Department of Computing

ITEC 810 Project List

This page lists projects for First Semester 2012.

Every student who undertakes ITEC810 carries out a project that requires a significant amount of effort (roughly equivalent to four weeks of full-time work, but spread over the semester). Most students will select a project from those listed on this page; however, if you already work in the IT industry, you may want to propose a project that is related to your employment, in which case you should identify a faculty member in the Department of Computing who might be an appropriate supervisor, and then contact the Unit Convenor promptly to see if this can be organised.

Much of the responsibility for identifying your project lies with you, and you are required to formally report on your progress in establishing a project by the end of Week 1; you are also required to present an initial project plan by the end of Week 2, so it pays to get started on this process early.

Projects are of two general types: development projects, which typically require some programming, and analysis projects, which don't. The projects on this page are listed under these two categories; click on a title in the list to see more about that project. Note that projects whose names are struck-through in the list below have already been adopted by someone: only one person is allowed to do any given project, so the earlier you take steps to agree a project, the more choice you will have.

If you have a project idea of your own, then you should contact the Unit Convenor, Robert Dale, as soon as possible, so that you can be matched with an appropriate supervisor. Note that, if you want to propose your own project, you are obliged to disclose how it relates to any similar projects you have done in the past: it is essential as a matter of fairness in this unit that all projects are completely new pieces of work.

All students enrolled in ITEC810 are required to make significant progress on agreeing the details of their project with a supervisor by the end of Week 1 of semester, and there is an assignment associated with this requirement.

Students are responsible for initiating contact with potential supervisors. You should make sure that you do the following:

Make initial contact with a potential supervisor, either as suggested by the Convenor in response to your project suggestion, or from the list below if you want to pursue a project proposed by a member of staff. You may want to initiate discussions with multiple supervisors in case your first choice does not work out.
Arrange a time to meet to discuss doing the project under the supervisor's supervision.
Provide the supervisor with enough information to enable them to determine whether you have the necessary prerequisite skills and knowledge to carry out the project.
Ensure that they and you are both comfortable that you can achieve the intended outcomes of the proposed project with what amounts to four person-weeks of effort.
Once you and the supervisor have definitely agreed that you will do the project, email Robert Dale the name of the project to confirm that you are doing it, and cc the supervisor on that email.

All of these tasks are the responsibility of the student.

Development Projects

Recommendation in Social Networks [Jian Yang]
~~A Social Blog using MongoDb [Jian Yang]~~
The Impact of Learning Algorithms and Feature Selection on Financial Document Classification [Mark Johnson]
Automatically Extending Pronunciation Dictionaries in a Forced-alignment Speech Recognition System [Mark Johnson]
Computational Experiments in Number Theory [Igor Shparlinski]
Pseudorandom Number Generators in Cryptography and Computation [Igor Shparlinski]
A Double-Base Number System Library for Cryptographic Applications [Christophe Doche]
Randomized Quiz Generation in Moodle [Christophe Doche]
~~A Multisensory and Multimodal Game for Children with Cochlear Implants [Deborah Richards]~~
Adding Automatic Annotation to the Australian National Corpus [Steve Cassidy]
Processing Business Rules [Rolf Schwitter]
Matching BPM and SNA Graphs [Peter Busch]
Extracting Abstracts from PDF Files [Robert Dale]
~~Parsing Bibliographic Data [Robert Dale]~~
A Portfolio of Spelling Correctors [Robert Dale]
Porting pLucid to Java [Mehmet Orgun]
Content Selection, Time Series Data and Football Commentary [Mark Dras]
Collaborative Reflection Blogging Tool [Matt Bower]
Communities of Practice using Drupal [Matt Bower]
Learning Management System Real-time Quiz Results Display Tool [Matt Bower]
~~Building an Activity Based Costing (ABC) Solution [Gary Lau]~~
Apply-language Image Processing Library [Len Hamey]
Efficiency of Machine Vision Algorithm Implementations [Len Hamey]
Visualization for Trust Inference in Social Networks [Yan Wang]
Shopping Cart and Online Checkout [Frank Moisiadis]
Student-initiated Employment-related Projects [Michael Johnson]

Analysis Projects

Modelling and Analysis of Wireless Routing Protocols [Annabelle McIver]
Modelling and Analysis of Security Protocols [Annabelle McIver]
~~Detecting and Responding to Pedagogical and Safety Issues in Online Educational Virtual Worlds [Deborah Richards]~~
A Review of Answer Set Programming [Rolf Schwitter]
The Logic of Trust: A Literature Review [Abhaya Nayak]
Gesture Analysis [Manolya Kavakli]
Measuring Cognitive Load in Gesture Analysis [Manolya Kavakli]
A Comprehensive Review of Logical Structure Extraction [Robert Dale]
~~Choice in Video Games [Michael Hitchens]~~
~~Trust Models for Cloud Computing [Michael Hitchens]~~
Analysis of Temporal Relational Data Models [Mehmet Orgun]
Linear Programming in Information Technology [Scott McCallum]
~~Semantic Intelligence Application to Survey Data [Gary Lau]~~
~~Cloud Business Intelligence [Gary Lau]~~
~~Smart Grid Security [Vijay Varadharajan]~~
~~Android Security [Vijay Varadharajan]~~
Capabilities of Machine Vision Libraries [Len Hamey]
~~Honeypot Literature Review [Milton Baar]~~
~~A Data Centre Strategy for Sustainability [Stephen Smith]~~
~~Bus Timetabling and Scheduling [Stephen Smith]~~
Context Comparison in Trust Inference [Yan Wang]
Student-initiated Employment-related Projects [Michael Johnson]

Recommendation in Social Networks

Supervisor

Jian Yang and Julian Zhong

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

Collaborative Filtering (CF) has become a mainstream method for personalized recommender systems, which are used in most of the current social networks services. The student will become familiar with one of the most active and popular fields of social networks.

Prerequisites

Programming skills such as Java or Python, and SQL skills of relational databases such as MySql.

Project Motivation and Description

Developing recommender systems is a very hot area in industry. We have seen some recommender systems (e.g. Google, Amazon) for recommending products, places, products, etc. With the large amount of data collected in social networks such as Facebook, effective algorithms need to be developed to provide better recommendations utilising social network data. In this project, the student will implement some CF algorithms. This experience will help in understanding the concept of collaborative filtering in social networks, and data analysis in social networks. The skills developed in the project are useful in either academic or industry fields.

Intended Outcomes

The student will develop a simple recommender system using a collaborative filtering algorithm, the Pearson Correlation algorithm, using the user-item data that can be downloaded from the web, for instance, MovieLens data. Analysis needs to be done for different sets of data in terms of the number of users, the number of items, and the number of ratings.

A Social Blog using MongoDb

Supervisor

Jian Yang and Julian Zhong

Student

Lucero Soria

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

Social networks becomes a dominating media for people to connect and sharing information Owing to its agile and scalable features, MongoDb is one of the most suitable database systems to build social network systems to meet the high demand of rapidly growing and flexible change of social networks. The project aims to develop a MangoDB based social blog.

Prerequisites

Programming languages such as Java or Python, and general knowledge of database.

Project Motivation and Description

Different from relational DBMS such as Oracle, mySQL, MongoDb is a schemaless database for building large scale systems. In the project, the student will learn to build a social network system through a document-based approach using mongoDB, and query and access in social networks.

Intended Outcomes

Analyse the differences between mongoDb and other relational DBMS, especial in supporting social media data. A blog system will be developed that helps users share their contents with others, and a comprehensive analysis of the implemented MongoDb data structure.

