Dr. Thierry Peynot is Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Chief Investigator of the QUT Centre for Robotics where he leads the Space Robotics and Mining Robotics activities. He is also Chief Investigator of the Australian Robotic Inspection and Asset Management (ARIAM) ARC Research Hub, and of the ARC Training Centre in Automated Vehicles in Rural and Remote Regions (AVR3). 

He has led multiple research programs funded by government, research institutions and industry, including mining (e.g. Caterpillar, Komatsu, Mining3), Defence (e.g. BAE Systems, Rheinmetall) and Space (e.g. with Boeing, ELO2 and CSIRO), developing robust perception technology for robots and autonomous vehicles that can function despite adverse environmental conditions, and has set up the largest covered lunar testbed facility in Australia: QUT’s Yandiwanba.  

Prior to joining QUT he was research fellow at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), The University of Sydney, worked at NASA Ames and obtained his PhD from LAAS/CNRS, the University of Toulouse in France. 

Thierry is a former associate editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), served as local arrangement chair for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2018 in Brisbane, chair of the Robotics and Automation & Control Systems Joint Society, IEEE Queensland section, and General Chair of the 2025 Australian School of Robotic Systems (AuSRoS). 

Thierry’s research interests include off-road ground vehicle autonomy (esp. planetary rovers), resilient perception, sensor data fusion (esp. multiple sensor modalities), terrain traversability estimation, GPS-denied localisation and mapping.