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 44 matching student topics
Displaying 1–12 of 44 results
Augmented reality (AR) applications for robotics
Augmented reality (AR), or mixed reality, has become a mature technology with many possible practical applications in manufacturing, retail, navigation and entertainment.We're interested in using AR to support human-robot interaction. In this project, you'll investigate how a human can use AR to better understand how a robot perceives the world and to understand the robot's intentions.
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Robotics
Interactive (and collaborative) robot programming using language (Project 2.5 - Joint CSIRO/ACC)
Programming robots to carry out desired tasks is difficult and time-consuming. This PhD project focuses on collaborative and instructional dialogue agents to help human operators program robot tasks.In this collaborative scenario, a human operator converses with an AI agent to explain the steps that are to be performed, using high-level references and abstractions that make sense to the human, as opposed to simple verbal instructions corresponding to rudimentary robot movements. The AI agent must interpret the high-level instructions and translate …
- Study level
- PhD
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
-
Design Lab
Robot learning for navigation, interaction, and complex tasks
How can robots best learn to navigate in challenging environments and execute complex tasks, such as tidying up an apartment or assist humans in their everyday domestic chores?Often, hand-written architectures are based on complicated state machines that become intractable to design and maintain with growing task complexity. I am interested in developing learning-based approaches that are effective and efficient and scale better to complicated tasks.Especially learning based on semantic information (such as extracted by the research in semantic SLAM above), …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
The dark side of robotic process automation
Pandemics such as COVID 19 have forced organisations to pursue hyper-automation to maintain operational sustainability. Many organisations are keen to adopt Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to dramatically improve operational efficiency. However, evidence to date highlighted various associated challenges associated with adoption of RPA in organisations.Furthermore, recent surveys by consultant organisations found a high RPA project fail rate and their inability to meet the expected return on investment.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Information Systems
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Future Enterprise
Kidnapped robot in a digital twin environment
Mobile robots are starting to be commonly used in manufacturing environments but they often get confused when they are switched on and off regarding where they are and what they should be doing. This is known as the 'kidnapped robot' problem, where the robot is to re-localise itself each time it is rebooted or a new task is presented.The advent of 'digital twins' has enabled a robot to build a map of its environment, which can aid in its localisation. …
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Robotics
Development of a microfluidic sample processing integrated robot (micro SPIN-R)
Microfluidic devices are increasingly relied upon to address the complexity of in-vitro disease models that are intended to mimic and provide insight into in-vivo processes and reactions to novel therapies and in turn, can become powerful companion diagnostic devices essential for predicting and individual patient’s reaction to a particular treatment. However, as these microfluidic devices become more and more prominent and necessary for addressing the drug screening and disease modeling needs of the industry, we have observed a lack in …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
Ubiquitous visual positioning devices
Everything that moves is defined and limited by its ability to navigate the world in which it exists. Knowing where you are located in the world is a key navigational capability for people, animals, and both autonomous and human-operated platforms ranging from self-driving cars to aircraft.But accurate and trustworthy positional knowledge has widespread potential implications beyond navigation: it can, for example, allow life-and-death decisions in defence and in tracking the spread of global pandemics. Both the potential of and problems …
- Study level
- Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Robotics
Human robotic interaction prototyping toolkit
Design relies on prototyping methods to help envisage future design concepts and elicit feedback from potential users. A key challenge the design of human-robot interaction (HRI) with collaborative robots is the current lack of prototyping tools, techniques, and materials. Without good prototyping tools, it is difficult to move beyond existing solutions and develop new ways of interacting with robots that make them more accessible and easier for people to use.This project will develop a robot collaboration prototyping toolkit that combines …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
-
Design Lab
Robotic intention visualisation
Complex manufacturing environments characterised by high value and high product mix manufacturing processes pose challenges to Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). Allowing people to see what robots are ‘thinking’ will allow workers to efficiently collaborate with co-located robotic partners. A tighter integration of work routines requires improved approaches to support awareness in human-robotic co-working spaces. There is a need for solutions that also let people see what the robot is intending to do so that they can also efficiently adjust their actions …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice
- School
- School of Design
- Research centre(s)
-
Design Lab
Mapping the world: understanding the environment through spatio-temporal implicit representations
Accurately mapping large-scale infrastructure assets (power poles, bridges, buildings, whole suburbs and cities) is still exceptionally challenging for robots.The problem becomes even harder when we ask robots to map structures with intricate geometry or when the appearance or the structure of the environment changes over time, for example due to corrosion or construction activity.The problem difficulty is increased even more when sensor data from a range of different sensors (e.g. lidars and cameras, but also more specialised hardware such as …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Robotics
Deep learning for next-generation visual place recognition: sequence matching in robotic navigation
Are you interested in contributing to the advancement of robotics and navigation systems? In this VRES project, you will explore the cutting-edge field of visual place recognition (VPR).In both human and robotic navigation, understanding our location is essential for various tasks, such as obtaining resources, commuting, and socialising. The future of robots and augmented reality devices depends on reliable localisation systems. VPR is a critical aspect of robotics that allows for navigation and decision-making without relying on satellite systems, which …
- Study level
- Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Robotics
Investigating Australian consumer perspectives on smart home products
Technological advancements such as information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence, internet-of-things, robotics, and the increasing popularity of the smart city and smart living movements during the last couple of decades have created and intensified a boom of the smart home industry. At present, digital technology applications uptake in homes has become common and increasingly changed people’s lifestyles. Smart home technology provides a suite of independently and remotely controlled software and hardware connected to a network to deliver smart living. Smart …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours, Vacation research experience scheme
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Architecture and Built Environment
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