Modelling and Analysis of Wireless Routing Protocols

Supervisor

Annabelle McIver

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

One of the major factors affecting performance in ad hoc wireless networks is the ability to create and sustain valid multi hop routes between wireless nodes. Typically routing protocols are automatically executed whenever a route between (a pair of) network nodes is required; the performance of these protocols is sensitive to its so-called "protocol settings". The aim in this project is to produce a machine readable model of the BATMAN protocol and to analyse its performance for several settings of the basic protocol to gain an understanding of how they affect overall performance of route finding.

Prerequisites

Students should have some programming experience (essential).

Project Motivation and Description

Wireless researchers have discovered that current protocols for ad hoc networks have the potential to achieve much a higher level of performance than the current "off-the-shelf" implementations provide. There is however little understanding of why this is the case. This project will contribute to the understanding of how basic settings protocol affect performance. An example of such a setting might be the elapsed time before a timeout.

The project involves creating a model of the BATMAN protocol using the UPPAAL model checker which is capable of making detailed analyses of performance. Variations of the model will be analysed in order to discover which settings affect performance.

Intended Outcomes

A report on the work carried out, which should include a description of the UPPAAL model, what variations to it were made and to what purpose, a presentation of experimental results and an analysis reflecting on what has been learned about the BATMAN protocol.

Modelling and Analysis of Security Protocols

Supervisor

Annabelle McIver

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

Many protocols which aim to guarantee anonymity nevertheless leak information about the identity of a user. The aim of this project is to model and analyse some simple web-based protocols and to measure approximately how much sensitive information they can potentially leak.

Prerequisites

Students should have some programming experience (essential) and some knowledge of basic probability theory (desirable).

Project Motivation and Description

Researchers have discovered that many protocols implementing security mechanisms actually release information about users contrary to their published "guarantees" of anonymity. This project will contribute to understanding how such protocols nevertheless inadvertently release information.

The project involves creating a model of one or more simple internet protocols (such as the Crowds anonymity protocol) using the UPPAAL model checker which is capable of making detailed analyses about information leakage. The UPPAAL model of e.g. Crowds will be analysed for the amount of information that it can leak.

Intended Outcomes

A report on the work carried out, which should include a description of the UPPAAL model, what experiments were conducted (and to what purpose), a presentation of experimental results and an analysis reflecting on what has been learned about anonymity protocols.

The Impact of Learning Algorithms and Feature Selection on Financial Document Classification

Supervisor

Mark Johnson

Project Type

Analysis and Development

Project Aim

Evaluate the effect of different combinations of learning algorithms and features on the accuracy of the algorithms for classifying financial documents.

Prerequisites

Essential skills include vector and matrix algebra, an ability to implement moderately complex programs based on a description of the algorithms involved, and an ability to plan, run and organise the results of a set of experiments. Desirable skills include multivariate calculus, statistical analysis and a familiarity with modern machine learning methods.

Project Motivation and Description

The techniques you will learn in this project are important because they are one way of dealing with the "information overload" that faces almost all organisations today. You will study the accuracy of a variety of automatic techniques for identifying the subset of financial documents that are relevant to an important business-oriented goal. After identifying a business-oriented task (e.g., identifying price-sensitive stock announcements) and an appropriate data set (e.g., ASX stock announcements), you will develop and apply several machine learning algorithms with several different combinations of features you have designed to solve this task. You will evaluate the accuracy of each combination of algorithm and feature set, and identify which algorithms and which feature classes lead to better classification accuracy on this data set.

Intended Outcomes

You will produce a report that provides the following information about your project (this might be the chapter layout of your report):

Abstract: (High-level description of project, and summary of main results).
Introduction:
- Give an example of the documents to be classified, and explain what information is to be automatically produced.
- Give a high-level description of the algorithms (at least the name, a citation, and the chief advantages and disadvantages of the algorithm) that you will explore.
- Give a high-level description of the features you will explore, using an actual worked example.
- Describe related previous work on this topic.
Data set and features:
- Description of the data set: (E.g., where does it come from, how many documents does it contain, what is the distribution of document lengths?)
- Description of the classification task. (E.g., how many different document classes are there, how many documents are there in each class, how is the output of a classifier evaluated, how is the data set split into training, development and test sets?)
- Description of feature classes. (E.g., describe the different kinds or "classes" of features you will use. Give the number of features in each feature class. Describe the sparsity of the features in each feature class. Give the distribution of the correlation of these features with the class labels in the classification task, and give the features from each feature class that are most correlated with the class labels).
Description of the learning algorithms: In this project you should implement and evaluate at least three algorithms. One should be Naive Bayes, one should be the Perceptron algorithm (in one of its variants), and one should be a more sophisticated algorithm (e.g., Support Vector Machines, Logistic Regression, the on-line Passive-Aggressive Algorithm, etc.). For each algorithm, you should provide the following information:
- Informal description of the learning algorithm. (At a high-level, how does the algorithm function? Does it try to optimise a loss function? Is it an "error-driven" algorithm? Is it an on-line algorithm?)
- Mathematical description of the learning algorithm. (Define the mathematical quantities the algorithm uses)
- Algorithmic description of the learning algorithm. (Define the data structures used and present the algorithm itself)
Experimental results:
- Evaluation of the accuracy of each classification algorithm: (evaluate each classifier on all the features, and present the results in a table and a graph)
- Evaluation of the importance of each feature class: You should do this in two ways:
  - for each feature class, evaluate the accuracy of each classifier on data that only contains the features of that feature class, and present the results in a table and a graph
  - for each feature class, evaluate the accuracy of each classifier on data that contains all of the features except those from that feature class, and present the results in a table and a graph
Discussion: (E.g., which combination of classifier and features performed best? which feature classes were more useful for this task? were some algorithms particularly sensitive, or insensitive, to the choice of features?)
Conclusion: (Summarise the project and the results. What implications does this have for applying machine learning classification techniques to financial data, and to other tasks?)

Automatically Extending Pronunciation Dictionaries in a Forced-alignment Speech Recognition System

Supervisor

Mark Johnson

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

Develop software that identifies potential errors in pronouncing dictionaries for a speech recognition system, including erroneous pronunciations and missing pronunciations, and suggests possible corrections to the dictionary.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with string processing and data-base manipulation in Java, Python or similar language. Willingness to learn how to use the HTK forced alignment toolkit.

Project Motivation and Description

We're using forced-alignment methods from automatic speech recognition technology to study the variation in pronunciation of words when mothers talk to their children. These systems use "pronouncing dictionaries" to constrain the search for possible pronunciations. Missing pronunciations and incorrect pronunciations in our current pronouncing dictionary reduce the accuracy of our system.

Intended Outcomes

You'll develop software for identifying potential errors in a pronouncing dictionary, and use it to produce an improved version of the pronouncing dictionary that is tuned to mother's speech to children.

Computational Experiments in Number Theory

Supervisor

Igor Shparlinski

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

Computation is an important tool as well as a source of new and exciting problems for computer science and mathematics. The aim of this project is to further development the relationship between computation, experimentation, and number theory. In turn this may lead to new exciting discoveries.

Prerequisites

Good programming skill in C++ or any other major programing language; solid mathematical background. Active interest in experimentation and research.

Project Motivation and Description

Number theory targets the most fundamental object of a human's mind: integer numbers. It also provides a very powerful background for many important constructions in computer science and cryptography. Over the several hundred years of study, mathematicians have developed enough of understanding of integer numbers that usually enables them to heuristically predict well enough their behaviour in various scenarios, even if rigorous proofs are often still unknown. There are however, several natural and important questions where even heuristic predictions are very difficult to make. In these cases modern computers come to help. They allow to collect and analyze a large amount data, and thus make some reliable conjectures, and sometimes also lead to full proofs.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcomes will be formulation of, and providing a convincing support to, several new conjectures in the area of number theory and cryptography.

