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About

Brett Wood is a leading robotics researcher specializing in heterogeneous multi-robot systems, autonomous exploration, and human-robot teaming for extreme environments. His most impactful work centers on the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, where he was a key member of Team CSIRO Data61—a collaboration between CSIRO, Emesent, and Georgia Tech that tied for the top score. Wood’s contributions demonstrated how diverse ground and aerial platforms with unified perception and autonomy can navigate dangerous, unstructured underground spaces. His highly cited 2022 paper (97 citations) details the team’s approach to balancing autonomy with human interaction, while his 2018 work on Magneto (66 citations) introduced a novel multi-limbed climbing robot with compliant magnetic feet, capable of deforming its body to squeeze through tight spaces—a breakthrough for industrial inspection. More recently, Wood has explored real-world search and rescue missions, comparing human-robot team performance to full autonomy across 16 missions. His research has profound implications for disaster response, mining, and infrastructure inspection, pushing the boundaries of what robotic teams can achieve in the most challenging environments on Earth.