Financial Performance

Our 2017 Income and Expenditure Report summarises the Centre’s financial performance for the calendar year.

The majority of our expenditure is on salaries and staff expenses, with smaller amounts allocated to equipment purchases, travel and professional development and operating expenses.

The Centre accumulated a significant carry-forward of funds in 2014 due to delays in establishing the legal agreements governing the operation of the Centre which prevented us from recruiting. Carry-forward continued into 2015 and 2016 but we were actively spending both income and carry forward in 2017. The carry-forward is fully allocated in our budget and we project it to be fully expended with annual expenditure forecast to exceed “new” annual income for the remainder of the Centre’s life to ensure funds will be fully expended. New income is approximately $3.7million, in cash, that we are contracted to receive each year until 2021.

The Centre Executive determines budget allocations based on the Centre’s original bid submission, with all nodes contributing to operating expenses. We have centralised some expenditure at QUT, with budgets across the life of the Centre developed by the mutual consent of all members of the Executive.

We have created a pool of untied cash to support strategic initiatives by using the (not guaranteed) indexation funds sent to the Administering Organisation by the ARC. These funds will be used in 2018 to support the Centre’s new Gender Equity Plan by funding 50% of the costs of female postdoctoral research fellows. The initiative is designed to address some of the structural barriers preventing female participation in robotics and computer vision.

Summary Contributions from all Centre Partners

Each year, our administrative and collaborative partner organisations contribute $AU980,000 as cash, a total of more than $AU6.86 million over the life of the Centre. Almost $AU997,000 is contributed as in-kind, or $AU6.98 million over the life of the Centre.

Together, our international partner organisations contribute $AU139,000 per annum of in-kind, totalling $AU973,000 over the Centre’s seven-year lifespan.

The Centre’s collaborating Partners, where most of our researchers are based, also provide access to a broad range of robotic vision equipment, which is conservatively valued at over $AU1 million per annum ($7 million in total, over the life of the Centre). A summary of the total cash and in-kind contributions from our Partners over the Centre’s seven-year term is shown on p. 94. All figures quoted are in Australian dollars.