Projects 2005-2006

Group ID Supervisor Project title
gp05-acc-1 Anthony C. Cook Robotic Telescope Target Acquisition System
gp05-acc-2 Anthony C. Cook Simulation of a Spacecraft Flyby through the Asteroid Belt
gp05-bnk-dfb Boriana Koleva & David Brailsford The COG Scrapbook - Creating montages of document components for scrapbooks, posters and other wall displays
gp05-cmg Chris Greenhalgh An application of the EQUATOR Component Toolkit
gp05-dge Dave Elliman An Interactive Web-Scraper
gp05-dzs Damian Schofield Blood Spatter Pattern Analysis or E-learning
gp05-geb Gary Burnett The development of a front-end user-interface for use in driving simulator research
gp05-jds Dario Landa Silva An Online and Distributed Implementation of the Diplomacy Game
gp05-mvr Milena Radenkovic Adaptive Wireless Sensor Network Simulator
gp05-nhn Henrik Nilsson Dynamic Digital Photo Album
gp05-nxg Neil Ghani Game Theory
gp05-pxb Peter Blanchfield Internet Adaptation for Visual Impairment
gp05-rxq Rong Qu Case-Based Problem Solving System
gp05-smx Steve Mills Tools for Visualising and Manipulating 3D Images
gp05-tjb Tim Brailsford Virtual Evolution Lab

Robotic Telescope Target Acquisition System

Group ID: gp05-acc-1

Supervisor: Anthony C. Cook (acc)

Group mailing list: gp05-acc-1@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
You will write a software system that is capable of using digital images from a wide field finder scope CCD camera to help target a robotic telescope onto specific objects in the night sky. Images obtained from a second CCD camera on the robotic telescope will help finely centre the telescope onto the desired object. Specific tasks will be:

  1. Generate wide field/narrow field star maps of the sky for comparison with CCD images
  2. Acquire CCD images from the wide field (finder scope) camera
  3. Identify which part of the sky one is looking at from the finder scope CCD by comparing it with the star map
  4. Issue commands to the telescope down an RS232 to slew the telescope in an appropriate direction to point at the target object
  5. Repeat steps 2 to 5 until telescope is pointing close to the target object
  6. Acquire images from the CCD camera looking through the telescope
  7. Perform minor slewing corrections until the target object is centred


Simulation of a Spacecraft Flyby through the Asteroid Belt

Group ID: gp05-acc-2

Supervisor: Anthony C. Cook (acc)

Group mailing list: gp05-acc-2@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
You will do a path finding study to see if it is possible to fly a single space probe past several (e.g. 10 or more) asteroids over a mission duration of 5 years. Data provided will be the orbits of a quarter of a million known asteroids and the daily positions of the planets over a 5 year period. You will generate a toolkit/system that will enable a user (or automated program) to decide when to burn fuel (direction and how much) to aim at interesting asteroids. It will then show the path of the spacecraft (at small time increments) and highlight when it comes within a 100,000 km flyby distance of an asteroid (minimum useful distance at which we can get detailed images). Little knowledge of Physics will be needed other than some supplied simple A-level equations e.g. Newtons Law of Gravitation. To avoid having to compute the gravitational pull of a quarter of a million asteroids, for every iteration of the flight path, you will need only to calculate the pull from a handful of nearby asteroids, the Sun and the 9 planets. If you wish to extend this project further, monte carlo modeling or genetic algorithms could be used to select suitable trajectories/fuel burns so as to maximize the the number of asteroids that can be visited.


The COG Scrapbook - Creating montages of document components for scrapbooks, posters and other wall displays

Group ID: gp05-bnk-dfb

Supervisor: Boriana Koleva (bnk)
Co-Supervisor: David Brailsford (dfb)

Group mailing list: gp05-bnk-dfb@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
The aim of this group project is to enable users to create digital montages of related material from various document components (charts, photographs, graphics, captions etc.). When printed out, the created documents will be rendered at A4 or A5 size in scrapbooks, or at larger sizes, from A3 up to A0. In the many cases the montage is expected to be a poster or other form of wall display. Further details are available here


An application of the EQUATOR Component Toolkit

Group ID: gp05-cmg

Supervisor: Chris Greenhalgh (cmg)

Group mailing list: gp05-cmg@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
The Equator Component Toolkit is a lightweight platform designed to support the rapid development of ubiqutous computing installations. It is a distributed infrastructure that allows a number of components to be interconnected through a shared dataspace. Components have been developed for many of the existing ubiqutous computing technologies. The infrastructre also provides facilities to allow users to extend this set of components set of components.

