Professor Stefan Williams
School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering
Australian Centre for Field Robotics
Professor Stefan Williams' research in the field of marine robotics is enhancing our ability to document, understand and thus protect our deep-water marine habitats. His current focus is on the development and deployment of autonomous underwater vehicles whose visual and acoustic sensors can gather data for the purpose of generating high-resolution 3D models of underwater marine environments.
"My research focuses mainly on the development of techniques for high-resolution mapping of marine habitats. This work uses a combination of visual and acoustic sensors to generate detailed, three-dimensional models of underwater environments using data collected by autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).
"These AUV surveys are designed to collect high-resolution stereo imagery and oceanographic data to support studies in the fields of engineering science, ecology, biology, geoscience, archaeology and industrial applications.
"My recent work has focused on generating high-fidelity, three-dimensional models of the seafloor; precisely matching survey locations across years to allow scientists to understand variability in these environments; and identifying patterns in the data that facilitate automated classification of the resulting image sets.
"Insights gained from this work have been used, for example, to better understand the recovery of coral reefs from bleaching and cyclones, as well as the behaviour of temperate reef organisms such as fish, urchins and lobsters.
"My colleagues and I conduct these AUV-based surveys around Australia and internationally. We are currently undertaking arguably the world's first benthic (sea-floor) observing program to make extensive use of AUVs for the purpose of monitoring benthic habitats on such a large scale.
"I am particularly passionate about this area of research because it allows me to interact with such a dynamic group of peers in helping to document and understand marine habitats. Seeing our robotic systems and sensor systems being deployed on sensitive coral reefs, deep-water hydrothermal vent systems and temperate kelp forests is immensely satisfying, and is helping to change our understanding of the marine environment."
MTRX5700 - Experimental Robotics
IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
IEEE Oceanographic Engineering Society
2020 - VC Award for Outstanding Teaching and Research
2019 - Payne Scott Professorial Distinction, University of Sydney
2018 - Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Oceanographic Engineering Society
Project title | Research student |
---|---|
Underwater Situational Awareness | Riley BEHLEVANAS |
Automation and robust control on Surgical Robots | Jing CHENG |
Enhancing Marine Habitat Observations with Machine Learning | Heather DOIG |
Improving Vision-based Control using Robust Neural Networks | Raghav MISHRA |
Publications
Book Chapters
- Bewley, M., Nourani-Vatani, N., Rao, D., Douillard, B., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2015). Hierarchical Classification in AUV Imagery. In Luis Mejias, Peter Corke, Jonathan Roberts (Eds.), Field and Service Robotics: Results of the 9th International Conference, (pp. 3-16). Cham: Springer. [More Information]
- Nourani-Vatani, N., Lopez-Sastre, R., Williams, S. (2015). Structured Output Prediction with Hierarchical Loss Functions for Seafloor Imagery Taxonomic Categorization. In Roberto Paredes, Jaime S. Cardoso, Xose M. Pardo (Eds.), Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis, (pp. 173-183). Cham: Springer. [More Information]
- Beaman, R., Bridge, T., Done, T., Webster, J., Williams, S., Pizarro, O. (2012). Habitats and Benthos at Hydrographers Passage, Great Barrier Reef, Australia. In Peter T. Harris, Elaine K. Baker (Eds.), Seafloor Geomorphology as Benthic Habitat: GeoHAB Atlas of Seafloor Geomorphic Features and Benthic Habitats, (pp. 425-434). Waltham, USA: Elsevier. [More Information]
Journals
- Yamada, T., Massot-Campos, M., Prugel-Bennett, A., Pizarro, O., Williams, S., Thornton, B. (2023). Guiding Labelling Effort for Efficient Learning With Georeferenced Images. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 45(1), 593-607. [More Information]
- Marais, W., Williams, S., Pizarro, O. (2021). Anisotropic Disturbance Rejection for Kinematically Redundant Systems with Applications on an UVMS. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6(4), 7017-7024. [More Information]
- Yamada, T., Massot-Campos, M., Prugel-Bennett, A., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Thornton, B. (2021). Leveraging Metadata in Representation Learning with Georeferenced Seafloor Imagery. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6(4), 7815-7822. [More Information]
Conferences
- Marais, W., Williams, S., Pizarro, O. (2022). Go With the Flow: Energy Minimising Periodic Trajectories for UVMS. Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
- Doig, H., Pizarro, O., Wu, H., Williams, S. (2020). Adversarial and generative autoencoders for unsupervised clustering of benthic images. 2020 Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA 2020, Brisbane: Australasian Robotics and Automation Association.
