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Articles 1 - 30 of 33
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Web Based Resource Management For Multi-Tiered Web Applications, Bryce Daniel Ott
Web Based Resource Management For Multi-Tiered Web Applications, Bryce Daniel Ott
Theses and Dissertations
The currently emerging trend of building more complex web applications to solve increasingly more involved software problems has led to the the need for a more automated and practical means for deploying resources required by these advanced web applications. As web based applications become more complex and involve more developers, greater system redundancy, and a larger number of components, traditional means of resource deployment become painfully inadequate as they fail to scale sufficiently. The purpose of this research is to provide evidence that a more sound and scalable test and deployment process can be employed and that many of the …
A Direct Algorithm For The K-Nearest-Neighbor Classifier Via Local Warping Of The Distance Metric, Tohkoon Neo
A Direct Algorithm For The K-Nearest-Neighbor Classifier Via Local Warping Of The Distance Metric, Tohkoon Neo
Theses and Dissertations
The k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) pattern classifier is a simple yet effective learner. However, it has a few drawbacks, one of which is the large model size. There are a number of algorithms that are able to condense the model size of the k-NN classifier at the expense of accuracy. Boosting is therefore desirable for increasing the accuracy of these condensed models. Unfortunately, there does not exist a boosting algorithm that works well with k-NN directly. We present a direct boosting algorithm for the k-NN classifier that creates an ensemble of models with locally modified distance weighting. An empirical study conducted …
Supporting Flight Control For Uav-Assisted Wilderness Search And Rescue Through Human Centered Interface Design, Joseph L. Cooper
Supporting Flight Control For Uav-Assisted Wilderness Search And Rescue Through Human Centered Interface Design, Joseph L. Cooper
Theses and Dissertations
Inexpensive, rapidly deployable, camera-equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems can potentially assist with a huge number of tasks. However, in many cases such as wilderness search and rescue (WiSAR), the potential users of the system may not be trained as pilots. Simple interface concepts can be used to build an interaction layer that allows an individual with minimal operator training to use the system to facilitate a search or inspection task. We describe an analysis of WiSAR as currently accomplished and show how a UAV system might fit into the existing structure. We then discuss preliminary system design efforts for …
Intersection Algorithms Based On Geometric Intervals, Nicholas Stewart North
Intersection Algorithms Based On Geometric Intervals, Nicholas Stewart North
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis introduces new algorithms for solving curve/curve and ray/surface intersections. These algorithms introduce the concept of a geometric interval to extend the technique of Bézier clipping. A geometric interval is used to tightly bound a curve or surface or to contain a point on a curve or surface. Our algorithms retain the desirable characteristics of the Bézier clipping technique such as ease of implementation and the guarantee that all intersections over a given interval will be found. However, these new algorithms generally exhibit cubic convergence, improving on the observed quadratic convergence rate of Bézier clipping. This is achieved without …
Heuristic Weighted Voting, Kristine Perry Monteith
Heuristic Weighted Voting, Kristine Perry Monteith
Theses and Dissertations
Selecting an effective method for combining the votes of classifiers in an ensemble can have a significant impact on the overall classification accuracy an ensemble is able to achieve. With some methods, the ensemble cannot even achieve as high a classification accuracy as the most accurate individual classifying component. To address this issue, we present the strategy of Heuristic Weighted Voting, a technique that uses heuristics to determine the confidence that a classifier has in its predictions on an instance by instance basis. Using these heuristics to weight the votes in an ensemble results in an overall average increase in …
Limitations And Extensions Of The Wolf-Phc Algorithm, Philip R. Cook
Limitations And Extensions Of The Wolf-Phc Algorithm, Philip R. Cook
Theses and Dissertations
Policy Hill Climbing (PHC) is a reinforcement learning algorithm that extends Q-learning to learn probabilistic policies for multi-agent games. WoLF-PHC extends PHC with the "win or learn fast" principle. A proof that PHC will diverge in self-play when playing Shapley's game is given, and WoLF-PHC is shown empirically to diverge as well. Various WoLF-PHC based modifications were created, evaluated, and compared in an attempt to obtain convergence to the single shot Nash equilibrium when playing Shapley's game in self-play without using more information than WoLF-PHC uses. Partial Commitment WoLF-PHC (PCWoLF-PHC), which performs best on Shapley's game, is tested on other …
Improving Neural Network Classification Training, Michael Edwin Rimer
Improving Neural Network Classification Training, Michael Edwin Rimer
Theses and Dissertations
The following work presents a new set of general methods for improving neural network accuracy on classification tasks, grouped under the label of classification-based methods. The central theme of these approaches is to provide problem representations and error functions that more directly improve classification accuracy than conventional learning and error functions. The CB1 algorithm attempts to maximize classification accuracy by selectively backpropagating error only on misclassified training patterns. CB2 incorporates a sliding error threshold to the CB1 algorithm, interpolating between the behavior of CB1 and standard error backpropagation as training progresses in order to avoid prematurely saturated network weights. CB3 …
