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 113 matching student topics
Displaying 97–108 of 113 results
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
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
Mobile manipulation with logistics
Mobile manipulators have been proven helpful for individual manipulation tasks but slow for larger-scale logistical tasks. This project investigates how several robots (mobile manipulators and mobile robots) can cooperate to complete a task efficiently (this could be considered a travelling salesman problem with moving depots).Agriculture: The mobile manipulator picks the produce while the mobile robots transfer to produce between collection points.Clean up Australia Day 2019: Collecting rubbish from natural environments. Mobile manipulators collect rubbish and transfer it to mobile robots, …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
Predicting good sleep using computer science: Can we use machine learning to find out 'what's the best bed?'
In the Westernised world a person typically spends one third of their life in bed, with more time spent sleeping in a bed than in any other single activity. Sleep amount and quality of sleep have a direct impact on mood, behaviour, motor skills and overall quality of life. Yet, despite how important restful sleep is for the body to maintain good health, there is a comparatively small amount of studies evaluating key multi-factorial determinants of restful sleep in non-pathological, …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Biomedical Technologies
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Gesture-based control of underwater helper-bots
Underwater robotic systems have been in use for several decades. In recent years, various groups have been adding manipulators and other payloads to increase their utility. The next frontier is to have human divers and robotic system collaborate safely and productively in the same space to jointly complete complex tasks. In this project, you'll explore gesture-based interaction to allow a diver and underwater robotic system to collaborate to complete various tasks. This will involve exploring vision processing and fusion algorithms, …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
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