Tampere University Automation Engineering Master’s Thesis Guide: 30 ECTS, AUT.020, Turnitin and Trepo

What this guide covers

Tampere University’s current Automation Engineering master’s programme is a 120 ECTS Master of Science (Technology) degree. Its thesis follows Tampere’s Technology/Architecture diplomityö framework and carries 30 ECTS. Unlike Architecture, however, Automation Engineering uses the ordinary Technology thesis 0–5 grading scale. The programme also has a separate AUT.020 Master’s Thesis Seminar in Automation, which is 0 ECTS and graded pass/fail.

That distinction is important. The seminar does not increase the thesis above 30 ECTS, but its requirements are still part of the Automation thesis workflow. This guide therefore covers both the university-wide Technology thesis process and the programme-specific Automation structure from topic selection to final examination.

The research is bound to Tampere University’s current 2026–2027 curriculum and current thesis, maturity, AI, originality, publicity and archiving instructions.

Programme and degree structure

Automation Engineering is taught in English by the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences and leads to the Master of Science (Technology) degree. The current degree is 120 ECTS, normally planned as two years of full-time study.

The programme has two advanced-study modules: Factory Automation and Industrial Informatics and Robotics. Students take both. The module in which the student completes the master’s thesis becomes the major, while the other becomes the minor. That makes thesis positioning academically significant: the thesis topic is not only a project choice but also determines which advanced-study area becomes the major recorded through the degree structure.

Programme outcomes emphasise R&D capability, critical information analysis, scientific and professional ethics, sustainability, communication, teamwork, independent work and project management. A strong thesis should visibly demonstrate several of these outcomes rather than functioning only as a technical implementation report.

The thesis is 30 ECTS

Tampere’s Technology thesis carries 30 credits and is normally completed near the end of MSc-level studies. Do not use the university’s non-technical 20–40 ECTS range for this programme. Automation Engineering is a Master of Science (Technology) degree and belongs to the Technology diplomityö regime.

The separate AUT.020 seminar is 0 credits, so the defensible formulation is “30 ECTS thesis plus a compulsory programme-specific seminar process where required,” not “a thesis larger than 30 ECTS.”

The public Technology thesis instructions do not impose one universal page count. Scope should be controlled through the 30-credit workload, the supervision plan, research plan, selected major, validation needs and supervisor agreement.

What can an Automation Engineering thesis look like?

Tampere explicitly allows a Technology thesis to use empirical research, planning and implementation, or a review of existing research literature. Automation Engineering therefore supports several legitimate thesis forms.

A Factory Automation and Industrial Informatics thesis might investigate automation-system architecture, industrial data integration, information models, control and monitoring, manufacturing-system interoperability, cyber-physical production, system performance or another automation R&D problem. A Robotics thesis might focus on robot control, sensing, perception, planning, mechatronic integration, autonomy, simulation or experimental evaluation.

A thesis can also be strongly software-based, modelling-based, simulation-based or literature-based when that is the correct method for the research question. Tampere’s public rules do not require every Automation Engineering thesis to contain a physical robot, laboratory experiment or industrial deployment. What matters is the fit between question, method, evidence and validation.

A useful way to test method quality is to ask what evidence could falsify or weaken the proposed conclusion. A controller thesis might compare tracking error, robustness or energy use under defined conditions; an industrial-informatics thesis might evaluate interoperability, latency, data quality or maintainability; a robotics thesis might compare localisation, planning, perception or task performance. The metric should follow the engineering claim instead of being added after implementation merely because data are available.

Choosing the major and narrowing the topic

Because the thesis advanced module becomes the major, students should make the major decision deliberately. Ask whether the proposed problem is principally Factory Automation and Industrial Informatics or Robotics, which staff have the right expertise to supervise it, what data or equipment are available, and whether the project can produce defensible evidence within the thesis period.

