First Level Course Projects

Here you can find a list of project proposals for the courses of "Progetto di Ingegneria Informatica" and "Progetto di Robotica" (5 CFU for each student)

BioSignal Analysis

Brain-Computer Interface

Title:	Development of an existing genetic algorithm for ERP-based BCIs
Description:	Different event-related potentials (ERPs) are used in BCIs, e.g., P300 and error potentials. A genetic algorithm (GA) for ERP feature extraction has been developed at the Airlab. The GA has been proved to work, but there different ways that can explored to further develop this algorithm and expand its application field. Tools and instruments C++ Good programming skill required Bibliography B. Dal Seno, M. Matteucci, L. Mainardi. A Genetic Algorithm for Automatic Feature Extraction in P300 Detection [1]
Tutor:	Matteo Matteucci (email), Bernardo Dal Seno (email)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1
CFU:	5-20

Title:	Driving an autonomous wheelchair with a P300-based BCI
Description:	This project pulls together different Airlab projects with the aim to drive an autonomous wheelchair (LURCH) with a BCI, through the development of key software modules. Depending on the effort the student is willing to put into it, the project can grow to a full experimental thesis. Tools and instruments C++, C, BCI2000 Linux Bibliography R. Blatt et al. Brain Control of a Smart Wheelchair [2]
Tutor:	Matteo Matteucci, Bernardo Dal Seno
Start:	November 2008
Number of students:	1
CFU:	5-20

Title:	Online automatic tuning of the number of repetitions in a P300-based BCI
Description:	In a P300-based BCI, (visual) stimuli are presented to the user, and the intention of the user is recognized when a P300 potential is recognized in response of the desired stimulus. In order to improve accuracy, many stimulation rounds are usually performed before making a decision. The exact number of repetitions depends on the user and the goodness of the classifier, but it is usually fixed a-priori. The aim of this project is to adapt the number of repetitions to changing conditions, so as to achieve the maximum accuracy with the minimum time. Depending on the effort the student is willing to put into it, the project can grow to a full experimental thesis. Tools and instruments C++, BCI2000, Matlab Bibliography E. Donchin, K.M. Spencer, R. Wijesinghe. The Mental Prosthesis: Assessing the Speed of a P300-Based Brain-Computer Interface [3]
Tutor:	Matteo Matteucci, Bernardo Dal Seno
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1
CFU:	5-20

Affective Computing

Title:	Affective VideoGames
Description:	The goal of this activity is to develop an interactive video game (Car game, Shoot them up, Strategic game ..) able to adapt its behaviour in order to maximize your enjoyment. The game will measure your excitement by analizing your biological signals, which mirror your emotional state. The system will be able to adjust some parameters (i.e difficulty of car game circuits, opponents strength ...) in order to keep you egnagemet constant: "In your flow zone!". Project phases: Design and implementation of the game (it is possible to start from avaliable open source game) Design of experimental protocol used to stimulate particular emotions Data acquisition by using biological sensors during the playing experience Off-line classification of data with available tools Design and development of an on-line classifier system for emotion recognition Closed loop control: the game reacts to the user emotional state changing its behaviour. These projects allow to experiment with biological-data acquisition tools and videogame design. Each project consists in the realization of one or more phases depending on the difficulty/cfu to be achieved and on the competences of the candidate(s)
Tutor:	Cristiano Alessandro (alessandro-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it), Simone Tognetti (togetti-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 3
CFU:	2.5 to 20

Title:	Affective recognition in multimedia contexts
Description:	The goal of this activity is to develop an interactive multimedia application (advertisement, e-learning, reccomendation system) able to capture your emotional state (interests, excitement, anger, joy) while watching at images, earing sounds etc. The application will measure your excitement by analyzing your biological signals, which mirror your emotional state. The system could be used to give feedback on the quality of multimedia content (i.e goodness of the advertisement, enjoyment of the movie ...) Project phases: Design and implementation of the multimedia application. Design of experimental protocol used to stimulate particular emotions. Data acquisition by using biological sensors during the multimedia experience. Off-line classification of data with available tools. Design and development of on-line classifier system for emotion recognition Closed loop control: the multimedia application will provide contents according to your enjoyment. These projects allow to experiment with biological-data acquisition tools and multimedia application design. Each project consists on the realization of one or more phases depending on the difficulty/cfu to be achieved and to the competences of the candidate(s)
Tutor:	Cristiano Alessandro (alessandro-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it), Simone Tognetti (togetti-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 3
CFU:	2.5 to 20

Title:	Affective robotics
Description:	The goal of this activity is to develop an rehabilitation robotic game able to capture your emotional state (interests, excitement, anger, joy, stress) while interacting with the robot. The application will measure your excitement by analyzing your biological signals, which mirror your emotional state. The system could be used to adapt the therapy (executed by the game) according to the patient's needs. We believe the quality of the therapy is related to the subject's emotional state. The long term goal is to keep the user into a specific emotional state in order to maximize the therapy efficacy. Project phases: Design and implementation of the robotic game on the available robot. Design of experimental protocol used to stimulate particular emotions. Data acquisition by using biological sensors during the interaction with the robot. Off-line classification of data with available tools. Design and development of on-line classifier system for emotion recognition Closed loop control: the therapy will be adapted to the patient's needs. These projects allow to experiment with biological-data acquisition tools, robots and videogame design. Each project consists on the realization of one or more phases depending on the difficulty/cfu to be achieved and to the competences of the candidate(s)
Tutor:	Cristiano Alessandro (alessandro-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it), Simone Tognetti (togetti-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 3
CFU:	2.5 to 20

