QUT offers a diverse range of student topics for Honours, Masters and PhD study. Search to find a topic that interests you or propose your own research topic to a prospective QUT supervisor. You may also ask a prospective supervisor to help you identify or refine a research topic.
Found 641 matching student topics
Displaying 133–144 of 641 results
Perception-to-action for collision avoidance using robotic boats
Much like driving cars on our roads, there are rules around driving maritime systems (boats) on waterways regarding where you can drive and how to avoid and behave in potential collision situations.In this project, you'll explore and develop state-of-the-art perception and decision support solutions to allow robotic surface vessels (robot boats) to safely travel complex waterways in and around other human-driven vessels. This will involve diving deep into vision and laser-based sensor processing and fusion algorithms, as well as robust …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Moving to see
This PhD aims to investigate methods for enabling robots to intelligently move their perception systems to improve their view of a target object. Typically, robots capture images of their environment and then decide how to act: grasping an item, move to a location etc... However, sometimes it is necessary for a robot to gather more information in order to make a better decision. How can a robot decide on where to move its sensors (i.e. camera) such that it learns …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Reaching in clutter using force and tactile feedback
Reaching into cluttered and unstructured environments for robotic manipulation is still a largely unsolved problem. Current motion planning strategies for robots optimise for reaching while avoiding collisions within their environment. This is a fundamental problem when interacting with real-world environments as contact is inevitable. This PhD seeks to understand how we can use tactile or other sensory feedback and advanced control methods to exploit the environment for solving robotic tasks that are not achievable with current techniques. This PhD aims …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Search and retrieve with a fully autonomous aerial manipulator
The aim of this PhD is to develop an autonomous multirotor based aerial manipulator that is capable of searching an environment, visually identifying a payload, and performing a pick and-place type maneuver. Full 3D trajectories for the search stage of the flight need to be predefined, with the grasping maneuver generated dynamically once the payload is identified. The manipulator and payload interactions with the multirotor base need to be actively compensated for by the controller to ensure stable flight during …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Terrain traversability
Autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles face a wide range of challenges in identifying and safely traversing terrain across a wide range of environments from mine sites to farms to forests to deserts. We are looking for PhD students interested in developing new techniques for improving terrain traversability detection, using both "traditional" methods as well as modern deep learning-based pipelines. …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Multiple manipulator cooperation and coordination
Multiple manipulators or manipulators and mobile manipulators share a workspace and/or workpiece. How do these robots coexist safely while also completing tasks quickly?Multiple robots assembling a part in a shared workspace.Multiple robots cooperatively assemble a part in a shared workspace.Mobile manipulators and manipulators cooperatively manipulating: a mobile manipulator collects a bottle and brings it to be opened by a manipulator before delivering the bottle.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Submarine manipulation
This project will explore and develop techniques for control and vision in submarines to allow for robust and effective manipulation capabilities - autonomous control of an underwater mobile manipulator in the presence of current and reactionary forces.Underwater maintenance: A submarine mobile manipulator can carry out underwater maintenance and monitoring, for example, dam wall maintenance or ship hull cleaning.Coral reef: A submarine mobile manipulator which can collect samples, remove rubbish, remove invasive species, and/or monitor.Alternatively, these same underlying ideas could be …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Manipulation in nature
Grasping/manipulating in rainforest, farmland or shrubland environments pose a new challenge for existing techniques. This project will investigate how they manipulate where there may be tree branches, foliage, or other natural obstacles in the way.This project would explore existing and emerging techniques such as optimisation, neural radiance fields (NeRFs), deep learning and reinforcement learning and equipment, including depth cameras, LiDAR, event cameras, and light field cameras.Does the manipulator have to re-arrange the environment to manipulate the point of interest?Or does …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Space robotics: Scene understanding for Lunar/Mars Rover
The QUT Centre for Robotics is working with the Australian Space Agency on the newly established Australian space program, in which robots will play a key role. There are multiple PhD projects available to work on different aspect of developing a new Lunar Rover (and later Mars Rover) and in particular its intelligence and autonomy. Future rovers will not only need to conduct exploration and science missions as famous rovers such as NASA's Curiosity or Perseverance are doing right now …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Off-road mobile manipulation
This project will investigate how mobile manipulators can operate and interact in natural environments like rainforests, grassland, shrubland, farmland, or desert ecosystems. This research project would explore how to control a continuous track or quadruped mobile manipulator in outdoor natural environments with many obstacles and constraints.Is holistic mobile manipulation possible with uneven terrain? As a mobile robot traverses rough ground, the terrain difference will cause feedback in the end-effector position.The mobile manipulator must overcome obstacle challenges, i.e. traverse around a …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Cobot contact tasks through multi-sensory deep learning
Contact tasks like grinding, polishing and assembly require a robot to physically interact with both rigid and flexible objects. Current methods relying on force control have difficulty achieving consistent finishing results and lack robustness in dealing with non-linear dynamics inherent in how the material is handled. This project will take a new approach that detects and diagnoses the dynamical process through deep learning fusion of multi-sensory data, including force/tactile, visual, thermal, sound, and acoustic emission; and generate corrective process parameters …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Robotic maintenance of equipment
Think about the problem of maintaining equipment at remote work sites. How can robotic technology help human maintenance staff to work more safely and productively?
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
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