Broad themes such as “AI in robotics” or “Industry 4.0” are not yet thesis questions. A workable problem identifies a system, decision, performance issue or knowledge gap; specifies what will be designed, implemented, compared or analysed; and defines how success will be evaluated.

For a company thesis, clarify early which system access, logs, source code, datasets, test hardware and publication permissions will actually be available. An impressive industrial setting is not useful if the evidence required for academic evaluation cannot be included in the public thesis.

When you are academically ready to start

Before the master’s thesis begins, Tampere expects sufficient subject expertise for the proposed work and the degree-programme learning outcomes. Current Technology instructions also require the bachelor’s degree to be completed or the bachelor’s thesis to have formal approval before the master’s thesis starts.

In practice, students should also be ready to work independently with scientific literature, engineering methods, data or system validation and project planning. If the intended thesis depends on advanced control, robotics, industrial informatics or software skills that are still missing, completing the relevant advanced studies first can reduce thesis risk substantially.

Supervisors and academic responsibility

Tampere appoints one or two supervisors, with one as primary supervisor. Supervisors are normally selected according to the thesis topic and advanced-study field. The primary supervisor typically also acts as an examiner.

A commissioned thesis may additionally have a company supervisor who helps with practical engineering work, access and organisational coordination. That role does not replace the university supervisor’s academic responsibility. Research quality, methods, public-thesis boundaries, examination and degree requirements remain governed by Tampere University.

The student remains responsible for completing the thesis. Regular meetings are useful, but supervision is not an outsourcing arrangement. Bring decisions, evidence, problems and concrete drafts to meetings so feedback can change the work while changes are still feasible.

The Thesis Supervision Plan is mandatory

Technology students must prepare a Thesis Supervision Plan with the supervisor. It records supervisory practices, meeting frequency, key stages and expected completion timeframe. The timeframe also defines the intended duration of the supervisory relationship. The responsible supervisor nominates the examiners through this process at the beginning of the thesis.

For Automation Engineering, use the plan to identify major technical checkpoints: literature and problem framing, architecture or algorithm definition, data access, implementation, simulation or experimental setup, validation criteria, intermediate results, final analysis, manuscript review, seminar presentations and final submission.

A plan should also state dependencies outside the student’s direct control. Hardware delivery, industrial test windows, production-system access, cybersecurity approvals or company data permissions can become critical-path risks if they are left implicit.

Agree what happens if those dependencies fail. A defensible fallback might replace factory deployment with a controlled testbed, replace unavailable proprietary data with an approved dataset, or narrow a physical prototype into a validated simulation. Changing method is academically acceptable when it is documented and still answers the research problem; silently changing the research question after results arrive is much harder to defend.

Build a research and validation plan

Tampere expects a preliminary research plan to be reviewed with supervisors. It can evolve, but it should establish the logic of the thesis before most implementation work is done.

A useful Automation Engineering plan identifies the background, research question, relevant literature, system boundary, data or test environment, methods, implementation tasks, validation metrics, ethical/data-protection issues, risks, intended outputs and timetable.

Separate the engineering artefact from the research contribution. Building a controller, ROS node, simulation model, database integration, monitoring application or robot demonstrator is work, but it is not automatically a research conclusion. The thesis should explain what was learned, how performance was evaluated, what alternatives were considered, what limitations remain and how the evidence answers the research question.

Ethics, data, cybersecurity and company work

Automation theses can involve personal data, confidential industrial information, safety-critical systems or operational cybersecurity constraints. If personal data are collected or processed, agree the procedures with the supervisor and follow Tampere’s data-protection guidance.

For company work, separate information needed for academic evaluation from information the company cannot publish. Do not design the thesis around confidential evidence that examiners cannot see or that cannot appear in the public document. An NDA does not automatically make the assessed thesis confidential.

If experiments affect people, vehicles, machinery or production systems, risk management must be appropriate to the actual setup. University research-ethics requirements depend on the research design; engineering work is not automatically exempt simply because it uses machines or software.