Pseudorandom Number Generators in Cryptography and Computation

Supervisor

Igor Shparlinski

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to test and compare the quality and speed several recently suggested pseudorandom number generators.

Prerequisites

Good programming skill in C++ or any other major programing language; solid mathematical background.

Project Motivation and Description

Pseudorandom number generators are of great importance for both cryptogarphy and mathematical simulation of complex systems. Yet, very few satisfactory constructions are known and those are not fully understood as yet.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcomes include, but are not limited too, a series of test results (speed, distribution, unpredictability, etc.) about already existing generators as well as design an investigation of new generators.

A Double-Base Number System Library for Cryptographic Applications

Supervisor

Christophe Doche

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

This project aims at the development of a C++ library able to efficiently compute different variants of the Double-Base Number System for a given integer.

Prerequisites

A good understanding of traditonal numeric representation systems. Good algorithmic background, dynamic programming and a good knowledge of C++. Knowledge of the packages NTL or GMP and an elementary understanding of cryptography are a plus.

Project Motivation and Description

The double-base number system is an original way to represent an integer n as a sum of terms of the form 2^a3^b. This system (and its generalisations) proves to be useful in cryptography where relevant integers are several hundreds of bits long. This system is useful in practice since one can easily find representations involving very few terms (significantly less than in base 2 for instance) for any given integer. It has important applications in many cryptographic protocols as it allows non-negligible speed-ups over traditional methods. A C++ library, building on existing packages NTL or GMP, could then be made available for the use and the benefit of the community.

Intended Outcomes

A report on the work carried out
A C++ library to efficiently compute Double-Base Number expansions of a given multiprecision integer

Randomized Quiz Generation in Moodle

Supervisor

Christophe Doche

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

This project aims at developing a moodle plugin to assist students' learning of programming, in this case in Java. It consists in researching and implementing a software able to quickly and automatically generate a set of different questions/answers related to a particular Java topic taken from a pool of predetermined programming notions.

Prerequisites

A good knowledge of Java and PHP. Knowledge of moodle is a plus.

Project Motivation and Description

Feedback that students receive after completing a certain task is a critical component of their learning. Providing useful feedback is in general a difficult and time-consuming task. However it is easy to give very simple feedback (right or wrong) for simple programming questions through computer based assessment. Questions of increasing difficulty can then be used to deliver immediate feedback and ensure a student gains technical competency for a particular topic. The randomized nature of this tool ensures that different questions are given to different students (to avoid plagiarism) or to the same student at different times (to evaluate student's progress).

Intended Outcomes

A report on the work carried out
A moodle plugin able to generate randomized quizzes assssing different programming concepts

Detecting and Responding to Pedagogical and Safety Issues in Online Educational Virtual Worlds

Supervisor

Deborah Richards

Student

Diego Fernando Gutierrez Aponte

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

Virtual Worlds provide promise for learning however there are concerns whether the pedagogical goals can be achieved and how to handle risks such as cyberbullying.

Prerequisites

The student must have good communication skills. Ideally the student has some familiarity with virtual worlds and games used in education.

Project Motivation and Description

Parents, Teachers and education authorities are reluctant to allow virtual worlds to be deployed in the classroom or accessed at home because they are concerned that they will not be able to protect the privacy of the child and the potential for cyberbullying or stalking. This project will identify the issues and recommend solutions. A socio-technical approach should be taken which consider human factors as well as technology.

Intended Outcomes

A thorough literature review of research in this space and relevant case studies.
A set of solutions and recommendation to address the issues identified.

A Multisensory and Multimodal Game for Children with Cochlear Implants

Supervisor

Deborah Richards

Student

Maria Carmela Sogono

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

This project will develop a multisensory game in which visual and tactile feedback systematically engages and refines localisation skill.

Prerequisites

The student must have good programming skills. Ideally the student will have experience with programming a game.

Project Motivation and Description

A cochlear implant can allow a recipient with single-sided deafness to pick up sounds from their deaf side. However, locating the direction of that sound is difficult. It is unclear if CI recipients are able to learn the location of the sound over time. Immersive gaming will provide continuous visual feedback about localisation, allowing users to improve localisation cues arising from CIs. Games have previously been used with CI users, but have focused on sound input only. This proejct will develop an immersive audiovisual gaming environment to assess and train sound localisation skill among CI users.

Intended Outcomes

A literature review of research in this space.
A game which has varying levels of complexity and range of tasks that will allow the child to practice identifying the location of sounds.
A report which describes how the game can be used and how evaluation could be undertaken.

Adding Automatic Annotation to the Australian National Corpus

Supervisor

Steve Cassidy

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The Australian National Corpus is a new facility to support research on Australian Langauge. It consists of a number of large collections of text and associated meta-data and annotation. Meta-data describes the texts - author, title, when written, etc, while annotation describes the structure of the text and the language it contains.

A useful kind of annotation is a part-of-speech tagging. This adds a tag to each word describing it's part of speech (noun, verb etc). There are automated ways of generating these tags, this project is about applying one of these automated taggers to the texts in the corpus and integrating the results with the rest of the annotations so that it is useful to researchers.

There are other kinds of automatic annotation that we might look at as well as part-of-speech.

Prerequisites

The software to support the AusNC is written in Python and you would need to be able to write Python to make a contribution. The language is easy to learn, so it could be your first Python project.
Good general programming skills.
Some knowledge of language structure, linguistics (desirable).

Project Motivation and Description

The AusNC is a new national facility to support eResearch, we have had funding to get the project started and there are a lot of people interested in making use of the resources and adding new data to the collections. It's important that we are seen to add value to the resources in the collection. Being able to apply one or more automatic annotation tools to the data will be a big plus.

Unfortunately this was out of scope for the initial project, but it makes a nice focussed project for an MIT student which should yield some useful experience and gives you the opportunity to make a real contribution to a real-world research tool.

Intended Outcomes

A working part-of-speech tagger reading data from the AusNC and generating conformant annotation that can be fed back to the corpus
An assessment and design for integrating similar automatic annotation tools into the corpus infrastructure
A report on the project that can be used by future students and project staff to build on the work in this project
A demonstration of the application of the tagger to some or all of the corpus texts

Processing Business Rules

Supervisor

Rolf Schwitter

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

In this project you will process business rules with an existing statistical parser and investigate if the generated syntactic relations can be translated automatically into a logical notation that can be processed by an automated reasoning service.

Prerequisites

An interest in natural language processing as well as strong programming skills are required.

Project Motivation and Description

Business rules are statements written in natural language that define or constrain how a person or a machine can perform a specific action in the operational context of an organisation. Business rules serve as elements of guidance for making decisions and specify how things must be done or how things have to be understood in an organisation. If these business rules are well-written, then they follow certain structural patterns. Statistical parsers exploit knowledge of language and try to produce the most likely analysis of a sentence. These parsers make sometimes mistakes, and it is an open research question, if there output can be used (and possibly fixed) to generate logical forms for business rules that can then be processed by an automated reasoning service.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcome of this project is a prototype that takes the output of a statistical parser and generates a logical form for a number of selected business rules. If the quality of the resulting logical forms is high enough, then their usefulness should be demonstrated in a specific reasoning task, otherwise the entire approach is subject to a critical discussion.

Matching BPM and SNA Graphs

Supervisor

Peter Busch

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

This project extends work done previously on comparing Social Network Analysis (SNA) graphs with Business Process Modelling (BPM) workflows to examine the overlap between workflows and social interactions in a workplace.

Prerequisites

It would be expected that students have programming knowledge in Java or C and be able to interpret SNA graphs and BPM workflow diagrams.