- Boutros, N., Monk, J., Pizarro, O., Williams, S., Barrett, N. (2020). Automated Observation and Prediction of Fine-Scale Spatial Distributions of Benthic Fauna. Ocean Sciences Meeting, Washington: AGU.
Visual Art
- Velonaki, M., Rye, D., Scheding, S., Williams, S. (2004). Fish-Bird Circle B-Movement C. In: Unnatural Selection. Ars Electronica 2004: Timeshift - The World in 25 Years, Linz, Austria.
Magazine / Newspaper Articles
- Webster, J., Beaman, R., Bridge, T., Davies, P., Byrne, M., Williams, S., Manning, P., Pizarro, O., Thomas, A., Tudhope, S., Thornborough, K., Woolsey, E. (2008). From Corals to Canyons: The Great Barrier Reef Margin. EOS Transactions American Geophysical Union, 89,24.
Other
- Woolsey, E., Byrne, M., Webster, J., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Thornborough, K., Davies, P., Beaman, R., Bridge, T. (2012), Ophiopsila pantherina beds on subaqueous dunes off the Great Barrier Reef.
2023
- Yamada, T., Massot-Campos, M., Prugel-Bennett, A., Pizarro, O., Williams, S., Thornton, B. (2023). Guiding Labelling Effort for Efficient Learning With Georeferenced Images. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 45(1), 593-607. [More Information]
2022
- Marais, W., Williams, S., Pizarro, O. (2022). Go With the Flow: Energy Minimising Periodic Trajectories for UVMS. Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
2021
- Marais, W., Williams, S., Pizarro, O. (2021). Anisotropic Disturbance Rejection for Kinematically Redundant Systems with Applications on an UVMS. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6(4), 7017-7024. [More Information]
- Yamada, T., Massot-Campos, M., Prugel-Bennett, A., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Thornton, B. (2021). Leveraging Metadata in Representation Learning with Georeferenced Seafloor Imagery. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 6(4), 7815-7822. [More Information]
2020
- Torres-Pulliza, D., Dornelas, M., Pizarro, O., Bewley, M., Blowes, S., Boutros, N., Brambilla, V., Chase, T., Frank, G., Friedman, A., Williams, S., et al (2020). A geometric basis for surface habitat complexity and biodiversity. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 4(11), 1495-1501. [More Information]
- Doig, H., Pizarro, O., Wu, H., Williams, S. (2020). Adversarial and generative autoencoders for unsupervised clustering of benthic images. 2020 Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA 2020, Brisbane: Australasian Robotics and Automation Association.
- Boutros, N., Monk, J., Pizarro, O., Williams, S., Barrett, N. (2020). Automated Observation and Prediction of Fine-Scale Spatial Distributions of Benthic Fauna. Ocean Sciences Meeting, Washington: AGU.