AUT.020 Thesis Seminar in Automation

The current AUT.020 Master’s Thesis Seminar in Automation is a programme-specific advanced-studies course worth 0 ECTS and graded pass/fail. Its four published requirements are concrete.

First, the student must follow at least four final presentations from other participants, so attending early is sensible. Second, the student gives a brief introductory presentation soon after entering the course. Third, the student gives a final presentation close to completion, presenting the process and most important results. Fourth, the student participates in information-searching training organised by Tampere University Library.

The university-wide Technology thesis page also describes seminar participation, oral presentation and opposition as parts of the broader process. Follow the exact AUT.020 implementation and the requirements registered for you in Sisu rather than assuming that the 0-credit label means “optional.”

Use the introductory presentation as a scope test rather than a ceremonial update. State the major, problem, research question, planned evidence and validation method. Use the final presentation to show not only what was built but what the evaluation demonstrates, what limitations remain and whether the original objective was actually met. Observing other students’ final presentations is also useful preparation for anticipating examiner questions.

Writing and technical evidence

Tampere directs Technology students to the Guide to Writing a Thesis in Technical Fields and the designated MSc thesis template. Use them for formal structure and presentation.

Technical evidence should be interpretable. If the thesis depends on source code, simulation, controller tuning, test logs, sensor data, network measurements or industrial information models, explain the setup and evaluation sufficiently for examiners to understand what was actually tested. Avoid turning the thesis into raw documentation or a repository dump.

Figures, diagrams and tables should carry argumentative value. A block diagram should clarify architecture; a plot should support a result; a screenshot should only be included when it answers something the text cannot communicate more effectively.

AI use in an Automation Engineering thesis

Tampere permits AI support under defined rules, and thesis use must be agreed with the primary supervisor and properly acknowledged. Students must not upload personal data, confidential industrial information or protected third-party work to external AI services.

AI-generated material is not a direct scholarly source. Students remain responsible for their own analysis. AI may support discussion of preliminary analysis or draft improvement, but current Tampere guidance does not permit asking AI to complete the analysis or directly generate the final summary, and it says students should not ask AI to rewrite or complete the draft.

For Automation Engineering, discuss code generation, debugging, model assistance and data-analysis support explicitly. Generated code still has to be understood, tested and validated by the student, and any use that affects the intellectual work should follow the supervisor-agreed acknowledgement practice.

Maturity test: confirm your route

A maturity test forms part of the master’s thesis process. For international master’s students in Technology/Architecture, Tampere states that the thesis abstract serves as the maturity test. The examiner evaluates the abstract’s content and the faculty records the approved result in Sisu; the Technology page says this route has no language checking.

Students who need a maturity test with language checking follow the university’s separate electronic EXAM route. Do not assume every student uses the same implementation. Confirm the maturity course in Sisu and your applicable language requirement.

Treat the abstract as part of the examined thesis. It should state the problem, method, essential results and conclusion accurately enough to stand on its own.

Turnitin comes before Trepo

When the thesis is ready for formal examination, the completed manuscript goes through Turnitin. The supervisor reviews the similarity report. A similarity percentage is not an automatic plagiarism verdict; matches need academic interpretation.

Resolve questionable quotation, citation, source-code attribution and copied technical documentation before final submission. For a company thesis, also verify that the final file contains no confidential appendices or restricted screenshots that were present during internal drafting.

After preliminary examination, final revisions and the primary supervisor’s permission, proceed to the final repository submission.

Trepo is the examination and archiving route

The final thesis is deposited in Trepo, Tampere University’s institutional repository. The student must be registered as attending to submit for examination and receive thesis credits.

The University Library normally sends the Trepo access email within three working days. Forward that access information to the examiner or examiners promptly. All master’s theses are archived electronically and stored permanently, and the archival file must be PDF/A.

Do not treat the repository step as clerical cleanup. The file deposited for examination must be the final public academic version that the examiners are intended to assess.