Project Motivation and Description

Following on from previous work conducted by ITEC810 students, this project will examine the literature in the areas mentioned above as well as some algorithm designs already established. The interested student will extend algorithms already proposed to read in an SNA graph and then map this graph against a BPM workflow to establish closeness of fit. Where one graph does not align, the differences in the two models should be exposed.

Intended Outcomes

An updated analysis of the literature in this space, leading to a literature review
An understanding of BPM and SNA approaches
Extension of an algorithm for which partial work has already been undertaken
Programming the algorithm so that graphs may be compared one with another
Testing with some sample data
Writing up the results of the tests.

A Review of Answer Set Programming

Supervisor

Rolf Schwitter

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

In this project you will conduct a comprehensive review of Answer Set Programming (ASP) and its applications. ASP is a form of declarative problem solving that has its roots in knowledge representation, logic programming, and constraint satisfaction.

Prerequisites

Experience with declarative programming languages and some knowledge of propositional and first-order logic would be helpful. Be prepared to learn to program in ASP for this project since you have to write snippets of code that introduce the language by examples in your review.

Project Motivation and Description

ASP is a rather new programming paradigm where search problems are reduced to computing stable models (= answer sets) that form solutions. ASP uses a simple and intuitive modelling language and is oriented towards difficult search problems. ASP has been applied to several areas of science and technology and has already resulted in a number of successful applications. However, it is difficult to find a good review of ASP that provides a synthesis on this novel paradigm and that can serve at the same time as an introductory text for, let's say, a 3rd year computing student.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcome of this project is a review of ASP that should include a discussion of the history and origin of ASP, a presentation of the language and its extensions by means of carefully crafted code examples, a comparison of existing Answer Set solvers, and an overview of existing ASP applications from different domains.

The Logic of Trust: A Literature Review

Supervisor

Abhaya Nayak

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to provide an adequate review of the literature on logical accounts of trust.

Prerequisites

This project requires a formal background, interest in trust related research, attention to details, and the interest/ability to present complex ideas in a simple and clear manner. It will be ideal for a student interested to subsequently do a PhD in this area.

Project Motivation and Description

The concept of trust is playing an increasingly important role in different fields related to information technology, such as multi agent systems, communication networks, and social networks. Different approaches to analyse the concept of trust, leading to alternative ways of implementing trust computation have been suggested. Suggested formalisms include Dempster-Shafer's belief functions, Spohn's ordinal conditionalization functions, specialised modal logics and decision theory. Any foundational study on trust needs to survey this literature.

Intended Outcomes

A review of the area based on at least one representative work from different approaches to trust. The report needs be between twenty and thirty pages.

Measuring Cognitive Load in Gesture Analysis

Supervisor

Manolya Kavakli

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The main objective of this project is to explore human computer interaction and gesture recognition, in order to support the design process. In this short-term MIT project, we will specifically focus on measuring cognitive load in the performance of design tasks collecting data measuring skin conductivity.

Prerequisites

The student is expected to review existing literature, design and conduct further experiments, and analyse collected data to validate the previously established hypotheses regarding gesture recognition. Analytical skills are required to carry out the project. Experience in statistical analysis packages, protocol analysis, cognitive walkthrough, and/or Matlab are desirable.

Project Motivation and Description

This is a Discovery project sponsored by the Australian Research Council. The project examines a novel environment in which a designer can define the contour of a sketch by controlling a pointer using a pair of datagloves and can interact with the design product in 3D space. The virtual environment incorporates 3D position sensors so that drawing primitives entered are recreated in real time and projected to the user. The interface developed recognizes hand-gestures of the designer, passes commands to a 3D modelling package via a motion recognition system, produces the 3D model of the sketch on-the-fly, and generates it on a head mounted display.

Intended Outcomes

The expected outcomes of this proposal are: The thresholds for skin conductivity measures and the development of an analysis method for measuring cognitive load in the performance of creative tasks using hand-gestures.

Gesture Analysis

Supervisor

A/Prof Manolya Kavakli

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The main objective of this project is to explore human computer interaction and gesture recognition, in order to support the design process. In this short-term MIT project, we will specifically focus on the investigation and analysis of design behaviour and semiotics of gestures in various design tasks.

Prerequisites

The student is expected to review existing literature, conduct further experiments, and analyse collected data to validate the previously established hypotheses regarding gesture recognition. Analytical skills are required to carry out the project. Experience in statistical analysis packages, protocol analysis, cognitive walkthrough, and/or Matlab are desirable.

Project Motivation and Description

Intended Outcomes

The expected outcomes of this proposal are: The comparitive analysis following the analysis of hand-gestures based on preliminary testing using traditional methods and the VR technology in the performance of creative tasks.

A Comprehensive Review of Logical Structure Extraction

Supervisor

Robert Dale

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature and software tools that attempt to address the problem of extracting logical structure from documents.

Prerequisites

This project requires an interest in the area, an attention to detail, and a general awareness of the issues in document formatting and processing, which might have been obtained, for example, by having used a number of different document processing systems (such as Word and LaTeX) in constructing variety of documents with non-trivial format and structure. Although this is cast as an analysis project, it would be particularly suitable for a student who is interested in going on to do a PhD that involves the implementation of techniques for deriving logical structure from physical structure.

Project Motivation and Description

When we talk about documents, a useful distinction can be drawn between physical structure and logical structure. Physical structure is concerned with visible layout properties such as the constituent pages, columns and paragraphs that make up the document; logical structure is concerned with the underlying structure that consists of elements such as title information, headings, sections, and subsections. Documents such as PDF files generally only provide a view of the physical structure; but many intelligent text processing applications need to access the logical structure. The mapping between the two structures is non-trivial, and a great deal of research has explored how we can derive the logical structure of a document from its physical structure. This project will attempt to summarise the literature in this field, to review existing software solutions, and to identify the most promising techniques in the area.

Intended Outcomes

A detailed review that consolidates and organises information on existing solutions to the extraction of logical structure, with a clear indication of the state of the art and an analysis of future prospects.

Extracting Abstracts from PDF Files

Supervisor: Robert Dale

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to build a tool that is able to identify and extract the text from a specific logical element of research papers provided in PDF format.

Prerequisites

This project requires strong programming skills in either Java or Python.

Project Motivation and Description

PDF files are the standard format in which research articles are distributed and consumed. It is often useful to get an idea of the content of research paper without having to open the PDF file that contains it in a browser. A useful indication of the content of a research paper is typically provided in the abstract, a short piece of text near the beginning of the document that summarises what the paper is about. This project aims to build a tool that is able to navigate the logical structure of a PDF file in order to identify and extract the abstract contained within that file. This is challenging because there is no simple correlation between the physical layout characteristics of the text, and the logical status of the elements in the document.

Intended Outcomes

An implementation of a tool that identifies and extracts abstracts from journal and conference papers in PDF format.

Parsing Bibliographic Data

Supervisor

Robert Dale

Student

Rudy Kartono Ng

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to build a tool that can parse the entries in a document's reference list into sets of named fields.

Prerequisites

This project requires strong programming skills in either Java or Python.

Project Motivation and Description

Scholarly works usually contain reference lists which provide detailed information on how to obtain the works cited in the text. This typically includes information such as author, date, title, and the name and location of the publisher. For many automated document processing tasks it would be useful to have this information in a structured form, where each data element is explicitly labelled; however, in most cases the data is provided in a semi-structured free format which the user has to parse. This is relatively straightforward for a human to do, but much harder for a machine. The aim of this project is to develop a parser which can extract the information in a free-form bibliograhic entry into a set of labelled fields with high accuracy.

Intended Outcomes

An implementation of a tool that is able to parse bibliographic data.

A Portfolio of Spelling Correctors

Supervisor

Robert Dale

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to build a number of spelling correctors based on techniques described in the literature, and to test these spelling correctors on a common set of data so that their relative strengths and weaknesses can be identified.