2019
- Ferguson, E., Williams, S., Jin, C. (2019). Convolutional neural network for single-sensor acoustic localization of a transiting broadband source in very shallow water. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 146(6), 4687-4698. [More Information]
- Ferguson, E., Williams, S., Jin, C. (2019). Improved Multipath Time Delay Estimation Using Cepstrum Subtraction. 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2019), Piscataway: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Dornelas, M., Madin, E., Bunce, M., DiBattista, J., Johnson, M., Madin, J., Magurran, A., McGill, B., Pettorelli, N., Pizarro, O., Williams, S., et al (2019). Towards a macroscope: Leveraging technology to transform the breadth, scale and resolution of macroecological data. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 28(12), 1937-1948. [More Information]
2018
- Dornelas, M., Antao, L., Moyes, F., Bates, A., Magurran, A., Adam, D., Akhmetzhanova, A., Appeltans, W., Arcos, J., Pizarro, O., Williams, S., et al (2018). BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 27(7), 760-786. [More Information]
- Toohey, L., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2018). Bounding Drift in Cooperative Localisation Through the Sharing of Local Loop Closures. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2018), Brisbane: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Bongiorno, D., Bryson, M., Bridge, T., Dansereau, D., Williams, S. (2018). Coregistered Hyperspectral and Stereo Image Seafloor Mapping from an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. Journal of Field Robotics, 35(3), 312-329. [More Information]
2017
- Perez, J., Sanz, P., Bryson, M., Williams, S. (2017). A benchmarking study on single image dehazing techniques for underwater autonomous vehicles. OCEANS 2017, Aberdeen: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Pizarro, O., Friedman, A., Bryson, M., Williams, S., Madin, J. (2017). A simple, fast, and repeatable survey method for underwater visual 3D benthic mapping and monitoring. Ecology and Evolution, 7, 1770-1782. [More Information]
- Wilson, T., Williams, S. (2017). Active Sample Selection in Scalar Fields Exhibiting Non-Stationary Noise with Parametric Heteroscedastic Gaussian Process Regression. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2017), Piscataway: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
2016
- Thornton, B., Bodenmann, A., Pizarro, O., Williams, S., Friedman, A., Nakajima, R., Takai, K., Motoki, K., Watsuji, T., Hirayama, H., et al (2016). Biometric assessment of deep-sea vent megabenthic communities using multi-resolution 3D image reconstructions. Deep-Sea Research Part I, 116, 200-219. [More Information]
- Ferguson, E., Ramakrishnan, R., Williams, S., Jin, C. (2016). Deep Learning Approach to Passive Monitoring of the Underwater Acoustic Environment. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140(4), 3351-3351. [More Information]
- Bryson, M., Duce, S., Harris, D., Webster, J., Thompson, A., Vila-Concejo, A., Williams, S. (2016). Geomorphic changes of a coral shingle cay measured using Kite Aerial Photography. Geomorphology, 270, 1-8. [More Information]
2015
- Bewley, M., Friedman, A., Ferrari, R., Hill, N., Hovey, R., Barrett, N., Pizarro, O., Figueira, W., Meyer, L., Babcock, R., Byrne, M., Williams, S., et al (2015). Australian sea-floor survey data, with images and expert annotations. Scientific Data, 2, 1-12. [More Information]
- Johnson-Roberson, M., Bryson, M., Douillard, B., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2015). Discovering salient regions on 3D photo-textured maps: Crowdsourcing interaction data from multitouch smartphones and tablets. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 131, 28-41. [More Information]
- Steinberg, D., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2015). Hierarchical Bayesian models for unsupervised scene understanding. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 131, 128-144. [More Information]
2014
- Johnson-Roberson, M., Bryson, M., Douillard, B., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2014). Crowdsourced Saliency for Mining Robotically Gathered 3D Maps Using Multitouch Interaction on Smartphones and Tablets. 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Piscataway: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Rigby, P., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2014). Estimation of Clustering Parameters Using Gaussian Process Regression. PloS One, 9(11), 1-13. [More Information]
- Dansereau, D., Wood, D., Montabone, S., Williams, S. (2014). Exploiting parallax in panoramic capture to construct light fields. Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation 2014, Melbourne, VIC: University of Melbourne.
2013
- Nourani-Vatani, N., De Deuge, M., Douillard, B., Williams, S. (2013). An analysis of monochrome conversions and normalizations on the Local Binary Patterns texture descriptors. 14th IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops 2013, Sydney, Australia: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Bryson, M., Johnson-Roberson, M., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2013). Automated registration for multi-year robotic surveys of marine benthic habitats. 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Tokyo, Japan: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Bongiorno, D., Fairley, A., Bryson, M., Williams, S. (2013). Automatic spectrometer/RGB camera spatial calibration. 2013 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
2012
- Bewley, M., Douillard, B., Nourani-Vatani, N., Friedman, A., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2012). Automated species detection: An experimental approach to kelp detection from sea-floor AUV images. Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA) 2012, Wellington, New Zealand: Australian Robotics and Automation Association (ARAA).