You must select your own application; possible examples include 'art pieces', 'museum or gallery installations', 'educational installations' or 'smart homes'. You may recruit an outside domain 'expert' (e.g. a museum curator, a new-media artist) if you want to get some 'real' requirements and end-user involvement. Assessment criteria include how interesting/engaging the installation is, how well it works, and how technically interesting it is.


An Interactive Web-Scraper

Group ID: gp05-dge

Supervisor: Dave Elliman (dge)

Group mailing list: gp05-dge@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
The objective of this project is to develop an application that allows the user to select fields within a browser-like interface and to state that he or she would like these to be read and saved to a file (or perhaps a database) at certain intervals. A second part of the application is a Windows service that does this, or reports an error should the format of the web page change.

This could be done in Java with a Swing interface and that would be perfectly acceptable. As it is inented as a 32-bit windows application it might be better done in C# or C++ within a .NET environment using Visual Studio. This will involve more of a learning curve for the group, but might produce a better system. The C# option might be a good compromise as it is very like Java.

It would be great if the application were able to scrape whole tables, but this is considered beyond the scope of the project but worth bonus marks if achieved. More details available at the first supervisory meeting.


Blood Spatter Pattern Analysis or E-learning

Group ID: gp05-dzs

Supervisor: Damian Schofield (dzs)

Group mailing list: gp05-dzs@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
Choose one of the following two projects:

  1. Blood Spatter Pattern Analysis

    When blood is found at a crime scene it is often in a spatter pattern. I and my team have investigated the nature of these patterns from low velocity (blunt force trauma) patterns to high velocity (gunshot) patterns. We have undertaken a lot of modelling and statistical work on spatter patterns which has been correlated with real experimental work (throwing human blood around laboratories). Projects in this area include image analysis of the blood spatter, statistical analysis for point of origin determination and 3D modelling of the spatter environment and event chronology.

    For the group project I would be particularly interested in students developing statistical tools to assist in the practical evaluation of blood spatter at a crime scene. This could be extended to include image/shape analaysis algorithms for classification of the original stains or visualisation of the results of the analysis.

  2. E-Learning

    I have been involved in the development of a large number of interactive laboratory experiments for undergraduate students. More information on these can be seen at http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~dzs/teaching/elearning.html. The development of such e-learning systems, particularly focused on visual learners offers the potential to improve the learning experience of the student population. The development of such gaming resources for students raises a whole range of research issues.

    I would be particularly interested in a group exploring the use of 3D game engines to develop a learning environment. This would utiilise the latest technology, appealing to current learners' increasing levels of graphical literacy and provide an engaging and interesting learning experience. A range of potential subject areas exist in which this application could be developed.


The development of a front-end user-interface for use in driving simulator research

Group ID: gp05-geb

Supervisor: Gary Burnett (geb)

Group mailing list: gp05-geb@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
The School of Computer Science and IT has an advanced interactive driving simulator which is used for research investigating the human implications of novel in-car computing systems (see http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~geb/research.html). Experimental research has considered issues such as: the use of handwriting recognition as a means of entering destinations into a navigation system while driving; the visual distraction of different dashboard control layouts; behavioural adaption in response to the use of advanced vehicle control systems (e.g. collision avoidance), and so on. In all these studies, participant details (e.g. age, gender, driving experience) need to be recorded and related to the results obtained from both the simulator (e.g. lane deviations) and from video recordings (e.g. visual gaze). Currently, this has required the experimenter to relate paper forms to computer files, and consequently, has been overly time-consuming. In this project, the group would develop software that acts as a front-end to the simulator system enabling a range of participant details to be easily recorded at the start of an experiment. Experimental instructions relevant to the individual study could also be provided on-screen. Furthermore, questionnaires that participants might complete at the end of a study could be implemented within the system. Finally, the group will need to consider how the data generated by their software could easily be related to participants' results (from the simulator and within video recordings) for the purposes of statistical analysis.


