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 30 matching student topics
Displaying 13–24 of 30 results
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
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
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Information Systems
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for Future Enterprise
Ethical and Legal Implications of RPA and Enterprise Automation
Examine the ethical and legal implications of RPA/Enterprise Automation adoption in organisations. Research can focus on addressing issues such as data privacy, transparency, accountability, and the impact of RPA/Automation on human employment, culture, and structure.
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Information Systems
- Research centre(s)
-
Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology
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
Optimisation of piezoelectric materials for robotics applications
Piezoelectricity, which translates to “pressure electricity”, is the phenomenon in which certain materials convert mechanical energy to electrical energy, and vice versa. Such materials are common-place and are used in a variety of applications including sensor, actuator, and energy harvesting technologies. The capabilities of such piezoelectric materials have not yet been fully realised. We plan to use computational structural optimisation to design new piezoelectric materials and components that may contribute to novel sensing technologies for robotics applications. Essentially, robots need …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Science
- School
- School of Mathematical Sciences
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
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
Estimation and control of networked cyberphysical systems
Cyberphysical systems (CPS) integrate sensors, communication networks, controllers, dynamic processes and actuators. CPS play an increasingly important role in modern society, in areas such as:energytransportationmanufacturinghealthcare.Due to the interplay between control systems, communications and computations, the design of CPS requires novel approaches, which bridge disciplinary boundaries.We're interested in developing engineering science and methods for the analysis and design of CPS operating in closed loop. Our research brings together elements of control systems engineering, as well as telecommunications and reinforcement learning.The current …
- Study level
- PhD, Master of Philosophy, Honours
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
The insufficient informativeness of measurements in Bayesian detection problems
Shiryaev's Bayesian Quickest Change Detection (QCD) problem is to detect a change in the statistical problems of an observed process. This is an important signal processing problem with application in a diverse range of areas, including:automatic controlquality controlstatisticstarget detection.Recently a critical deficiency in Shiryaev's QCD problem has been identified to occur due to the insufficient informativeness of measurement in low signal-to-noise (SNR) to overcome geometric prior assumption on the change event.These deficiencies are due to the non-ergodic nature of the …
- 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. However, their role has primarily been monitoring and mapping the oceans without human interaction.The next frontier is to have human divers and robotic system collaborate safely and productively in the same space to jointly complete complex tasks. This will involve the robotic system directly understanding and interacting with the diver in a non-verbal manner. …
- Study level
- PhD
- Faculty
- Faculty of Engineering
- School
- School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics
- Research centre(s)
- Centre for 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
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