Updated for 2012

A number of projects are possible in all areas, I list the ones I could think of, please also make up your own ideas, and talk me into them. Most of these can be extended to a PhD or reduced for a 3rd year single semester project or a Summer Research Scholarship, or something in between. Also, most of them could range from an AI investigation, to SE construction of a platform, to HCI/IS analysis, and so on.

If you are interested in any of the following (or similar) topics and would like to see if you might want to do a project in this area, please e-mail me tom@cs.anu.edu.au or come and see me in N332.

Projects

Please select the topic and type of project and click the display button.

Year:
All
2012 priority projects
other projects
Topic:
All
Face recognition
Eye Gaze
Generating Art
File sorter
Neural networks
Fuzzy logic
Evolutionary algs.
On-line surveys
Type:
All
Artificial Intelligence
Human Computer Interaction
Computer Science
eScience
Software Engineering
Information Systems

 

Face Recognition projects

I am interested in topics such as image processing for face recognition, HCI research tool to collect facial images, biologically plausible architectures for face recognition, building and modifying computer models of real faces. No previous work on face recognition is necessary.

Caricature: Comparing a specific space to an averaged face allows us to determine how this face differs from the average. If this difference was increased (an inverse of morphing), we can generate a caricature of the face. (See also 3D face model project, a tool is almost ready.)
Eye gaze: Use of an eye gaze detector and (optionally) an EEG 'hat' allows learning when a user is looking at a face they recognise versus one they do not recognise. If we can tell from eye gaze we have a simple specialised lie detector for the question "do you know this person"! Overall, this use of eye gaze has a number of applications, primarily in the security domain.
View morphing: View morphing between two images of an object taken from two different viewpoints produces the illusion of physically moving a virtual camera. We generate compelling 2D transitions between images. Initially we will use the same face with small rotations and produce intermediate images to produce a realistic QuickTimeVR head.
3-D Face model: An average face 3D model can be constructed from a single face image and animated via rotation, a simple face expression model, or illumination. This can then be used to recognise faces in multiple poses, expressions or lighting. (A tool was built, which can be extended or used for caricature etc.)
Operator observation: This project is to use facial gestures and head movements to determine whether a human operator (of a vehicle or in virtual manufacturing) is alert, distracted or in a danger situation. The initial plan for the project is to construct known scenarios, and to use AI techniques to predictively match observations of the operator (eg EEG, facial expression) to situations.

Eye Gaze projects

We have a Mind Attention Interface lab, which has Eye Gaze and EEG equipment, and is run in the room formerly known as the Wedge Virtual Reality studio. I am particularly interested in interesting uses of the eye gaze equipment, as well as validation using the EEG equipment.

Face recognition: see the Eye Gaze project in Face Recognition section
Generating art: see below
EEG: record EEG and eye gaze while users look at particular kinds of images/scenes. This project could involve:
  1. software engineering construction of a platform for such work
  2. reliably extract EEG signals knows to occur for certain types of images using AI techniques
  3. unsupervised AI techniques for finding new EEG signals
  4. correlating known/unknown EEG signals with eye gaze path characteristics
  5. unsupervised AI techniques for characterising eye gaze paths
  6. determine whether the EEG hat modifies behaviour of experimental subjects (IS project)
Attention: what do people see in images? What is it about some images that attract our attention and presumably interest where other seemingly similar images are less interesting?

Generating Art

Some previous work has been done generating Mondrian-like images (see under Evolutionary algorithms). Various projects are possible in this area. These range from the design or implementation of a simulator, to further development of the Mondrian work, to computerised analysis of artistic esthetic, and to generation of other kinds of artistic images.

3D simulator: to show images generated in a 3D visualisation which is either technically interesting or of artistic merit.
Mondrian: a number of further developments are possible here (some initial work done, involved creation of a new drawing tool, which also incorporates some support for a 3D mouse, and initial support for wiimote)
  1. further develop Mondrian image generation process
  2. extend interactive interface
  3. extend to new mobile devices
Rotoscope: Converting live-action film or images to an animated form is called rotoscoping. This project would use existing line detection and optical flow software to automate the conversion of a film to an animated form.
Generate more art: using some other kind(s) of artistic (abstract) images
Faces: modify faces in an identi-kit fashion and present them to users for selection of likeness
Eye gaze: use eye gaze monitor to substitute for manual selection of likes and dislikes (see Eye Gaze section)
Analyse esthetics: can a neural network learn what I find esthetic? (Initial work in late 2007 indicates that this is possible to some extent - this would be interesting to investigate properly.)
Reaction: what 3D effects are more powerful? This lends itself best (I think) to an IS/HCI project.