An Online and Distributed Implementation of the Diplomacy Game

Group ID: gp05-jds

Supervisor: Dario Landa Silva (jds)

Group mailing list: gp05-jds@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
Diplomacy is a classic game of political intrigue and military power. Typically, there are between 2 and 7 players and the objective is to achieve dominance of Europe. The rules of the game are easy but playing diplomacy requires careful analysis, and involves negotiation between the players.

The goal of this project is to develop a computer version of the diplomacy game that is interactive, visually attractive and incorporates an effective tool for the negotiation between players. The project also involves the implementation of known diplomacy tactics so that the computer can act as one of the players in the game. Given its nature, it is required that the game is implemented in such a way that each player can access the program from different locations. The computer program should include the following functionalities:


Adaptive Wireless Sensor Network Simulator

Group ID: gp05-mvr

Supervisor: Milena Radenkovic (mvr)

Group mailing list: gp05-mvr@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
The project aims to simulate behaviour of a large sensor network using NS-2. Sensors and their connections should be modelled by varying link bandwidth and battery life. The network should be able to self-organise and adaptively find the optimal (or existing) routes in the network to route the queries and capture the sensor data. It can be assumed that there is a central server which can store the sensor data but that not all the sensors are connected to it directly.


Dynamic Digital Photo Album

Group ID: gp05-nhn

Supervisor: Henrik Nilsson (nhn)

Group mailing list: gp05-nhn@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
My digital photo collection is in a bit of a sad state, and I suspect I am not alone. It basically consists a large number of photos stored in sequentially numbered files, subdivided into directories named after the date at which the photos were transferred from the camera to the computer. As the chronological order is maintained, it is not impossible to locate images, but it does take time. And quickly finding all photos relevant to a particular audience, say photos of people from a particular set of friends, or photos from a particular place, is not really feasible. Wouldn't it be great if one could create a photo album containing, say, all pictures of nieces and nephews with just a few clicks and a bit of typing, and if this album then was kept up to date automatically as further images of nieces and nephews are added to the collection of photos?

The objective of this project is to create tools to do something along these lines. JPEG image files do not only contain the actual image data, but also information about the image, such as when it was taken. Additionally, it can contain comments about an image. These can be used to store a caption and indexing terms. Thus, assuming that images have been properly tagged, it would be possible to create dynamic photo albums by specifying search criteria (e.g. certain index terms, certain words in a caption, a range of dates) and sorting criteria (e.g. chronological).

Two tools needs to be created. The first is the "Tagger". This should support adding and editing indexing terms (both pre and user defined) and captions to JPEG images stored in a user-definable set of directories. To facilitate consistent indexing, a small "database" of indexing terms should be maintained, along with actual tags that have been used in the past for particular terms. To speed up the tagging process, completion technology could be used, e.g. showing dynamically updated menus of possible completions after a few key strokes.

The second tool is the "Dynamic Album". This is used both to define albums through search and sorting criteria, and to browse defined albums. The search criteria should include matching indexing terms, looking for keywords in captions, dates and date ranges, and logical negation, conjunction and disjunction of these. Sorting criteria should at least include chronological. Additionally it should be possible to manually exclude images. For displaying the images, EXIF size and orientation information should be taken into account to automatically scale and rotate images. Defined captions should obviously be displayed along with the images.

It should also be possible to export albums in a format that would be accessible over the web. The simplest scenario is to export a simple snapshot of an album by copying all images in the album to a separate directory, possibly reducing their resolution to make them more web friendly, and then generate a simple static HTML web page that shows all the images along with their captions. A more ambitious approach would be to export the entire dynamic album collection in the form of a dynamic web page (using Java script or some similar technology). That would effectively mean that the "Dynamic Album" is a simple, graphical, domain-specific language for creating photo albums, which then gets compiled into "low level" code such as Java script.