- Barkby, S., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Jakuba, M. (2012). Bathymetric particle filter SLAM using trajectory maps. International Journal of Robotics Research, 31(12), 1409-1430. [More Information]
- Bender, A., Williams, S., Pizarro, O. (2012). Classification with Probabilistic Targets. 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
2011
- Steinberg, D., Friedman, A., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2011). A Bayesian Nonparametric Approach to Clustering Data from Underwater Robotic Surveys. 15th International Symposium on Robotics Research ISRR 2011.
- Barkby, S., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Jakuba, M. (2011). A Featureless Approach to Efficient Bathymetric SLAM Using Distributed Particle Mapping. Journal of Field Robotics, 28(1), 19-39. [More Information]
- Friedman, A., Steinberg, D., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2011). Active learning using a Variational Dirichlet Process model for pre-clustering and classification of underwater stereo imagery. 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Piscataway, NJ, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
2010
- Singh, S., Fitch, R., Williams, S. (2010). A research-driven approach to undergraduate robotics education. Computers in Education Journal, 1(4), 21-27.
- Bender, A., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Jakuba, M. (2010). Adaptive Exploration Of Benthic Habitats Using Gaussian Processes. OCEANS 2010 MTS/IEEE SEATTLE Conference & Exhibition, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
- Steinberg, D., Bender, A., Friedman, A., Jakuba, M., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2010). Analysis of propulsion methods for long-range AUVs. Marine Technology Society Journal, 44(2), 46-55. [More Information]
2009
- Barkby, S., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Jakuba, M. (2009). An efficient approach to bathymetric SLAM. 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Jakuba, M., Barrett, N. (2009). AUV Benthic Habitat Mapping in South Eastern Tasmania. 7th International Conference on Field and Service Robotics (FSR09), Camridge, MA. USA: Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. [More Information]
- Barkby, S., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Jakuba, M. (2009). Incorporating prior maps with bathymetric distributed particle SLAM for improved AUV navigation and mapping. Oceans '09 MTS/IEEE Biloxi: Ocean Technology for Our Future: Global and Local Challenges, Columbia, MD, USA: Marine Technology Society.
2008
- Bender, A., Steinberg, D., Friedman, A., Williams, S. (2008). Analysis of an Autonomous Underwater Glider. Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation 2008, Canberra, Australia: Australian Robotics and Automation Association (ARAA).
- Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Johnson-Roberson, M., Mahon, I., Webster, J. (2008). AUV-assisted surveying of Relic Reef sites. 2008 MTS/IEEE Oceans Conference.
- Mahon, I., Williams, S., Pizarro, O., Johnson-Roberson, M. (2008). Efficient View-Based SLAM Using Visual Loop Closures. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 24(5), 1002-1014. [More Information]
2007
- Rigby, P., Pizarro, O., Williams, S. (2007). Improved AUV navigation through multi-sensor data fusion: A combined Doppler and acoustic navigation system can provide drift-free geo-referenced positioning. Sea Technology, 48(3), 15-19.
- Brooks, A., Kaupp, T., Makarenko, A., Williams, S., Oreback, A. (2007). Orca: A component model and repository. In Prof. Davide Brugali (Eds.), Software Engineering for Experimental Robotics, (pp. 231-251). Berlin, Germany: Springer. [More Information]
2006
- Williams, S., Mahon, I. (2006). A Terrain-Aided Tracking Algorithm for Marine Systems. In S.YUTA; H ASAMA; S THRUN; E PRASSLER; T TSUBUCHI (Eds.), Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics - Field and Service Robotics: Recent Advances in Research and applications, (pp. 93-102). Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. [More Information]
- Brooks, A., Makarenko, A., Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2006). Parametric POMDPs for planning in continuous state spaces. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 54(11), 887-897. [More Information]
- Johnson-Roberson, M., Sureshkumar, S., Williams, S. (2006). Segmentation and Classification of Coral for Oceanographic Surveys: A Semi-Supervised Machine Learning Approach. Oceans'06 IEEE Asia Pacific, Piscataway, NJ: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
2005
- Kaupp, T., Makarenko, A., Ramos, F., Upcroft, B., Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2005). Adaptive Human Sensor Model in Sensor Networks. 8th International Conference on Information Fusion (Fusion 2005), United States of America: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
- Rigby, P., Williams, S. (2005). Adaptive Sensing for Localisation of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. 2005 Australiasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA), Sydney, Australia: Australian Robotics and Automation Association (ARAA).
