Group Project Ideas

Leave the trite "library" or "restaurant" or "gym/sport centre" or "car dealer" scenario. Be inventive. Here is a list of projects and project ideas you can use to boost your inspiration.

Research Inspired Projects

(This is unavoidably rather vague, but i hope i will convey the general idea nevertheless) You are part of one of the most vibrant research environments in the country. Your group project could be based on ideas (discussed with colleagues) that are related to our different research expertises.

Disclaimer. The project is always your own. You can discuss trendy topics and interesting areas with colleagues, but you cannot ask them to supervise your work. If you decide to pursue a project of this type you do so at your own risk. Support is provided in the way explained on CANVAS (no more, no less).

Public Health Ispired Work

Collaborative Environment. The ultimate goal of this project to design and develop an online platform to facilitate the collaboration between the clinicians at the kids’ hospital in Liverpool (Aldery Hey Children’s Hospital) and the academics and researchers within the University of Liverpool. The platform will host all the current on-going projects as well as a list of problems/solutions in the space of Digital Health. Other features/functions to be implemented include collaborating on shared documents, working on tasks and projects, etc. This outcome of this important project will be directly used to support the continuous collaboration between Alder Hey and University of Liverpool. (Suggested by Heba Lakany, EEE)

(suggested by Chris Kypridemos. In all cases, particularly in the initial requirement analysis stages, the teams will work under close supervision of Dr. Kypridemos and Dr. Zito)

Epidemiology. The public health team is studying the effectiveness of various random number generators. The project will involve the use of Diehard tests.

Data Extrapolation. Public health studies often end up with data analysis results described by way of graphs of various types. The researchers involved then have to problem of extrapolating trends and patterns. This is often done manually by presenting the graphs to EXPERTS and asking such experts to predict data trends etc.
We would like to develop a mobile app (or, failing that, a system with a web interface) that could be easily used by the experts (on their phones, or other PED) to draw data trend patterns and compare their analysis with that of other experts.

Citizen Science Projects. A mobile app is needed that integrates OCR, and geolocation to describe food environments for citizen science projects. Desired features include:

Apps and Stuff

(suggested by Stuart Thomason)

https://ionicframework.com/
Allows you to create mobile apps using HTML/CSS framework. The framework automatically converts your code into a mobile app.

https://aws.amazon.com/sumerian/
Recently launched (you can sign up for a preview). This allows you to create VR/AR applications without much expertise. Obviously a growing area in mobile games and so on, so might be popular with students.

Code Migration

The following was proposed by Frans Oliehoek few years ago:
"I would like a group of students to take an existing piece of matlab code, which revolves around the (Sumo) traffic simulation of traffic in liverpool and port this code to an open source python toolbox."
While the opportunity to work on this particular idea has passed (Frans does not work in Liverpool any more), the idea of this project could be interesting. You may be interested in re-designing an existing system to be deployed using different, perhaps more modern, technologies.

Minecraft Programming

Minecraft is a great virtual construction system. Social media are full of examples and applications. Perhaps less exploited is the fact that Minecraft is fully programmable. Have a look at this. Here is an example of project ideas you might want to consider:
  • Design and implement a tool that adds complex objects (formed of other, simpler ones) to the "palette" of available blocks and tools (large spheres, huge tetrahedra, etc)
  • Design a system that allows (programmatically) to model complex dynamic behaviours using minecraft: the flow of liquid in a pipeline system, the flow of current in a circuit.
  • A recent (post 2000) development is Procedural Content Generation (PCG) whereby a computing system is created to automatize the task of generating certain Minecraft features (buildings, landscapes, etc). A daring team might choose to explore this area.

    None of this is cast in stone. They are just random ideas that someone might want to pick.

    A Real Life Database

    BAT (Bromborough Asset Tracking) System
    Cereal Partners is a joint venture between Nestle and General Mills. The company employees circa 270 people at its Bromborough manufacturing plant and produces cereal under the Nestle and several customer brands. It produces circa 50000 tonnes of cereal each year and to enable the continuous production of this cereal there is a need to carry out maintenance on the manufacturing equipment.