Title:	Driving companions
Description:	The goal of this activity is to develop an applicationable to capture your emotional state (stress, attention level .. ) while driving standard cars. The application will measure the driver's stress level by analyzing his biological signals, which mirror the physiological state, and could be used to give feedbacks to the driver in dangerous situations. Project phases: Design of experimental protocol used to stimulate particular emotions. Data acquisition by using biological sensors while driving in different conditions (city, highway, country ..) Off-line classification of data with available tools. Design and development of on-line classifier system for emotion recognition Closed loop control: the car will give audio/visual feedbacks to the user letting him know its physiological state These projects allow to experiment with biological-data acquisition tools, robots and videogame design. Each project consists on the realization of one or more phases depending on the difficulty/cfu to be achieved and to the competences of the candidate(s)
Tutor:	Cristiano Alessandro (alessandro-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it), Simone Tognetti (togetti-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 3
CFU:	2.5 to 20

Title:	Emotion from interaction
Description:	The goal of this activity is to detect emotional states, such as stress or boreness from the interaction with the computer via mouse and keyboard (Emotion from Interaction). A library getting data from these devices has been already developed. Data have to be acquired in different situations and analyzed by neural networks or other classification tools already implemented.
Tutor:	Andrea Bonarini (bonarini-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 2
CFU:	5 to 12.5

Computer Vision and Image Analysis

Title:	Video surveillance system for indoor Environment
Description:	The goal of this project is to develop a video surveillance system based on background subtraction algorithm. The idea is to use a single static camera to track moving objects in a known environment. The skills required for this project are: C/C++ and OpenCV library Linux o.s. The project can be turned into a thesis extending the algorithm for camera network.
Tutor:	Matteo Matteucci (matteucci-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	2-3
CFU:	2.5-15

Machine Learning

Title:	Learning API for TORCS
Description:	TORCS is a state-of-the-art open source racing simulator that represents an ideal bechmark for machine learning techniques. We already organized two successfull competitions based on TORCS where competitors have been asked to develop a controller using their preferred machine learning techniques. The goal of this project is to extend the existing C++ API (available here) to simplify the development of controller using a learning framework. Such an extension can be partially developed by porting an existing Java API for TORCS that already provides a lot of functionalities for machine learning approaches.
Tutor:	Daniele Loiacono (loiacono-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 2
CFU:	5 to 12.5

Title:	EyeBot
Description:	TORCS is a state-of-the-art open source racing simulator that represents an ideal bechmark for machine learning techniques. We already organized two successfull competitions based on TORCS where competitors have been asked to develop a controller using their preferred machine learning techniques. So far, the controller developed for TORCS used as input only information extracted directly from the state of the game. The goal of this project is to extend the existing controller API (see here) to use the visual information (e.g. the screenshots of the game) as input to the controllers. A successfull project will include both the development of the API and some basic imaga preprocessing to extract information from the images.
Tutor:	Daniele Loiacono (loiacono-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it), Alessandro Giusti (giusti-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it), and Pierluigi Taddei (taddei-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 2
CFU:	5 to 12.5

Title:	SmarTrack
Description:	The generation of customized game content for each player is an attractive direction to improve the game experience in the next-generation computer games. In this scenario, Machine Learning could play an important role to provide automatically such customized game content. The goal of this project is to apply machine learning techniques for the generation of customized tracks in TORCS, a state-of-the-art open source racing simulator. The project include different activities: the automatic generation of tracks, the section of relevant features to characterize a track and the analysis of an interest measure.
Tutor:	Daniele Loiacono (loiacono-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 2
CFU:	5 to 12.5

Title:	TORCS competition
Description:	TORCS is a state-of-the-art open source racing simulator that represents an ideal bechmark for machine learning techniques. We already organized two successfull competitions based on TORCS where competitors have been asked to develop a controller using their preferred machine learning techniques. The goal of this project is to apply any machine learning technique to develop a successfull controller following the competition rules (available here)
Tutor:	Daniele Loiacono (loiacono-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1 to 2
CFU:	5 to 12.5

Robotics

Title:	Simulation of 6-DOF Robot Manipulator
Description:	The goal of this project is to develop a simulator for a 6-DOF robot manipulator, using the ode (open dynamics engine) library for simulating the rigid body dynamics. The project involves three different phases: Building the physical model of the manipulator Implementing the forward and inverse kinematic routines Implementing the trajectory planning routines Implementing the control modules Implementing an interface to control the robot movements This project allows to put into practice what has been explained during the first part of the course of Robotics. The project can be turned into a thesis, by using the simulated manipulator to perform some learning experiments.
Tutor:	Marcello Restelli (restelli-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	2-3
CFU:	10-15

Title:	Robot games
Description:	The goal of this activity is to develop an interactive game with robots using commercial devices such as the WII Mote (see the Robogames page) Projects are available in different areas: Design and implementation of the game on one of the available robots Design of the game and a new suitable robot Implementation/setting of a suitable robot Evaluation of the game with users (in collaboration with Franca Garzotto) These projects allow to experiment with real mobile robots and real interaction devices. The project can be turned into a thesis by producing a new game and robot.
Tutor:	Andrea Bonarini (bonarini-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1-2
CFU:	5-12.5

Title:	Robocup: soccer robots
Description:	The goal of this activity is to finalize the team of robots that will participate to the robocup world championship in Graz next summer (see the Robocup page and the MRT Team page) Projects are available in different areas: Implementation of mechanical and electronical parts of the robots for the management of the ball and kicking Design of robot behaviors (fuzzy systems) Coordination of robots New sensors These projects allow to experiment with real mobile robots. Participation to the championships is a unique experience (2000 people, with 800 robots playing all sort of games...) The project can be turned into a thesis by facing different problems in depth.
Tutor:	Andrea Bonarini (bonarini-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it), Marcello Restelli (restelli-AT-elet-DOT-polimi-DOT-it)
Start:	Anytime
Number of students:	1-2
CFU:	5-12.5