Project Type

Development

Prerequisites

This project requires strong programming skills, previous experience in programming in Python, and an attention to detail.

Project Motivation and Description

Spelling correction has been around for a long time, but it is still far from a solved problem, especially when we consider the problem of words misspelled as other words (such as their vs there and quite vs quiet); these are often referred to as context sensitive spelling errors, since in order to correct them, one has to take account of the context in which the word is found. Many techniques for addressing this task have been described in the research literature; the aim of this project is to re-implement four of the most important methods that have been described, and to test them on a common data set.

Intended Outcomes

A re-implementation of four spelling correction techniques and their comparative evaluation on a common data set.

Choice in Video Games

Supervisor

Michael Hitchens

Student

Ricardo I Corral Terrazas

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

To develop a model to represent the types and scope of choices offered to players of video games.

Prerequisites

A knowledge of video games; it would best if the student has played a considerable number.

Project Motivation and Description

Video games should offer choices to their players. If the game does not offer choice then what is the player doing? However, there is little understanding of what sort of choice is offered to players and how this varies across different types of game. This project will propose a categorisation of the types of choices available to players, based on ontological approaches to analysing games.

Intended Outcomes

A model describing the differing types of choices offered to players in video games.
A report describing the model and giving examples of its application to a range of existing games.

Trust Models for Cloud Computing

Supervisor

Michael Hitchens

Student

Swetal Yogeshbhai Patel

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to identify the issues associated with trust in cloud computing and to review and compare the existing models that address trust in this area.

Prerequisites

Good knowledge of distributed systems and preferably some knowledge of cloud computing.

Project Motivation and Description

Cloud computing is rapidly expanding. However, the security issues surrounding it are complex and not all fully resolved. One of the fundamental issues is the trust between the cloud providers and the various users, especially if the cloud is used to host services provided to third parties. This project will examine the issues connected to trust in cloud computing and the various models that have been proposed for handling trust in cloud computing.

Intended Outcomes

An enumeration and explanation of trust issues in cloud computing
A review and analysis of existing models of trust in cloud computing based on the identified issues
Ideally recommendations as to the best approach to modelling trust in cloud computing

Porting pLucid to Java

Supervisor

Mehmet A. Orgun

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to port the implementation of a dataflow programming language written in C to Java. The student is also expected to learn how to write programs in a specific dataflow programming language and appreciate the dataflow model of computation.

Prerequisites

This project requires a good understanding of both C and Java. It also requires advanced programming skills, working knowledge of program development environments, to be organised and methodical, and to present results in a professional manner.

Project Motivation and Description

The dataflow model of computation provides an alternative way of programming in contrast to more traditional forms of programming. It is more amenable to paralellism and/or distributed models of computation over large clusters of processing stations. pLucid is one of the earliest dataflow programming languages which was proposed in early 1980'ies by Faustini, Matthews and Yaghi [1]. It belongs to a family of dataflow functional programming languages originally proposed by Bill Wadge and Ed Ashcroft [2]. In pLucid, a given program defines a dataflow network of continuously operating autonomous processing stations (nodes) where data is processed while it flows between the nodes. The original implementation of pLucid was coded in C [3]. In this project we will port its original implementation of pLucid written in C to Java to make it available on a wide range of computing platforms.

Intended Outcomes

The outcome will be a Java implementation of pLucid and a report discussing the dataflow model of computation by giving examples in Lucid.

References

A. A. Faustini, S. G. Matthews and A. A. G. Yaghi. The pLucid Programming Manual (Last accessed July 19, 2011)
William W. Wadge, Edward A. Ashcroft. Lucid, the dataflow programming language. Academic Press - A.P.I.C. studies in data processing; no. 22, 311 pages, 1985.
pLucid (Last accessed July 19, 2011)

Analysis of Temporal Relational Data Models

Supervisor

Mehmet A. Orgun

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to explore how the notion of time can be represented in the relational model of data and to provide an analysis of a few representative temporal relational data models.

Prerequisites

This project requires a good understanding of modern database systems, especially the relational model and the relational query languages. Some skills such as demonstration of the ability to apply logical thinking to gathering and analyzing information, to be organised and methodical, and to present results in a professional manner, are also essential.

Project Motivation and Description

In the relational model of data, each relation reflects the current reality as it is best known of the enterprise being modeled. The model cannot deal with the notion of a history, or how each relation has evolved into what it is now. Having recognized the need to incorporate the time dimension into the relational model, a significant number of efforts have been directed towards studying various aspects of this problem. In this project, an analysis will be carried out to identify and classify several representative temporal relational data models, to study their associated temporal query languages and to point out potential applications of those temporal relational data models. The analysis will also include a brief overview of how time is modeled in modern relational database systems such as Oracle.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcomes of this project include a report that presents a detailed analysis of a few representative temporal relational data models and their associated query languages.

Content Selection, Time Series Data and Football Commentary

Supervisor

Mark Dras

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The project is related to a larger project on generating textual commentary for football games in English and in Arrernte (http://www.comp.mq.edu.au/~ayeye/). This particular subproject will look at content selection: specifically, it will investigate using software for analysing time series data, and correlating that with a collection of textual commentary, as a first step to seeing how methods can be developed for automatically selecting 'interesting' content.

Prerequisites

Good programming skills would be useful: the project will involve installing various pieces of software and trying them out, possibly using scripting to run them over large amounts of data. A level of comfort with mathematics is helpful, although knowledge of time series analysis techniques is not essential. Similarly, familiarity with machine learning (particularly Weka) would be useful but not essential.

Project Motivation and Description

There is a (small) body of work on automatically generating textual commentary for various sports games. For the most part the data described in the commentary (e.g. a particular goal that leads to the highest score difference, or a streak of goals by one team) is chosen by manually determined rules, although there is some work in using machine learning to decide which 'raw' facts -- that is, facts in the database -- are interesting. We want to extend this to data not found directly in the database, e.g. regarding goal streaks.

Intended Outcomes

The outcomes will be

an investigation of the suitability of various open source software for this time series analysis;
a series of tests on how well the data produced by the time series analysis correlates with a collection of textual commentary we have on two seasons of football games;
and possibly (time permitting) a first pass at an algorithm for automatically choosing time series data to be described, along with an evaluation of its accuracy.

Learning Management System Real-time Quiz Results Display Tool

Supervisor

Matt Bower

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to create a real-time quiz response tool for the Moodle Learning Management System. The Moodle Learning Management System currently allows teachers to setup quizzes and students to provide their responses online, however none of the native quiz tools or plugins enable responses to be graphed in realtime. Establishing such a system would allow a teacher to propose quiz or survey questions during a lesson, and immediately analyse student responses with the class.

Prerequisites

Confident developing in PHP and MySQL (and other languages that may be used to enable the realtime graphing)
Self motivated
Strong organisational skills
Ability to work towards high level goals with relative independence

Project Motivation and Description

Moodle is an open source Learning Management System currently being used by millions of students and teachers across the globe. Teachers need a way to collect data from their students (such as multiple choice quiz and survey responses) and instantly represent that data. With the modular design of Moodle 2.0 and the growing popularity of web-enabled mobile devices, such a plugin could revolutionise learning and teaching across the planet.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcomes of this project are:

Development of a quiz module (based on other similar modules) that enables teachers to set quiz/survey questions and then display a graph of the responses as they are submitted by students. The module should be able to be viewed by both laptops and web-enabled mobile phones.
Possible extension 1: develop other usability features that allow the teacher to tailor how the responses are displayed (eg when the responses start to be displayed, graphing format, student view etc).
Possible future extension 2: develop a standalone quiz app that can be used by mobile devices but runs off a Moodle server.

