure priors aided inertial navigation system
Lyu, Yang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Liu, Liu, Cao, Muqing, Yuan, Shenghai, Nguyen, Thien Hoang and Xie, Lihua (2023). SPINS: A structure priors aided inertial navigation system. Journal of Field Robotics, 40 (4), 879-900. doi: 10.1002/rob.22161
2022
Journal Article
Flexible and resource-efficient multi-robot collaborative visual-inertial-range localization
Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh and Xie, Lihua (2022). Flexible and resource-efficient multi-robot collaborative visual-inertial-range localization. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 7 (2), 928-935. doi: 10.1109/lra.2021.3136286
2021
Journal Article
Distributed multi-robot sweep coverage for a region with unknown workload distribution
Cao, Muqing, Cao, Kun, Li, Xiuxian, Yuan, Shenghai, Lyu, Yang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh and Xie, Lihua (2021). Distributed multi-robot sweep coverage for a region with unknown workload distribution. Autonomous Intelligent Systems, 1 (1) 13, 1-10. doi: 10.1007/s43684-021-00011-1
2021
Journal Article
NTU VIRAL: A visual-inertial-ranging-lidar dataset, from an aerial vehicle viewpoint
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Yuan, Shenghai, Cao, Muqing, Lyu, Yang, Nguyen, Thien H. and Xie, Lihua (2021). NTU VIRAL: A visual-inertial-ranging-lidar dataset, from an aerial vehicle viewpoint. International Journal of Robotics Research, 41 (3), 270-280. doi: 10.1177/02783649211052312
2021
Journal Article
Graph optimization approach to range-based localization
Fang, Xu, Wang, Chen, Thien-Minh, Nguyen and Xie, Lihua (2021). Graph optimization approach to range-based localization. IEEE Transactions On Systems Man Cybernetics-Systems, 51 (11), 6830-6841. doi: 10.1109/tsmc.2020.2964713
2021
Journal Article
VIRAL-Fusion: a visual-inertial-ranging-lidar sensor fusion approach
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Cao, Muqing, Yuan, Shenghai, Lyu, Yang, Nguyen, Thien Hoang and Xie, Lihua (2021). VIRAL-Fusion: a visual-inertial-ranging-lidar sensor fusion approach. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 38 (2), 958-977. doi: 10.1109/tro.2021.3094157
2021
Journal Article
MILIOM: tightly coupled multi-input Lidar-Inertia Odometry and Mapping
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Yuan, Shenghai, Cao, Muqing, Lyu, Yang, Nguyen, Thien Hoang and Xie, Lihua (2021). MILIOM: tightly coupled multi-input Lidar-Inertia Odometry and Mapping. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6 (3), 5573-5580. doi: 10.1109/lra.2021.3080633
2021
Journal Article
Range-focused fusion of camera-IMU-UWB for accurate and drift-reduced localization
Thien Hoang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Nguyen and Xie, Lihua (2021). Range-focused fusion of camera-IMU-UWB for accurate and drift-reduced localization. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6 (2), 1678-1685. doi: 10.1109/lra.2021.3057838
2021
Conference Publication
LIRO: tightly coupled lidar-inertia-ranging odometry
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Cao, Muqing, Yuan, Shenghai, Lyu, Yang, Nguyen, Thien Hoang and Xie, Lihua (2021). LIRO: tightly coupled lidar-inertia-ranging odometry. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Xi'an, China, 30 May - 5 June 2021. Washington, DC, United States: IEEE Computer Society. doi: 10.1109/icra48506.2021.9560954
2020
Journal Article
Single landmark distance-based navigation
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Qiu, Zhirong, Cao, Muqing, Nguyen, Thien Hoang and Xie, Lihua (2020). Single landmark distance-based navigation. IEEE Transactions On Control Systems Technology, 28 (5), 2021-2028. doi: 10.1109/tcst.2019.2916089
2020
Journal Article
Tightly-coupled ultra-wideband-aided monocular visual SLAM with degenerate anchor configurations
Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh and Xie, Lihua (2020). Tightly-coupled ultra-wideband-aided monocular visual SLAM with degenerate anchor configurations. Autonomous Robots, 44 (8), 1519-1534. doi: 10.1007/s10514-020-09944-7
2020
Journal Article
Persistently excited adaptive relative localization and time-varying formation of robot swarms
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Qiu, Zhirong, Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Cao, Muqing and Xie, Lihua (2020). Persistently excited adaptive relative localization and time-varying formation of robot swarms. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 36 (2), 553-560. doi: 10.1109/tro.2019.2954677
2020
Journal Article
Loosely-coupled ultra-wideband-aided scale correction for monocular visual odometry
Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Cao, Muqing and Xie, Lihua (2020). Loosely-coupled ultra-wideband-aided scale correction for monocular visual odometry. Unmanned Systems, 8 (2), 179-190. doi: 10.1142/s2301385020500119
2020
Conference Publication
Tightly-coupled single-anchor ultra-wideband-aided monocular visual odometry system
Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Nguyen, Thien-Minh and Xie, Lihua (2020). Tightly-coupled single-anchor ultra-wideband-aided monocular visual odometry system. 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Paris, France, 31 May-15 June 2020. Washington, DC, United States: IEEE Computer Society. doi: 10.1109/icra40945.2020.9196794
2019
Journal Article
Distance-based cooperative relative localization for leader-following control of MAVs
Nguyen, Thien-Minh, Qiu, Zhirong, Nguyen, Thien Hoang, Cao, Muqing and Xie, Lihua (2019). Distance-based cooperative relative localization for leader-following control of MAVs. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 4 (4), 3641-3648. doi: 10.1109/lra.2019.2926671
Supervision
Availability
- Dr Thien-Minh Nguyen is:
- Available for supervision
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Media
Enquiries
Contact Dr Thien-Minh Nguyen directly for media enquiries about:
- AI
- Robotics
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