Student topics

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 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

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

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 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

Despite efforts to monitor and manage declining species and ecosystems around the world, biodiversity is still not routinely included in mainstream decision-making and continues to decline at the highest rate in human history. Added to this is the problem that both natural and agri-food systems are complex networks that are continually changing due to human and natural disturbances, with climate change likely to increase the impacts of extreme events like drought, fire and economic shocks on these networks.Because of large …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Biology and Environmental Science

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science
Centre for the Environment

The human microbiome refers to the collection of micro-organisms that are living symbiotically in the human body (defined as the “microbiota”), their genetic material as well as the surrounding environmental habitat.It is now appreciated that the microbiome plays an important role in human health and diseases. Various disease states have been linked to dysregulation of the gut microbiota, including neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The composition of the gut microbiome can also affect responses to therapies, most notably in cancer …

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
Centre for Microbiome Research

How does technology help us to support a person’s sense of wellbeing and/or performance? Beyond technology and metrics, how do a body-worn (electronic/biosensing) device be designed to fit the person in different contexts of use and different performance needs? We are investigating the role of designing with sensor technology (sensor technology agnostic) in body-worn devices from a Human Centred (HCD) lens, and Research through Design (RtD) approach.In today's fast-paced world, the pursuit of optimal human performance has become a paramount …

Study level

PhD

Faculty

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

School

School of Design

Research centre(s)

Design Lab

Raman scattering has been used as a powerful 'fingerprinting' technique for more than 80 years, and is widely used by security and law enforcement for detecting hazardous threats. To better safeguard the community, QUT has developed a unique eye -safe laser Raman sensing system for detecting threats, that works at distance from a target (> 10 m) and operates in real time. Increasingly however, threats are being concealed in order to avoid detection. This project will investigate what range of …

Study level

Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Chemistry and Physics

Bayesian statistics provide a framework for a statistical inference for quantifying the uncertainty of unknowns based on information pre and post data collection.This information is captured in the posterior distribution, which is a probability distribution over the space of unknowns given the observed data.The ability to make inferences based on the posterior essentially amounts to efficiently simulating from the posterior distribution, which can generally not be done perfectly in practice.This task of sampling may be challenging for various reasons:The posterior …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Mathematical Sciences

Research centre(s)

Centre for Data Science

This research is part of a Future Fellowship project funded by the Australian Research Council. You will join a team of researchers and research students in the school of computer science, with expertise in the disciplines of human computer interactions and data science.In broad terms, the project is seeking to understand how the meaning of images can be computed and used in the design of intelligent interfaces which can be used by and support people with intellectual disability.The visual interactions …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Science

School

School of Computer Science

This project will explore the application of Non fungible tokens NFTs to the architectural discipline specifically. It will do so with both intellectual and entrepreneurial goals.In light of today's highly liquid global financial markets, and the rise of intangible capital as the dominant form of corporate wealth (think Facebook, Google, Bitcoin), the property sector often seems like an anachronism. Land and buildings have historically been identified as the most fixed and tangible forms of capital. They have thus been difficult …

Study level

PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Engineering

School

School of Architecture and Built Environment