Hi
I was wondering whether anyone had some ideas for a dissertation i have to do for university. It will be a 12 month project and I will probably be looking to do something in c++ but I'm open to anything. I was thinking about looking in AI but not sure.
Thank in adv.
May I suggest to have a look at an open source project? In particular, projects participating in the Google Summer Of Code initiative (here's a list) often maintain a list of interesting ideas for students. Those are usually tailored to be completed during the summer, but it could be an interesting starting point nonetheless.
I would suggest you to look for people who work in this field at your university and ask them for project suggestions. You will eventually end up with someone from yor Uni as a supervisor anyway, so why not get in touch with them right away?
On the other hand, if you really want some suggestions, look at the numerous AI competitions that are on the web.
http://www.thousandparsec.net/tp/comp.php
http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition
... and more
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=ai+competition
As someone who has just been though a dissertation I'll agree with Peter and say the 100% best thing to do is seek out your supervisor. Typically you'll end up doing a project that is close to their field of expertise and often they'll have something in mind for you, again normally branching off from their own research or the research of their PhD's.
The other piece of advice for you is to try and choose a project that genuinely interests you, its hard to keep the focus required to properly research something if you don't personally find it interesting!