Examiner timeline and 0–5 grading

The normal examiner assessment window is 21 days. If a separate maturity test must also be completed as part of the master’s thesis process, the window is 28 days. These are assessment windows, not guarantees for total graduation processing.

Automation Engineering uses the normal Technology thesis 0–5 scale: 1 Sufficient, 2 Satisfactory, 3 Good, 4 Very Good and 5 Excellent. Do not import Architecture’s pass/fail exception simply because the same university-level thesis page covers both Technology and Architecture.

The examiners’ statement and proposed grade are sent to the student’s tuni.fi email. If the student accepts the examination, faculty Study Services can proceed toward the Dean’s confirmation according to the published process.

Written response and appeal rights

If dissatisfied with the proposed assessment, a student may submit a written response within seven days of the email containing the proposed result. The Dean may decide based on the existing statement, request examiner comments or appoint an additional examiner.

After the final decision, an appeal to the Faculty Council may be submitted within 14 days from the point when the student could access the result and information on how the criteria were applied.

Once approved, the thesis is final and cannot be resubmitted. Resolve substantial technical, analytical and writing corrections before approval.

Public thesis and confidential industrial material

Tampere treats theses as public documents, although legal public-document status and open-web availability are not exactly the same. Online availability depends on the student’s permission and, where relevant, publisher restrictions.

This boundary is especially important for industrial automation work. Keep trade secrets, credentials, unpublished security information, customer-identifying data and other restricted material outside the assessable public thesis. If the academic argument depends on data that cannot be shown, redesign the evidence strategy early with the supervisor and company.

Third-party diagrams, standards extracts, software screenshots and article manuscripts can also raise copyright or publication-permission issues.

Research data after the thesis

The thesis itself is archived permanently, but student-controlled research data are separate. Where the student is the data controller, Tampere recommends retaining thesis research data for five years in certain justified circumstances so research integrity can later be checked.

The student is responsible for secure storage; the university does not automatically preserve student-controlled data on the student’s behalf. Industrial datasets may also be governed by company agreements, security rules or data-protection obligations, which should be reconciled with research-integrity needs before the project ends.

A practical Automation Engineering workflow

A reliable sequence is: verify academic readiness; choose whether the thesis belongs primarily to Factory Automation and Industrial Informatics or Robotics; narrow the problem; secure the right supervisor; complete the Thesis Supervision Plan and examiner nomination; register for AUT.020 and start observing presentations early; prepare the research and validation plan; resolve data, ethics, cybersecurity and company-publication boundaries; implement the work while collecting interpretable evidence; give the introductory and later final seminar presentations; complete Library information-search training; write with the technical-fields guide and template; agree and acknowledge any AI use; complete the applicable maturity route; obtain supervisor permission; run the final Turnitin check; prepare PDF/A; deposit in Trepo while registered as attending; forward the Library email to examiners; and monitor the 21/28-day assessment window plus graduation processing.

Final checklist

Before submission, confirm that the thesis belongs to the current 2026–2027 Automation Engineering programme; the degree is 120 ECTS; the thesis is 30 ECTS; the chosen thesis advanced module correctly establishes the major; AUT.020 requirements have been completed where registered; thesis grading uses 0–5, not Architecture pass/fail; the supervisor/examiner arrangements and Thesis Supervision Plan are current; the research plan distinguishes implementation from research contribution; validation evidence is adequate; personal-data, confidentiality, safety and cybersecurity issues are resolved; AI use follows current supervisor-agreed rules; the maturity route is complete; Turnitin has been reviewed; the final file is PDF/A; Trepo submission occurs while registered as attending; and enough time remains for examination and the separate graduation process.

A strong Automation Engineering thesis is not simply the largest system or most complex robot. It is a controlled research-and-development project in which the engineering problem, method, implementation, evidence, validation and conclusions form one coherent academic contribution.