Pauline Pounds

Professor Pauline Pounds is a full Professor at the University of Queensland, jointly affiliated with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Faculty of EAIT) and the Research Centre in Creative Arts and Human Flourishing (Faculty of HASS). She leads a broad robotics research portfolio centred on low-cost, high-performance drones, bipedal locomotion, embodied intelligence, disposable UAVs, exoskeletons and novel sensor systems.

Education:

• Bachelor of Engineering – Australian National University
• Doctor of Philosophy – Australian National University

Research interests span five thematic areas: (1) Drone design for extended range, efficiency and payload; (2) Low-cost bipedal robot locomotion; (3) Embodied intelligence enabling robots to exploit electromechanical dynamics without heavy computation; (4) Disposable, biodegradable UAVs for one-way missions; and (5) Human-augmenting exoskeletons for search-rescue and warehouse tasks.

Her recent publications reveal concentrated effort in deep-reinforcement-learning-based robot control, tactile whisker sensors, lidar-based place recognition, modular aerial robots and real-world RL deployment—trends that emphasise cheap, robust autonomy and novel sensing.

Funding & grants include current CSIRO “Robot-Enabled Autonomous Science” (2019-25), Wellcome Leap “Abdominal Laparoscopic Surgical Models with High-Fidelity Haptics” (2023-24), AuScope “EarthDrone” infrastructure (2023-25), and Advance Queensland / Trusted Autonomous Systems CRC “Integrated Sensors and Control” (2020-24), among others.

PhD supervision: She has graduated four doctoral candidates to date (one as principal advisor, three as associate) and is currently available for new research students.