About Us

Dr Daniel Fitzgerald heads up the Avionics Research and Development department at Cyber Technology, a UAV R&D and manufacturing company located in Western Australia. Here he leads a team of approximately 10 staff, working on future avionics systems for the company's capable UAV fleet. Prior to this, Daniel was a research scientist within the CSIRO ICT Centre's Autonomous System Laboratory, Aerial Robotics group.   Before joining CSIRO, Daniel was a member of the Airborne Avionics Research Group at the Queensland University of Technology.    Here he completed a Bachelor of Aerospace Avionics Engineering (minor in Systems Engineering) with first class honours in 2002.    As part of this degree he specialized in the later 2 years on UAV platforms, developing many embedded avionics systems and hardware modules.    Particular focus was on a 4 engine experimental VTOL platform.    Following this Daniel completed his PhD entitled: Landing Site Selection for UAV Forced Landings Using Machine Vision.

Current research interests are the UAV forced landing problem, classification techniques using neural networks and object / feature tracking for UAV inspection tasks with an overall focus on the issues involved with integrating UAVs into civilian airspace.    Daniel has been actively involved in the UAV research community for over 9 years. Of particular interest to note is his novel research in the UAV forced landing and UAV emergency landing fields, plus his speciality in avionics and payload development for UAVs.      View Resume
Contact: d.fitzgerald@aerosys.com.au

Other researchers looking at this problem:

• Assoc/Prof Rodney Walker is the director of the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA) , Queensland University of Technology.    Rodney heads up this large research group focussed at solving many of the impediments that face UAVs and their integration into civilian airspace. Some of the research areas include the UAV forced landing problem, aerospace image processing, aerospace risk assessment and fault tolerant control.  Contact: ra.walker@qut.edu.au
• Dr Luis Mejias is a Lecturer at ARCAA - Queensland University of Technology. His research includes investigating computer vision techniques for control and navigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.   Contact: luis.mejiasalvarez@qut.edu.au
• Xi Liu is a PhD researcher at ARCAA in the UAV Forced Landing area. His research title is "A real time site selection system for UAV forced landing". The research plan is to implement a system which will continuously assess the situation during an emergency situation such as engine failure, and taking into account various factors such as wind, fuel, controllability of the aircraft, properties of the landing site candidates, etc, select a optimal site and approach to perform a forced landing. This assessment will be continuous and done in real time to accommodate for changing circumstances.   Contact: xi.liu@qut.edu.au
• Pillar Eng is a PhD researcher at ARCAA in the UAV Forced Landing area. His research title is "Vision-based navigation for autonomous aircraft forced landing". The objective of this research is to investigate the use of vision sensors to guide a descending, unpowered UAV aircraft to a selected "safe" site in unchartered territory, during a forced landing.   Contact: p.eng@qut.edu.au