1. Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
  2. School of Computing
  3. Undergraduate
  4. Project work

Project work

Student looking at laptop

The project work you will carry out on your course is designed to help you become a confident and self-motivated graduate, as you’ll learn sought-after skills in Computing. 

Projects are an important feature of all our courses. In addition to being a fun and practical way to learn, they provide you with an excellent opportunity to explore topics in depth and enable you to develop essential skills such as problem-solving, communication and teamwork, all of which are vital skills employers look for.

Individual project 

The individual project is a significant step to deepen your interests in computing and in preparation for your career upon graduation. You are expected to carry out a piece of individual research and will have an academic supervisor who offers guidance throughout. Depending on the choice of the project, you may tackle a theoretical study, an exploratory software development, a software product or an empirical investigation. 

A variety of projects are undertaken each year. Some were for external organisations such as the NHS, charities and software companies; others were based on research interests within the School. Examples of recent projects include: 

  • 3D Noughts and Crosses with Baxter, a Humanoid Robot: development of a software system run on the University’s Baxter Research Robot, enabling him to participate in playing 3D Noughts and Crosses with another human player. 
  • Design of Quad Rotor Semi-Autonomous Flight Controller Software: a quad rotor was designed, built and developed to be able to fly semi-autonomously maintaining a target altitude. A Base Station application was developed to control and display data from the Quad Rotor. 
  • The Leeds Method of Management antibiotic app: a mobile application was developed that can display information about pathogens and drugs as well as working offline. This was so doctors can have a quick reference guide in the palm of their hand without the need of an internet connection. 
  • Delivering a Cloud Monitoring Tool: a platform-agnostic cloud monitoring tool is designed and implemented capable of collecting monitoring data from the cloud, physical host and virtual machine layers. By provisioning a custom test-bed running OpenStack it demonstrated that the tool is able to collect and supply a series of metrics. 

In the Intelligent Systems and Robotics module you will work with our TurtleBots to design, implement and test different control and perceptual systems. 

Group research project 

You may undertake a major group project to further develop your team working, project management and research skills in addition to your technical knowledge. The project involves giving a presentation to students and staff as well as writing a joint report, presenting the problem, its solution and its evaluation. As part of this project, you will also write an individual report in which you reflect upon the experience of working in the group and your contributions to the project. 

Examples of recent projects include: 

  • Development of a 3D modelling tool using a Haptic device 
  • Design and development of a tool for monitoring energy measurements in Cloud Computing 
  • Exploring the use of NI’s myRIO C++ API and Robotics Platform to Perform Robot Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance.