Student project suggestions

Background

Rather than suggest particular projects, I much prefer to talk to people on an individual basis and try to find something that will be of mutual interest.

My current research interests are focussed around wireless sensor systems, pervasive systems, control systems, autonomous systems (UAVs), and security. However, I teach (or have taught) courses on wireless sensor systems, computer architecture using FPGAs, security, mobile systems, operating systems, networking, Linux internals, compilers, databases, distributed systems, etc.

In my group we build things, measure things, and analyse data. All my projects require two things - (i) a willingness to learn new things as necessary to finish the project, some of which might well be outside your comfort zone, and (ii) practical application, good testing and, in some cases, statistics on the data captured. In short, I enjoy supervising self-motivated people who want to do something useful and want to do it in a professional way.

I have almost no interest in web/database projects.

In general, in my group we build hardware for wireless sensor nodes, we interface sensors to it, and we deploy this (i) on humans and animals, typically to measure behaviour and performance, and (ii) in both indoor and outdoor environments to measure anything from energy and water consumption to pollution levels. Once we have data, we undertake analysis on it and, where necessary, we invent new analytical techniques. The work involves building hardware, writing low level code to interface to sensors, data gathering, network protocols, security, and data analytics to name a few. The area has names that range from wireless sensor networking and pervasive computing to the Internet of Things. I have a separate interest in the use of technology in the education of schoolchildren.

Specific suggestions

1. Analyse animal movement (GPS/IMU) data: assess whether boid-like dynamics can explain observed behaviour and, if not, learn new rules
2. Build an android app to allow GPS/IMU movement data, other sensor data and derived measures to be visualised. This needs to be easy to adapt for different uses: sports, IoT, etc.
3. Build an over-the-air programming system for Orisen Prime sensor nodes
4. Build a visual programming environment for Python programming (for the Raspberry Pi) - something rather like a simplified labview - for education.
5. Build a visual programming environment for the Engduino (www.engduino.org) - something like a scratch programming interface (​http://scratch.mit.edu/)
6. Build an automated means of analysing Kinect data of animal movements, test it and deploy it.
7. Build a wireless thermal comfort monitor, deploy and use it to gather data
8. Build the hardware and control systems for a portable sensor system for gas sensing using MOS sensors developed in the Chemistry department
9. Build a system for measuring indoor pollution, for deployment in developing countries (this is one of the world's largest killers)
10. Build a very cheap hovercraft for use in schools education.