The rise in connected autonomous vehicles presents challenges such as software reliability, operational trust and determination of accountability. A major concern is cyber security. Vehicle-attack opportunities are still emerging and not yet fully understood.

1) Assessing the threat and perceptions of automotive cyber risk. Vehicles will increasingly need to communicate with one another and to cloud systems. With the rise in connectivity, come the increasing risk of cyber breaches. Attacks could potentially affect data privacy, vehicle security or even vehicle safety. But how great is the danger? What are the perceptions of the car users? And how should we measure these? These are questions that automotive manufactures will need to increasingly ask in the next few years. 

2) Devising and testing automotive cyber attack scenarios. The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a crucial in-vehicle network used by safety crucial components, such as transmission, engine performance and braking. It is possible to read packets from the car’s CAN (as well as inject malicious packets), though the car manufacturers keep the meaning of the data secret.

Projects could investigate what CAN data sets might be available for testing attack detection, or investigate how attacks might be simulated, or devise algorithms to detect suspicious anomalies in data which might indicate an attack. One option would be to use a laptop based based CAN simulator (such as the free Kvaser CAN King) and CAN Python libraries with pre-gathered CAN logs (which we already collected). 

For any gym goer it is often important to record the specifics of what exercises were done in each session, be that minutes on a bike or similar cardio machine, reps on any of the various weight training machines or cardio circuits on the studio floor.

There are already a number of applications in existence for doing similar (see here), so can these be researched, reviewed and improved upon, or a whole new (better) way of doing this devised.

This project would expect students to do the research, find out what gym goers want and then design-build-test an application (mobile or web) to solve the problem identified.

Food waste is a huge problem in the western world, and as we move into a time of economic uncertainty with the cost of living becoming a real problem for very many, the desire to cut down on food waste is ever more pressing for very many people.

This project involved research into the problem and how technological advances and a variety of technologies could be used to help mitigate or solve the problem.

The project envisages, following on from this research an application or other similar tool can be developed to provide a potential solution for how individuals can minimise their own food wastage.

There has been a lot of research completed around memory loss, especially when associated with old age and certain diseases such as Alzheimers disease. Studies show that regularly using Applications which gamify the process of remembering can help to improve or slow down the ravages of such diseases.

This project involves the research into and creation of a cross platform game or memory training tool to support the user's ability to remember things.

Body language is closely related to posture - The way we move our bodies affects how others see us as well as our own moods and habits. In terms of scientific research, the two overlap quite a bit. This isn't too surprising, but how our posture and body language affect our thoughts is.

For instance, a study at Ohio State University in 2003 found that our opinions can be subconsciously influenced by our physical behaviour. Here are two fascinating examples:

1. When participants in the study nodded in agreements or shook their heads to signal disagreement, these actions affected their opinions without them realizing.
2. The same study also showed that when participants hugged themselves, they were sometimes able to reduce their physical pain.

This project will research into how technology can be used to improve a person's posture, this can be a straight research project, or also a project where an artefact is produced.

Getting students motivated within STEM subjects and beyond is essential to ensure that they perform well in their studies and become employable. Inside the changing world of higher education, university tutors and lecturers can struggle to motivate their students. Petty (1998) states that, “motivation is regarded by experienced and inexperienced teachers alike as a prerequisite for effective learning”. This certainly appears to be the case in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Students working within these disciplines are ingrained in technology within their everyday lives. Hence, these students could be expected to wish to see technology widely used within the classroom.

This project will explore what technologies would best support teaching staff to have the greatest impact to improve students experience and results. This project could be a research only project or could include the creation of a tool to meet the intended outcomes.

Universities are increasingly under pressure to monitor and track student attendance. This project has two potential outcomes for students, namely a research project into options available for this, or an interventional project where an end product is produced to meet a brief produced based on research undertaken.

Project Option 1 - Research

Research into the importance of student attendance monitoring and its implications, including primary research on both students and staff. Explore and critically evaluate the options currently available for technology solutions for monitoring and recording student attendance.

Project Option 2 - Design-Build-Test

Research into the importance of student attendance monitoring and its implications, including primary research on both students and staff. Develop an application, either mobile or web based which will enable efficient and effective monitoring and recording of student attendance. Examples of this could be a mobile phone application that teaching staff could use to scan bar codes on student ID cards or individual QR codes for each student, then record attendance for each session in a secure database.

Existing Examples

Recording and Monitoring Attendance

A Students Attendance System Using QR Code

Student attendance using QR code card

There are a large number of staff employed at a local employer, each of who have their own individual allocation of annual leave to take during the working year; which runs from 1st sept to 31st Aug annually.

Depending on the level at which a member of staff is employed they have between 28 and 36 days leave per year.

Currently the employer uses a paperbased system to record staff annual leave, where a member of staff is given an annual leave card in which they record which days they intend on taking off as annual leave, which is signed off by their line manager. Once this is done they hand their card to an administrator who enters the details onto a speadsheet and shared outlook calendar.

The company would like a technical solution to this where each member of staff can log into an electronic system to book their days off, which is then signed off electronically by their line manager, co-signed by the administrator and automatically recorded onto a system.

Your task it to research into the wide range of options for development of such a system, then DESIGN - BUILD - TEST your solution.

There is a need for students to be able to book appointments to see their academic staff during their open office hours.

Office hours for staff need to be able to be added to the system, or ideally pulled from Outlook calendars so that students can chose meetings of either 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes duration inside the scope of the staff member's office hours. Alternatively a staff member might like to stipulate the lengh of the meeting and when their office hours are manually.

This project will see you independently build the skills required to develop the software in a web accessible format so that students can book appointments to see academic staff.

Your task it to research into the wide range of options for development of such a system, then DESIGN - BUILD - TEST your solution.

You are using a system to store project suggestions from members of staff in a format that students can access, and so select themselves a final year project. Chris Bowers has put a lot of work into developing this system, but I'm sure there is room to make it even better. This project will involve finding out what improvements users would like to see, implementing as many as possible of them, and evaluating the outcome. It may involve developing a completely new system, or (with Chris Bowers' agreement) improving his system.