- Rye, D., Velonaki, M., Williams, S., Scheding, S. (2005). Fish-Bird: Human-Robot Interaction in a Contemporary Arts Setting. 2005 Australiasian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA), Sydney, Australia: Australian Robotics and Automation Association (ARAA).
2004
- Makarenko, A., Brooks, A., Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H., Grocholsky, B. (2004). A Decentralized Architecture For Active Sensor Networks. 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA), Piscataway, N.J, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
- Brooks, A., Williams, S., Makarenko, A. (2004). Automatic Online Localization Of Nodes In An Active Sensor Network. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation ICRA 2004, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [More Information]
- Williams, S., Mahon, I. (2004). Design Of An Unmanned Underwater Vehicle For Reef Surveying. 3rd IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems, Online: Elsevier.
2003
- Williams, S. (2003). A terrain-aided tracking algorithm for marine systems. [More Information]
- Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H., Dissanayake, G. (2003). Constrained Initialization of the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Algorithm. International Journal of Robotics Research, 22(7-8), 541-564.
- Makarenko, A., Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2003). Decentralized certainty grid maps. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems - IROS, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
2002
- Rosenblatt, J., Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2002). A behavior-based architecture for autonomous underwater exploration. Information Sciences, 145(1-2), 69-87. [More Information]
- Williams, S., Durrant-Whyte, H., Dissanayake, G. (2002). An efficient approach to the simultaneous localisation and mapping problem. IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, 2002, Piscataway NJ USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
- Makarenko, A., Williams, S., Bourgault, F., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2002). An experiment in integrated exploration. IROS 2002, Piscataway NJ, USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
2001
- Williams, S., Newman, P., Rosenblatt, J., Dissanayake, G., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2001). Autonomous underwater navigation and control. Robotica, 19, 481-496. [More Information]
- Williams, S., Dissanayake, G., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2001). Constrained initialisation of the simultaneous localisation and mapping algorithm. 3rd International Conference on Field and Service Robotics, Helsinki: UNSW Australian Defence Force Academy.
- Williams, S., Dissanayake, G., Durrant-Whyte, H. (2001). Efficient simultaneous localisation and mapping using local submaps. ACRA 2001: Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation. Australian Robotics and Automation Association (ARAA).
Selected Grants
2024
- Visual methods for advanced automation of underwater manipulation, Ila V, Liu T, Williams S, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Linkage Projects (LP)
- Self-supervised feature learning for rapid processing of marine imagery, Williams S, Liu T, Marzinelli E, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Linkage Projects (LP)
- A sovereign Autonomous Underwater Vehicle capability, Toohey L, Williams S, Shields J, Billings G, Allen T, Parker K, Department of Education and Training (Federal)/Australias Economic Accelerator Seed Program
2023
- Project 7: Thales UWS - ARIAM Hub: ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hubs (ITRH), Williams S, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Industrial Transformation Research Hubs (ITRH)
- Project 4: Reach Robotics, Integrated high-fidelity 3D reconstruction and manipulation in marine environments (WIP), Williams S, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Industrial Transformation Research Hubs (ITRH)
In the media
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Prestigious title awarded for marine robotics[14-Mar-19]
UnIversity of Sydney
Professor Stefan Williams has been recognised by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for research excellence in the field of oceanographic survey and marine robotics.More..
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Diving for DNA: 2000-year-old skeleton discovered on Antikythera shipwreck[29-Sept-16]
University of Sydney
More than 15,000 kilometers away from the University of Sydney, near the tiny island of Antikythera Greece, archaeologists explored the depths of the Mediterranean Sea and uncovered skeleton bones.More..