Smart disk cataloguer and synchroniser

I have many files on multiple computers organised in different ways, and would like to be able to keep track of them, etc. I suspect this is common, especially if we include files on google docs or facebook etc. None of the software I have seen solves my problem. A good solution would be very useful for me and many others.

Neural Networks

I am interested in topics such as extracting rules from neural networks, information retrieval using neural networks, data mining and feature selection, cascade neural network structures, hierarchical neural network structures, and neural network applications. I have published papers in all of these areas with former students so there is plenty of earlier work to build on. No previous experience with neural networks is necessary. Most projects will use the very popular backpropagation neural network training algorithm, and sometime the self-organising map.

Cascade neural network stuctures can be built automatically without making decisions as to the number of neurons required to solve a problem by adding single neurons. This project would investigate the use of larger chunks such as feature maps as cascade components, which would be useful for recognising images (including faces, or generated art). (Some progress made using shared weight feature-map 'chunks', which can be extended.)
Rule extraction: Neural networks can learn complex tasks but face the problem that human beings do not trust them as they can not understand _why_ a particular decision is made. This project focuses on rule extraction for explanation.
Cognitive modeling:The recommendation architecture model is based on a system theoretical approach to understanding higher cognition in terms of physiology. The model has some similarities to conventional neural networks but remains true to biological information flow constraints and does not suffer from the forgetting problem. This project could extend previous work in applications of this model in information filtering and face recognition, or extension of the model to demonstrate some of the properties observed in human consciousness.

Fuzzy Logic

I am interested in topics such as automated construction of fuzzy rule bases from data, hierarchical fuzzy systems, fuzzy interpolation, information retrieval using fuzzy logic, universal approximators, and fuzzy logic applications. I have published papers in all of these areas with former students so there is plenty of earlier work to build on. No previous experience with fuzzy logic is necessary.

Fuzzy document filtering: Web search engines return many documents which are not relevant to queries. Fuzzy techniques to enhance the results from search engines will be very useful. This project will investigate a number of fuzzy techniques for this purpose.
Combining uncertainty: Fuzzy logic is a technique which deals with uncertainty well. Sometimes data contains multiple kinds or sources of uncertainty. For example, a pedestrian could report that he saw someone he was quite sure was stealing something. He was not certain, and his own reliability is another (different) kind of uncertainty. This project is to develop some methods to combine different kinds of uncertainty in intelligence led investigation. (Data from a company specialising in this area will be available.)
Pattern trees: A pattern tree is a tree which represents the pattern for an output class. The output class is located at the top as the root of this tree. The fuzzy terms of input variables are on different levels of the tree. They use fuzzy aggregations to aggregate from the bottom level to the top (root). For a classification application which involves several output classes, the worked model should have as many pattern trees as the number of the output classes, with each pattern tree representing one class. This project will extend our initial work as published in IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Logic.

Evolutionary Algorithms

There are several optimisation methods inspired by natural processes, It has been shown that evolutionary algorithms are efficient tools for solving non-linear, multi-objective and constrained optimizations. The principle is a search for a population of solutions, where tuning is done using mechanisms similar to biological recombination.

Making pictures: If artificial 'organisms' encode the components of an abstract computer generated picture, an individual could identify nice and not nice images repeatedly to generate some 'art' which is tuned for their esthetic sense. Software built here is available to be be extended and improved. This project is ideal if you would like to create Art but do not believe you are artistic (but can recognise something you like).
Scheduling: A previous student has worked on a GA for University exam scheduling. An extension of this work or comparison with bacterial algorithms would be an interesting project. The ANU exam schedule data for last year are available, and the ANU timetabling section is happy to assist.

Mobiles and on-line dynamic surveys

VotApedia is an audience response system that doesn't require issuing clickers or need specialist infrastructure. See www.votapedia.com The project will involve design and implement extensions to this controlled but open source project initiated by CSIRO. The technology is in use by Tom in semester 1 (and maybe semester 2) so there should be opportunity for immediate trials of new functionality. This project would be co-supervised by Dr Ken Taylor (CSIRO).