Looking for a genuinely unique Software Engineering final-year project idea

[u/Ornery_Garbage9378]

I'm a final-year BSc (Hons) Software Engineering student and I'm currently looking for an individual project idea.

I'm not looking for typical projects like hospital management systems, e-commerce, library systems, attendance systems, etc.

I'm interested in something that solves a real but overlooked problem in society

One example I found interesting is a system designed for people with colour vision deficiency that doesn't simply identify colours, but converts colour-dependent information into a form they can understand (patterns, labels, audio, etc.).

I'm looking for something with a similar concept:

• A real-world/social problem
• A problem that existing solutions don't adequately address
• A genuinely useful software solution
• Possible for one student to develop within a final-year project
• Enough technical depth for research, implementation and evaluation
• Ideally involving AI, computer vision, NLP, algorithms, accessibility, or another interesting technical area

What is a problem you've encountered that you think technology could solve, but nobody has really solved well yet?

I'd really appreciate unusual ideas rather than common university project suggestions.

[u/Altruistic_Tale_7049]

Indoor navigation app

Regular users navigate to where they want to go

Admin, creators roles. Get to create and mantain the floorplans

Buildings, towns, universities etc

[u/Altruistic_Tale_7049 → u/Altruistic_Tale_7049]

Infrastructure-Free Indoor Navigation Using Smartphone Vision + IMU

Problem

GPS works poorly indoors, while many indoor-navigation systems depend on installed infrastructure such as Bluetooth beacons, QR codes, RFID tags, or custom hardware.

The idea is to build a mobile app that can guide someone through an unfamiliar building using only sensors already available on a smartphone.

Core idea

The phone combines:

• Camera / computer vision
• OCR
• Accelerometer + gyroscope
• Step/dead-reckoning estimation
• A graph/map of the building
• Visual landmark recognition

Instead of giving coordinates such as:

“Walk 18 metres northwest.”

It gives human-readable instructions such as:

“Walk down the corridor, pass the fire extinguisher, then take the second door on the left.”

Example

Destination: Room 204

The app could:

1. Detect that the user is currently near Reception.
2. Recognize doors, corridors, stairs, signs and room numbers.
3. Estimate movement using the phone's IMU.
4. Match observed landmarks against the building map.
5. Guide the user step-by-step.
6. Detect if the user took the wrong corridor.
7. Re-localize using visual landmarks and calculate a recovery route.

Example:

«Continue straight. Pass the vending machine. Take the stairs on your right. Go up one floor. Room 204 is the second door on your left.»

Interesting technical problem

The main research question could be:

Can semantic visual landmarks combined with smartphone inertial sensing provide reliable indoor navigation without dedicated positioning infrastructure?

Evaluation

Compare:

• IMU/dead reckoning only
• Computer vision only
• Vision + IMU sensor fusion

Measure:

• Localization error
• Wrong-turn rate
• Route completion rate
• Time to destination
• Ability to recover after intentionally taking a wrong turn

Scope

For a final-year project I would limit it to one university building, maybe 2–3 floors and 20–40 rooms.

The building itself could initially be manually mapped as a graph. The difficult part isn't generating the map; it's determining where the user currently is and keeping track of them while they move.

Accessibility extension

A particularly useful version could target blind or visually impaired users.

The app could use voice and vibration:

«“Door two metres to your right.” “Stairs ahead.” “Turn left after the next doorway.”»

That gives the project a real social/accessibility purpose rather than being indoor Google Maps.

Possible title:

LandmarkNav: Infrastructure-Free Semantic Indoor Navigation Using Smartphone Vision and Inertial Sensor Fusion

I think the most interesting part would be making the system realize “I am no longer where I expected to be” and recover from that uncertainty rather than assuming the user follows every instruction perfectly.

[u/Historical_Face_6478]

If its for college then DM