Collaborative Reflection Blogging Tool

Supervisor

Matt Bower

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to augment the features of the Wordpress blogging system (or similar) to enable users to provide feedback & ratings of posts along a number of dimensions. This would allow teachers to encourage students to post feedback to one another so that they could learn from the perceptions of their peers. The system could also enable teachers to gauge the quality of student postings based on the feedback and ratings of the students.

Prerequisites

Confident developing in PHP and MySQL (or the underlying technology of the blogging tool being used)
Self motivated
Strong organisational skills
Ability to work towards high level goals with relative independence

Project Motivation and Description

Reflective tasks are becoming more popular in education. Reviewing the work of others helps people to understand what constitutes quality performance in a domain, and students can benefit from the feedback of their peers. Eportfolio tasks (using blogs) provide a technology for capturing student progress on a task, but as yet there is no blogging tool that enables the administrator to specify the type of feedback categories that reviewers can post. If a teacher was able to define that they wanted students to rate elements of peers' posts such as the clarity, content knowledge, and relevance, then that information could be harvested to help teachers track performance of the class over time. If well designed, this system could be picked up by teachers across the planet.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcomes of this project in descending order of importance are:

Development of a plugin for Wordpress (or similar blogging tool) that enables different feedback elements to be specified for blog postings.
Development of a way for the administrator (for instance, teacher) to easily harvest the feedback that users post.

Communities of Practice using Drupal

Supervisor

Matt Bower

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to determine how the features of Drupal are best deployed and augmented in order to create effective Communities of Practice. Drupal is a popular Content Management System that is used the world over to create and manage websites. Communities of Practice is an established means of thinking about how groups work together to establish goals and extend their understanding of a field. This project would examine the literature underpinning Communities of Practice to derive principles for using Drupal to engage contribution and a sense of community. Up to three case study contexts are available for research and development.

Prerequisites

Capability to administer a Drupal server (PHP and MySQL backend)
Self motivated
Strong organisational skills
Ability to work towards high level goals with relative independence
(Optional: ability to develop in PHP and MySQL so as to customise the system)

Project Motivation and Description

Many websites attempt to engage users and encourage their contribution but almost as many struggle to foster widespread interest. What are the tricks to creating a sense of community around a website? What are the ways that tools should be used in order to encourage participation? Being able to do this is not just a matter of theoretical interest - it is a commercially valuable skill. Up to three case study contexts are available for investigating these questions, including a learning technology research group website, a grant project website, and a personal website.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcomes of this project in descending order of importance are:

An analysis of the literature surrounding Communities of Practice and Professional Learning Communities.
An analysis of the tools available in Drupal
A demonstration of how Drupal can be deployed so as to draw upon principles underpinning the development of effective Communities of Practice

Building an Activity Based Costing (ABC) Solution

Supervisor

Gary Lau

Student

Heron Jayawardena

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

Deliver to Office of Financial Services (OFS) web based data collection and reporting capability concerning Activity Based Costing Data through a tool called Palo (OLAP technology).

Prerequisites

SQL, PHP, analytical mind.

Project Motivation and Description

Develop a better and more efficient way to help organisation determine where their cost are incurred in order to improve profitability.

Intended Outcome

Deliver an integrated ABC solution that meets OFS specifications.

Semantic Intelligence Application to Survey Data

Supervisor

Gary Lau

Student

Mario Zullo

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

Evaluate a number of different semantic intelligence tools.
Use the best tool to analyse student survey data.
Determine what MQ does best and areas of improvement from survey data.

Prerequisites

SQL, text analytics, excellent problem solving skills.

Project Motivation and Description

Semantic intelligence is becoming an important business advantage e.g. understanding what external customers are saying about your products and services.

Intended Outcome

Two reports: (1) Tool Evaluation; and (2) Recommendations to MQ.

Cloud Business Intelligence

Supervisor

Gary Lau

Student

Dujin Choi

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

Create a framework for evaluating Cloud Business Intelligence. Identify the top 3 tools that support this framework.

Prerequisites

SQL, data warehousing, text analytics, ETL (extract-transform-load) principles.

Project Motivation and Description

Business are always looking for ways to save money. One way is to outsource their Information Technology infrastructure. The goal is to:

create a framework evaluating the advantages/disadvantages of putting corporate data on the cloud.
convince business that this is a viable alternative to building in-house business intelligence systems.

Intended Outcome

Two reports: (1) Cloud BI Evaluation Framework; (2) Report identifying Top 3 Tools for business.

Linear Programming in Information Technology

Supervisor

Scott McCallum

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

Linear programming is important in operations research, and it can also be applied to information technology. The aim of the project is to become familiar with linear programming and its application to information technology. A small number of case studies will be developed in consultation with the supervisor.

Prerequisites

Some background in linear algebra could be useful. Some prior familiarity with linear or mathematical programming could be advantageous, although not absolutely necessary. A genuine interest in some application area in which linear programming could be used would be desirable. More general skills needed will be an ability to start work on the project early, to specify and refine as necessary the specific project goals (in consultation with the supervisor), to work systematically towards those goals, to think critically, and to write a coherent report on what has been learnt.

Project Motivation and Description

Linear programming, also known as linear optimization, is an important approach in the general area of operations research. It concerns optimization of a linear measure of performance called an objective function subject to semilinear constraints. Although most books on the subject focus on more traditional applications such as production scheduling, blending of products, and transportation, linear programming can be used as an adjunct to methods used in information technology. Such applications include prediction, pattern classification and cluster analysis. First the student will become familiar with basic linear programming. Then the student will obtain an overview of applications of linear programming in information technology. Finally the student will develop a small number of case study applications in consultation with the supervisor.

Intended Outcomes

The intended outcome of the project is a report which describes the work performed. It will provide an overview of linear programming, a general discussion of applications in information technology and a description of the case studies undertaken.

Smart Grid Security

Supervisor

Vijay Varadharajan

Student

Ahmad Wajeeh Qasim Alqasim

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The aims of this project are (1) to identify the current state of the art in Smart Grid Security and (2) to review and analyze the security architecture and mechanisms that are currently being developed.

Prerequisites

Good knowledge of distributed systems and networking; some knowledge of security would be useful.

Project Motivation and Description

Smart grid typically refers to a digital electrical grid that makes use of information technologies such as the Internet, wireless, mobile and sensor technologies to gather, distribute information about the behavior of participants in the grid to improve their efficiency. They are becoming significant in the energy industry and are being used on electricity networks, from the power plants and wind farms all the way to the consumers of electricity in homes and businesses. They offer many benefits to utilities and consumers -- mostly seen in big improvements in energy efficiency on the electricity grid and in the energy users' homes and offices. However security and privacy issues are causing major challenges in this area and these are going to be significant over the next decade when the smart grid technologies become increasingly pervasive.

Intended Outcomes

Identification of security and privacy issues in smart grids
Review of common smart grid architectures and applications
Review and analysis of security mechanisms that are currently deployed or being developed.
Identification of possible next steps in terms of security solutions

Android Security

Supervisor

Vijay Varadharajan

Student

Diego Betancour

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The aims of this project are (1) to review the current state of the art in Android Security and (2) to describe and analyze in detail the security model and mechanisms in Android and (3) to analyze recent papers illustrating how these security techniques can be used to develop secure mobile Android applications.

Prerequisites

Good knowledge of operating systems; knowledge of system security would be very useful.

Project Motivation and Description

Android-based smart phones continue to grow in market share. This in turn has led to a dramatic growth in applications for Android-based phones. Android has been beaten up recently with major security companies warning that the Android Marketplace is insecure, and potentially rife with malware. This project is concerned with understanding the security model and mechanisms in Android and how they can be used to develop secure mobile applications.

