Hugh Durrant-Whyte

Hugh Durrant-Whyte is a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney, recognized internationally for his foundational contributions to robotics and machine learning. He earned a BSc (Eng) from the University of London, an MSE, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His academic interests focus on field robotics, developing autonomous outdoor robots for applications in agriculture, conservation, mining, and defence, operating in air, underwater, or on ground environments. Durrant-Whyte pioneered nonlinear filtering techniques that enabled simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms, now integral to self-driving cars, drones, and autonomous underwater vehicles. Among his key publications are "A new method for the nonlinear transformation of means and covariances in filters and estimators" with S. Julier and J. Uhlmann (1995), "Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM): Part I" and "Part II" with T. Bailey (2006), and "Inertial navigation systems for mobile robots" with B. Barshan (1995). He has published over 300 research papers and supervised more than 70 PhD students.

Appointed Professor of Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney in 1995, he directed the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems from 1999 to 2010. He then served as CEO of National ICT Australia (NICTA) from 2010 to 2014, returned to the University of Sydney as an ARC Federation Fellow from 2014 to 2016, acted as Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Ministry of Defence from 2016 to 2018, and currently holds the position of NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer. His honors include Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS, 2010), Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), IEEE Fellow (FIEEE), and Honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia (HonFIEAus). Major awards encompass NSW Scientist of the Year (2010), Engineers Australia NSW Engineer of the Year (2008), and multiple IEEE Best Paper prizes. He delivered a TEDxSydney public lecture titled "What is a robot?" in 2012.

Professional Email: hugh.durrantwhyte@sydney.edu.au