    The proposed project is needed to enable the electrical department to track the mandatory work it is required to carry out on the electrical infrastructure of the site. Equipment to be tracked includes high voltage switchgear, cabling and transformers. There is also a need to track low voltage equipment such as low voltage switchgear, motor control centres and distribution boards.

    There is a need to keep all the information about the equipment such as manufacturer, year built, design calculations, CE certification, safety documentation and all manuals associated to the equipment.

    Along with this documentation there is a need to identify all outgoing circuits from equipment and keep all the data associated with these circuits such as cable size, fuse sizes and length of run. There is relevant initial verification documentation to keep for each installation and a need to carry out periodic inspection and testing.

    All this information needs to be collated and be linked to each other in a logical way. It is envisaged to use a database and a web based interface to allow users to entre data and interrogate the information to show when testing is due, what has been tested and link together corrective works carried out as a result of testing and thermography work

    Sustainability @ Liverpool University

    The Green Guild Project Team are collaborating with the University Sustainability Team to promote sustainability within the University.

    CHALLENGE. Can we find a (few) group(s) of daring souls that are able to put together IT and sustainability in an exciting software development project?

    Energy Management and Computational Sustainability

    Dr. Zito is part of a research group here in Liverpool that works on Energy Management. He's happy to discuss ideas in the area. Here's the example of an AI oriented project:

    DATA
    (1) A collection of energy profiles, available, say, as sequences of pairs (TIME-INSTANT , VALUE) describing the amount of energy available at a certain moment in time.
    (2) A collection (typically a dozen or so) of energy outlets, probabilistic entities, described for instance by the following quantities: (NAME, DISTRIB, MEAN, STDEV, PRIORITY) (these are appliacnes taht can be switched on to use the energy available).
    CONSTRAINTS: This data should be computable as time averages from available data. Also, we want the table of frequencies of small regions (size set by the user) of values.

    MAIN TASKS
    (T1) Design and implement a system that computes all possible FEASIBLE combinations of outlets and sorts them by total MEAN values first and by total PRIORITY in the case of a tie. ``FEASIBLE'' here means feasible in terms of the Chance Constrained allocation model [REF?]
    (T2) Provide a user-friendly tool that allows the adjustment of the outlets priorities and verify the effect of such changes on the list in task T1.
    (T3) Allocation. The system should be able to allocate a high priority combination to each (TIME-INSTANT, VALUE) pair. We are interested in counting HOW OFTEN each outlet is used in such allocations.
    Assuming the user is allowed to specify how often a certain outlet should be used, the ``Intelligent'' part of this system should be able to provide a list of allocations that maximise the number of constriants of this type that are satisfied.
    All this, of course, should be wrapped by a good quality GUI.

    Social Networks

    Facebook is an interesting and popular social network platform. In particular it offers interesting software development and knowledge management opportunities. Students are invited to come up with interesting scenarios for the exploitation of such opportunities (e.g. database systems for managing the activities of groups; systems for studying the spreading of information in the social network; systems that use the Facebook Graph Search).

    Raspberry PI Application Development

    Raspberry PI is a pocket size computer architecture that is becoming very popular for its price and possible applications. You project could explore novel uses of such computer (eg. video, music, medias)

    Follow Your Immagination

    All projects listed so far look at a precise scenario. You can, in fact, choose any scenario you like. There are thousands of software packages and apps around. You could define your project by
  • Picking your favourite domain
  • Select a software package in that domain (this could be literally anything, any app on your phone, or that fancy app your friend has been showing you for days ... anything)
  • Replicate its main functionalities
  • Examples (picking, i guess, from my own personal interests): a spreadsheet manager, a dbms, music transcription software, a personal organizer
    •  Your final system does not have to be professionally good. The experience will make you face the main challenges in the development of a particular software system, and that's important. You will face problems, you will investigate solutions, and eventually delivery an interesting prototype.
    Also, this way part of the requirements are given ...