Intended Outcomes

Familiarization with Android's basic architecture and major abstractions (see http://source.android.com)
Detailed description of Android security model and mechanisms
Analysis of recent papers on security in Android-based applications
Identification of possible next steps in terms of security solutions

Capabilities of Machine Vision Libraries

Supervisor

Len Hamey

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

Industrial machine vision systems perform automated visual inspection, process monitoring, control and assembly in many industries. Images captured with digital cameras are processed to monitor product quality, wear and damage, or to identify vehicles. New applications are in high demand, and are typically developed using a library of well-known algorithms. In this project, you will compare three such libraries with respect to their coverage of machine vision algorithms.

Prerequisites

A student wishing to pursue this project must have an interest in machine vision and automated inspection, as the project will involve becoming familiar with the sorts of algorithms used in these systems. No programming is required, but the student will be expected to read documentation that may be terse, so good English language skills are required. Some prior experience with image processing would be helpful but is not required. A reasonable foundation in mathematics will be important.

Project Motivation and Description

Machine vision systems are increasingly important in applications ranging from manufacture to agriculture. The deployment of machine vision systems is a rapidly growing industry, with increasing demand for new applications. Except for the most basic of applications, each new machine vision application requires custom software development in which well known algorithms are combined to process the images and extract the required information. For example, a particular system may use pattern matching to recognise the location of a machined part in an image, then use segmentation algorithms to identify potential defects, and finally it may measure critical dimensions of the part. All this processing is performed using algorithms that have been developed over the past 50 years of computer vision research.

Machine vision engineers do not wish to reimplement the well known algorithms, so they employ a library of algoritghms. There are commercial library packages and open source libraries. Some libraries support particular hardware for efficiency. A key concern is to ensure that the library selected contains a sufficient diversity of algorithms to be able to implement the required analysis of the images. Before commencing development, the engineer will have some idea of the capabilities required, but experiments with actual image data are likely to highlight limitations that will require modifications to the analysis. This is where the capabilities of the library become critical: are there options for the engineer that can provide the improvements required?

In this project, you will study three machine vision libraries - one commercial package that the supervisor has used for successful industrial projects; one open source package and one other to be selected. Your study will consider the range and diversity of machine vision algorithms provided in the different packages. The main method of understanding will be to study the documentation for the packages which is freely available. If you are interested to explore further, you may wish to implement some simple image processing, but this is entirely optional.

Intended Outcomes

Develop a taxonomy of machine vision algorithms based on the libraries that have been studied.
Report summarising the capabilities of each library with respect to the taxonomy.
Comparison of the libraries, highlighting strengths and weaknesses, possibly relating that to any differences in the target users/purpose of the library.
Evaluation of the libraries and recommendations re selection of a library.

Efficiency of Machine Vision Algorithm Implementations

Supervisor

Len Hamey

Project Type

This is an experimental project: the student will perform experiments involving the development of programs, but the primary outcomes are the results of the experiments not the programs.

Project Aim

Machine vision systems are used in many industries. Images captured with digital cameras are processed to monitor product quality or to identify vehicles. In many applications, images must be processed at video rates or faster, so the execution speed of the underlying algorithms is a critical parameter. In this project, you will study the execution speed of some common machine vision algorithms as they are implemented in 2 or 3 machine vision libraries and also as they can be implemented using the image processing parallel language Apply. The study will help gudie the further development of Apply as a language for efficient image processing.

Prerequisites

Ability to program is essential; C or C++ is required. Ability to understand algorithms and documentation is essential. Interest in machine vision is important. Some knowledge of statistics will be useful. Prior experience with image processing will be helpful but is not required.

Project Motivation and Description

Machine vision systems must analyse digital images rapidly. For example, a labelling machine may allow the machine vision system only several milliseconds to inspect each label before the next product item takes it place in front of the camera. In such situations, execution time of the machine vision algorithms becomes very important.

The speed of execution of a machine vision algorithm is influenced by many factors including: use of specialised hardware (such as MMX extensions, or graphics card); use of parallel processing (modern CPUs are multi-core); program design (looping structures); and data structures (specialised data structures can support more efficient algorithms). This project will study the execution speed of a selection of algorithms that are found in a number of libraries. The algorithms will be selected to represent the range of machine vision algorithms typ[ically required in real applications. The student will compare the library implementations experimentally by writing programs that use the implementations. There may also be useful information to be gleaned from documentation and/or research papers relevant to the selected algorithms. As a further point of comparison, some of the algorithms can also be implemented in Apply and the speed of these implementations compared with the other library implementations.

Intended Outcomes

A report detailing:

The algorthms that were selected and the reasons for their selection.
Execution time measurements for each of the different implementations of the same algorithms.
Other aspects that may be of interest for comparison (such as specialised data structures, comments on ease of programming, etc).
Comparison of the libraries in terms of the efficiency of their algorithm implementations.
Comparison with Apply implementations.
Evaluation of the libraries.
Recommendations regarding library efficiency.
Recommendations for the future development of Apply to improve its efficiency or usefulness.

Apply-language Image Processing Library

Supervisor

Len Hamey

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

Industrial vision systems are built using libraries of algorithms. Apply is a language designed for efficiently implementing such libraries in a platform-independent manner. The same Apply code can be compiled for uniprocessor or parallel architectures and for different data structures (e.g. different image representations). This project aims to build a library of Apply code that can be used to demonstrate the capabilities of the Apply language. The project will also assist in identifying limitations of the language and possible improvements to guide its future development.

Prerequisites

Ability to program in C is essential. Knowledge of Pascal or Ada would be helpful. Interest in image processing is essential. Good mathematics background is essential. An understanding of compiler technology may be helpful.

Project Motivation and Description

The libraries that underpin industrial vision systems are typically developed as custom libraries in languages such as C or C++, Java, etc. Each library ends up being committed to a particular language. Further, the code may be developed to exploit particular hardware features (such as MMX or graphics card) which produces improved efficiency but restricts the applicability of the library even further. Apply is a language for writing lilbraries without committing to the target environment (language, hardware, etc). The idea is that a library of Apply modules can be compiled down to different target environments producing efficient code for each particular target. Apply is not a general-purpose language - the special features of Apply are designed to support porting the code efficiently to different environments.

In this project, you will write Apply modules to implement a range of image processing operations as found in one or more machine vision libraries. Not every algorithm found in such a library can be implemented in Apply, but many can be and your task is a build a substantial library of Apply modules. You may need to read books and/or research papers in order to understand the algorithms that you are implementing, and then you will express them in Apply. Apply is based on Ada and the syntax is not difficult, so if you are an experienced programmer, you will soon pick it up.

The Apply language has some significant limitations. As part of the project you will undoubtedly come across algorithms that you would like to implement, but you will find that they cannot be expressed in Apply. These cases are interesting to guide the future development of Apply. Depending upon your initiative, you may wish to merely catalog them, or you may wish to consider how the Apply language could be extended to include these algorithms. Not everything is suitable for the basic concept of Apply, but some algorithms would be suitable for extended versions of the Apply language and this is interesting.

Intended Outcomes

A substantial library of algorithms implemented in Apply. The library will include groups of related algorithms such as groups of edge detectors, segmenters, etc. At least 30 algorithms will be written and tested.
Report discussing the implementations, and discussing the limitations of Apply and algorithms that could not be implemented.
For the higher grades, discussion of what would be needed in Apply in order to implement some of the unimplementable algorithms.

Honeypot Literature Review

Supervisor

Milton Baar

Student

Farukh Naghman

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

To identify, review and analyse Honeypot project academic literature from 2010 to the present and identify any trends in project or target behaviour.