It is envisioned that both the "Tagger" and the "Dynamic Album" be written in Haskell using the wxHaskell toolkit for the GUI aspects. Image tagging and manipulation could either be carried out through existing command line utilities, such as "rdjpgcom", "wrjpgcom", "exif", or by using existing libraries (which might have to be interfaced with Haskell through the FFI).


Game Theory

Group ID: gp05-nxg

Supervisor: Neil Ghani (nxg)

Group mailing list: gp05-nxg@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
This project concerns the development of an implementation of a board game such as Connect4 or Scrabble. The ultimate goal is to produce a piece of software which is both fun to play and which can beat a human opponenent. Thus, in addition to producing a good interface, students will also have to understand the algorithms which allows a computer to decide which move to make and how to efficiently store and search a data structure. Extensions could involve a distributed version allowing the game to be played over the internet.


Internet Adaptation for Visual Impairment

Group ID: gp05-pxb

Supervisor: Peter Blanchfield (pxb)

Group mailing list: gp05-pxb@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
This project concerns adapting the Internet for visual impairment. Probably it would be a client and server based solution with the server acting as a proxy doing some adaptation and the client being an adapted browser.


Case-Based Problem Solving System

Group ID: gp05-rxq

Supervisor: Rong Qu (rxq)

Group mailing list: gp05-rxq@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
Experts in real life problem solving circumstances use their knowledge/experience to solve problems. For example, a doctor diagnosing a patient by matching the patient's symptoms to those of another patient whose diagnosis was known. Case-based reasoning (CBR) is an AI technique that mimics the way of this scenario. In a CBR system, a case base is built to store previously solved problems (cases) and their solutions. New problems are solved by reusing and adapting the most similar cases' solutions from the case base.

The aim of this project is to develop a case-based reasoning system to solve real-world problems. You can propose a problem solving circumstance and build a CBR system for solving the problems. Your main tasks of the project will include:

  1. You need to do a little bit research: The design of representation of cases in the CBR system is always one of the most important issues in CBR. Based on an appropriate representation a similarity measure can be defined to calculate how similar two cases are.
  2. The main part of the project is to implement: You are also required to build a CBR system including both a case base and a search engine. Database techniques should be used to build the case base. A user-friendly interface is required to link the case base and present the structure of the case base, the cases retrieved from the case base, and how similarity the cases are. New cases can be easily added into the case base either via the interface or by changing the database directly.


Tools for Visualising and Manipulating 3D Images

Group ID: gp05-smx

Supervisor: Steve Mills(smx)

Group mailing list: gp05-smx@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
Images are usually represented as two-dimensional arrays of data, but many application areas deal with three-dimensional information. Examples include medical scans such as MRI and CT scans and biological images from confocal microscopy. More generally, sequences of images from video can be seen as a single three-dimensional image, with the third dimension being time.

The aim of this project is to produce a set of tools for visualising and manipulating three-dimensional images. For visualisation this should include the ability to view an arbitrary 'slice' through the volume as a two-dimensional image. For manipulation, basic operators defined on two-dimensional images can be extended to three-dimensions.

This basic framework could be extended in a number of ways: More advanced image processing algorithms, such as segmentation and feature detection, could be implemented; situations where the data is irregularly sampled could be explored; or extensions to four-dimensions (such as time-varying three-dimensional images) could be made.


Virtual Evolution Lab

Group ID: gp05-tjb

Supervisor: Tim Brailsford (tjb)

Group mailing list: gp05-tjb@cs.nott.ac.uk

Group members:

Description:
The task is to write an educational game, which will teach certain aspects of evolutionary biology at a secondary school level. The game will consist of a world (i.e. a box that fills most of a computer screen), with animals (called Critters) moving around inside it. These animals will sometimes mate (i.e. when they touch there is a chance that they might produce offspring), and will eventually die (i.e. they will disappear from the system). The user will be able to kill the Critters by clicking on them with a mouse. The Critters should move at varying speed, and they should turn often or occasionally and at a sharp or shallow angle. These characteristics are all controlled by genes that are passed from parents to their offspring. As the user plays the game, the Critters should evolve to become more difficult to kill (this is survival of the fittest the ones that are easiest to catch with a mouse click will be the most likely to die).


Last updated 28 October 2005.