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 27 matching student topics
Displaying 13–24 of 27 results
Robust feature selection and correspondence for visual control of robots
Stable correspondence-free image-based visual servoing is a challenging and important problem.In classical image-based visual controllers, explicit feature correspondence (matching) to some desired arrangement (configuration) is required before a control input is obtained. Instead, this project will investigate variable feature correspondence and robust feature selection to simultaneously solve visual servoing problem, removing any feature tracking requirement or additional image processing.Also involving Prof Jason Ford.Example of recent past work
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
A soft robotic manipulator for spinal surgery
The geriatric population in Australia (4.2 million 2020, ABS), is growing steadily with numbers expected to double in the coming years. Incidences of spinal disorders requiring surgical treatment are therefore predicted to increase, incurring an estimated lifetime cost of AUD 3.7 billion per case (The Treasury). Robotics, an increasingly important component of modern medicine, is well suited to address the minimally invasive surgical needs of treating the spine.This project proposes the use of a soft-robotic manipulator to carry out spinal …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for 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
Implicit representations for place recognition and robot localisation
This project will develop a novel localization pipeline based on implicit map representations. Unlike traditional approaches that use explicit representations like point clouds or voxel grids, the map in our project is represented implicitly in the weights of neural networks such as Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF). You will get a chance to develop a new class of localization algorithms that work directly on the implicit representation, bypassing the costly rendering step from implicit to explicit representation. The designed algorithms will …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
High-speed robotic waste separation
Sorting waste or recyclables is an important but unpleasant job, currently done by specialised machinery and humans for the hard bits. What are the core challenges that could be done by "robots that see". This is a challenging problem in perception, dynamic path planning and control.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
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
Semantic SLAM for robotic scene understanding, geometric-semantic representations for infrastructure monitoring and maintenance
Making a robot understand what it sees is one of the most fascinating goals in our current research. To this end, we develop novel methods for Semantic Mapping and Semantic SLAM by combining object detection with simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) techniques.We work on novel approaches to SLAM that create semantically meaningful maps by combining geometric and semantic information. Such semantically enriched maps will help robots understand our complex world and will ultimately increase the range and sophistication of interactions …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Increasing resilience of robotic systems through quickest change detection technology
Future robotics systems are likely to benefit from having an ability to self-diagnose self-failure or the presence of anomalous situations (so that they can switch to fallback or fail-safe modes). Example situations include subtle sensor or actuator failure and cyber security or physical intruder detection.Such low signal-to-noise anomaly detection or self-diagnose problems can be understood using powerful mathematical and statistical tools which QCR has a rich history of advancing through collaboration with industry partners and publication in premium international venues.
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Augmented reality (AR) applications for robotic scene understanding
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
- Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Dynamic wireless transfer systems
There's a growing interest by many governments and industry sectors on dynamic wireless power transfer systems for electric vehicle charging. This means there's increased research intensity in this domain. However, there are numerous important issues that need to be addressed carefully, such as:load estimationsensorless vehicle position estimationrobust controlimproved power converter topologies.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Degradation-conscious charging of lithium-ion batteries
The adoption of electric vehicles and grid storage systems by the present day consumers has been phenomenal. The most critical issue with the lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery is how to manage its degradation.Understanding battery degradation mechanisms and the development of charging strategies to optimally manage battery degradation is very important. There are a number of important issues that need to be addressed carefully, such as thermo-electrochemical modelling of large battery packs and fast charging protocols.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Coordinated control of multi-robot systems for environmental management
Single robotic systems can't accurately measure dynamic processes and map large areas in challenging environments. However, managing multiple robotic systems simultaneously poses many challenges around coordination and control. This is particularly true in environments where there's a lack of communication with the system. This project will explore multi-robot swarming and formation control to monitor, manage and track large-scale environmental phenomena.In this project, you will explore multi-robot swarming and coordinated formation control for dynamic process monitoring, target tracking and coordinated mapping. …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Robotics
Contact us
If you have questions about the best options for you, the application process, your research topic, finding a supervisor or anything else, get in touch with us today.