Prerequisites

Understanding of honeypot concept - Mandatory
Understanding of networking vulnerabilities - Mandatory
Understanding of operating system concepts - Mandatory
Understanding of application vulnerabilities - Mandatory
Understanding of coding practices and secure coding techniques - Mandatory
Understanding of cryptography - desirable
Understanding of certificate management - desirable
Understanding of phishing techniques - desirable
Understanding of behavioural motivation in end users - desirable
Statistical analysis - desirable

Project Motivation and Description

Honeypot projects have developed from user-based initiatives to formal corporate and research-funded projects. In the last three years, human factors have become increasingly important, sometimes equalling technical factors when creating a Honeypot. In some institutions, students are the targets of Honeypots in an attempt to understand developing behaviours in a wider cohort. This project will attempt to identify and quantify any significant changes.

Intended Outcomes

Baseline or trendline for selected Honeypot characteristics from 2000-2009
Identification of significant changes in observed characteristics from 2010, with analysis and explanation of what they are and why they have occurred
Analysis of changes (if any) to project participants' behaviour from 2010 (including a definition of who project participants are)

Optional:

Identification of requirements for MQ to run a project or participate with an existing institution.

A Data Centre Strategy for Sustainability

Supervisor

Stephen Smith

Student

Annawar Soe

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

To address and propose solutions for the increasing demand for data storage and computer capacity that is environmentally sustainable, and that consolidates infrastructure and applications to offer cost efficiencies.

Prerequisites

The pre-requisites are rudimentary:

Sound project management skills
Ability to conduct a Literature Review
Ability to review existing case studies
Good collaboration skills (with external organisations and staff)
Well-developed problem solving ability
Ability to undertake critical analysis
Ability to find or propose a solution from the available information
Ability to work independently
Ability to write a coherent report and present the findings to an industry audience

Project Motivation and Description

State governments and large corporations can have a large number of decentralised storage facilities, ranging from small facilities to specialised data storage facilities. Currently data centres use 3% of all the world energy (the same amount as the airline industry), but data centre energy consumption is growing at ~10% per year. This project will analyse current practice in the development of data centres and look to providing options for establishing and managing current and future data centres. This project is interesting because of its relevance to universities and governments from a commercial standpoint, but more importantly it addresses an emerging problem globally.

Intended Outcomes

A report that serve as a white paper in this area,
Skills development in the area of data centre efficiency and current practice.

Bus Timetabling and Scheduling

Supervisor

Stephen Smith

Student

Xinru Ma

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

Buses have a poor record of maintaining their timetables schedules. This is usually beyond their control due to traffic delays. This project proposes solution(s) for improving bus services, reducing delays and getting them to arrive on-time.

Prerequisites

The pre-requisites are rudimentary:

Sound project management skills
Ability to conduct a Literature Review
Ability to review existing case studies
An understanding of communication networks
Good collaboration skills (with external organisations and staff)
Well-developed problem solving ability
Ability to undertake critical analysis
Ability to find or propose a solution from the available information
Ability to work independently
Ability to write a coherent report and present the findings to industry

Project Motivation and Description

An election promise was made to address the issue of Sydney bus timetables, services and schedules. Voters (commuters) were complaining about the frequency and reliability of bus services, mainly to the CBD but also the connections to train and ferry services. Delays in bus arrivals cause a flow-on effect where commuters would miss their connecting services (another bus, train or ferry). The government promised that if they were elected they would address this problem. The project will analyse current traffic management practices and look to providing options for improving services. This project is complex and interesting because of its relevance to Governments and commercially, but more importantly it is a problem for most cities and bus networks.

Intended Outcomes

A report that serves as a white paper in this area
Develop skills in the area of transport (mobile) network management

Context Comparison in Trust Inference

Supervisor

Yan Wang

Project Type

Analysis

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to produce a survey on the studies of context-aware trust inference in various application environments.

Prerequisites

Should be self-motivated with a strong desire for high quality work.
Should have a good knowledge of modelling and algorithms.

Project Motivation

Trust is an important issue in many applications, such as e-commerce recommendation systems and online social networks. Trust is context specific, so context-aware trust evaluation is important for obtaining more objective results. This is the case in all applications taking trust as an important issue.

This project will focus on how context is modelled and compared in different application environments, and how the result of context comparison is used in trust inference/evaluation.

Intended Outcomes

The student needs to work closely with the supervisor and a PhD student to analyse the existing studies in the literature, analyse their features and categorise them. Future problems and possible solutions are expected, particularly for context-aware trust inference in social networks.

Visualization for Trust Inference in Social Networks

Supervisor

Yan Wang

Project Type

Development

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to implement a visualization tool for social networks that supports a specially designed complex social network structure with trust and other impact factors and trust inference in the network based on provided algorithms.

Prerequisites

Should be self-motivated with a desire to produce high quality work
Should have good programming skills in Java and JUNG
Should have good experience in databases
Knowledge of XML would be desirable

Project Motivation

Online social networks are becoming popular tools and platforms for a variety of rich activities that require computing the trustworthiness of other people in the network taking a number of impact factors into account. Due to the massive scale in social networks, visualization tools should be a great assistance to navigation in social networks.

This project would not only further improve your programming skill, but also provide an opportunity to extend your knowledge of social networks and the state-or-the-art techniques in the field.

Intended Outcomes

The student needs to work closely with the supervisor and a PhD student to develop software with a user friendly interface and required functionality for navigating in social networks. Currently, there already exists an early-stage prototype with some navigation functionality provided. The student is expected to incorporate two trust oriented algorithms into the system, and implement other functionality as required. In addition, the complete set of system code and documentation should be provided.

Shopping Cart and Online Checkout

Supervisor

Frank Moisiadis, in conjunction with Mr Petros Petrou (Celestiatech)

Project Type

Development Project

Project Aim

The project has the following aims:

Research online eShops and Point of Sales (POS) solutions and shortlist ideas for user interfaces
Consider a modern design, rich AJAX functionality, ease of use, Web 2 design and a drag and drop functionality
Propose a solution by providing a number of mock-up pages

You need to provide mock ups including page layouts for the following: Product search and search results (description, images, prices, currency etc); Shopping cart (add/remove, summary etc); Checkout page; Credit card processing page; Payment verification page.

Prerequisites

You will be provided with a maven project called simpleEtrader. The majority classes you will need have already been created. You will be using the SpringFramework and Web Services integration using the framework CXF. This project involves requires competency with CSS and HTML work. You will implement the above solution using Tapestry5.

Project Motivation and Description

This is a real industry project where you can be involved in developing interfaces and pages for a industry standard web service.

Intended Outcomes

Thorough research of layouts for web services, considering existing popular designs, such as ebay, Amazon, and ozsale.com.au.
Designing mockups that clearly communicate your ideas: Does your proposed solution stand out from what's already on the net? Can your solution be flexible to be used for any product?

Student-initiated Employment-related Projects

Supervisor

Michael Johnson

Project Aim

To leverage your employment to develop a relevant quality ITEC810 project

Prerequisites

Current employment, most likely, but not necessarily, in IT.

Project Motivation and Description

The project page provides a range of projects suggested by academic staff. In addition, excellent projects can be developed based on students' own work experiences. Often a project can be aligned with desirable workplace outcomes so that there is good synergy. Of course the project must not be something that a student is merely doing as part of his or her job, so you need to think laterally about what developments might be valuable in your workplace and talk to me to develop those ideas into an appropriate project.

Intended Outcomes

Something valuable for your workplace, building on your expert knowledge of that workplace, and a properly presented project report (thesis) providing a scholarly evaluation of possible solutions and presenting your solution.

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Macquarie University Faculty of Science

Department of Computing

ITEC 810 Project List

Development Projects

Analysis Projects

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