Professor John Billingsley
MA (Cambridge) PhD (Cambridge)
CEng FIET SenMIEEE

Faculty of Engineering and Surveying
University of Southern Queensland
Toowoomba, QLD Australia

General Information

John Billingsley graduated in mathematics and in electrical engineering from Cambridge University in 1960. After four years working in the aircraft industry on autopilot design, he returned to Cambridge and gained a PhD in control theory in 1968.
He led research teams in Cambridge University developing early 'mechatronic' systems including a laser phototypesetting system which was the precursor of the laser printer and the 'acoustic telescope' which enabled sound source distributions to be visualised (this was used in the development of jet engines with reduced noise.)
He moved to Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1976, where he founded the Robotics Research Group. The results of the Walking Robot unit led to the foundation of Portech Ltd, which for many years supplied systems to the nuclear industry for inspection and repair of containment vessels. Other units in the Robotics group have substantial funding for research in quality control and in the integration of manufacturing systems with the aid of transputers.
In April 1992 he took up a Chair of Engineering at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba. His primary concern is mechatronics research and he is Director of Technology Research of the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture.
Three prototypes of new wall-climbing robots have been completed at USQ, while research on a fourth included development of a novel proportional pneumatic valve. Robug 4 has been acquired for further research into legged robots.
A substantial project in the NCEA received Cotton Research funding and concerned the guidance of a tractor by machine vision for very accurate following of rows of crop. Prototypes of the system went on trial on farms in Queensland, New South Wales and the USA for several years. In production form, it was marketed (without great success) by a major US tractor manufacturer, CASE IH. Parts of the system, however, became the successful basis for interfaces between GPS guidance systems and the automatic steering of the tractor. Novel techniques are bein exploited in a further commercial project. Other computer-vision projects have included an automatic system for the grading of broccoli heads, systems for discriminating between animal species for controlling access to water, systems for precision counting and location of macadamia nuts for varietal trials and several other systems for assessing produce quality.
He has taken a close interest in the presentation of engineering challenges to young engineers over many years. He has promoted the Micromouse robot maze contest around the world since 1980. With Mark Phythian he simplified the Micromouse contest to become the Bilby contest, appealing to eleventh and twelfth year school contestants.
He has contrived machines which have been exhibited in the 'Palais de la Decouverte' in Paris, in the 'Exploratorium' at San Fransisco and in the Institue of Contemporary Arts in London, hands-on experiments to stimulate an interest in control. Several robots resulting from projects with which he was associated are now on show in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Previous (lapsed) memberships include Fellow of the Institute of Acoustics and Fellow of Engineers Australia, with the status of Chartered Professional Engineer.
He was awarded an Erskine Fellowship by the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he spent two months February and March 2003.
In December 2006 he received an achievement medal from the Institution of Engineering and Technology, London.

2010 Teaching

[MEC 3905] Mechatronics Practice Unit
[MEC 4406] Robotics and Machine Vision
[ENG 8001] Research Methodology

Research Interests

Control Theory and Practical Systems
Robotics
Mechatronics

CV with publications. (Edited 2010)

(The last few years' crop includes several conference publications, journal publications and a book or three.
Check out www.essmech.com and www.esscont.com

Another book was published in May 2006, a further edited book was published in 2008.
Yet another book was published late in 2009.
Editorial board of a journal. Meanwhile there is some light reading below)

Professorial Lecture, McGregor College, March 1998
Vision and mechatronic applications at the NCEA
A mechatronic cynic's view of control theory
An engineer's lament
A lighthearted update of Steele Rudd's "Dad and Dave"

Other items of interest:

The thirteenth international conferrence (2006) on Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice was held in Toowoomba - click on a link below to see some details of this and earlier conferences.
The 2007 conference was in Xiamen, southern China.
The 2008 conference was in Auckland, new Zealand.
The 2009 conference in Brunei was deferred to 2010. A 2010 conference was combined as a stream of the Southern Engineering Conference.
The 2011 conference was to be held in Abu Dhabi, but was transferred to CSIRO Pullenvale, near Brisbane.
The 2012 conference will be held in Auckland, NZ, in late November - see www.m2vip.com

I have also been developing Jollies - Javascript On-Line Learning Interactive Environment for Simulation.
Take a look at http://www.jollies.com - but beware of other sites with Jollies in the name!