Ontology Aware Software Service Agents: Meeting Ordinary User Needs On The Semantic Web, Muhammed Jassem Al Muhammed
Ontology Aware Software Service Agents: Meeting Ordinary User Needs On The Semantic Web, Muhammed Jassem Al Muhammed
Theses and Dissertations
To achieve the dream of the semantic web, it must be possible for ordinary users to invoke services. It is clear that users need simple-to-invoke-and-use services. This dissertation offers an ontological approach to declaratively create services that users can invoke using free-form, natural-language-like specifications. Our approach uses task ontologies as foundational knowledge. A task ontology consists of a domain ontology and a process ontology. The domain ontology encodes domain information such as possible constraints and instances in terms of object sets, relationship sets among these object sets, and operations over values in object sets and relationship sets. The process ontology …
The Spillable Environment: Expanding A Handheld Device's Screen Real Estate And Interactive Capabilities, Jeffrey S. Clement
The Spillable Environment: Expanding A Handheld Device's Screen Real Estate And Interactive Capabilities, Jeffrey S. Clement
Theses and Dissertations
Handheld devices have a limited amount of screen real estate. If a handheld device could take advantage of larger screens, it would create a more powerful user interface and environment. As time progresses, Moore's law predicts that the computational power of handheld devices will increase dramatically in the future, promoting the interaction with a larger screen. Users can then use their peripheral vision to recognize spatial relationships between objects and solve problems more easily with this integrated system. In the spillable environment, the handheld device uses a DiamondTouch Table, a large, touch-sensitive horizontal table, to enhance the viewing environment. When …
Text Identification By Example, Daniel Joseph Preece
Text Identification By Example, Daniel Joseph Preece
Theses and Dissertations
The World-Wide Web contains a lot of information and reading through the web pages to collect this information is tedious, time consuming and error prone. Users need an automated solution for extracting or highlighting the data that they are interested in. Building a regular expression to match the text they are interested in will automate the process, but regular expressions are hard to create and certainly are not feasible for non-programmers to construct. Text Identification by Example (TIBE) makes it easier for end-users to harvest information from the web and other text documents. With TIBE, training text classifiers from user-selected …
Sampling Methods In Ray-Based Global Illumination, David Cline
Sampling Methods In Ray-Based Global Illumination, David Cline
Theses and Dissertations
In computer graphics, algorithms that attempt to create photographic images by simulating light transport are collectively known as Global Illumination methods. The most versatile of these are based on ray tracing (following ray paths through a scene), and numerical integration using random or quasi-random sampling. While ray tracing and sampling methods in global illumination have progressed much in the last two decades, the goal of fast and accurate simulation of light transport remains elusive. This dissertation presents a number of new sampling methods that attempt to address some of the shortcomings of existing global illumination algorithms. The first part of …
Or Best Offer: A Privacy Policy Negotiation Protocol, Daniel David Walker
Or Best Offer: A Privacy Policy Negotiation Protocol, Daniel David Walker
Theses and Dissertations
Users today are concerned about how their information is collected, stored and used by Internet sites. Privacy policy languages, such as the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), allow websites to publish their privacy practices and policies in machine readable form. Currently, software agents designed to protect users' privacy follow a "take it or leave it" approach when evaluating these privacy policies. This approach is inflexible and gives the server ultimate control over the privacy of web transactions. Privacy policy negotiation is one approach to leveling the playing field by allowing a client to negotiate with a server to determine how …
Extensible Pre-Authentication In Kerberos, Phillip L. Hellewell
Extensible Pre-Authentication In Kerberos, Phillip L. Hellewell
Theses and Dissertations
Organizations need to provide services to a wide range of people, including strangers outside their local security domain. As the number of users grows larger, it becomes increasingly tedious to maintain and provision user accounts. It remains an open problem to create a system for provisioning outsiders that is secure, flexible, efficient, scalable, and easy to manage. Kerberos is a secure, industry-standard protocol. Currently, Kerberos operates as a closed system; all users must be specified upfront and managed on an individual basis. This paper presents EPAK (Extensible Pre-Authentication in Kerberos), a framework that enables Kerberos to operate as an open …
Obstacle Avoidance And Path Traversal Using Interactive Machine Learning, Jonathan M. Turner
Obstacle Avoidance And Path Traversal Using Interactive Machine Learning, Jonathan M. Turner
Theses and Dissertations
Recently there has been a growing interest in using robots in activities that are dangerous or cost prohibitive for humans to do. Such activities include military uses and space exploration. While robotic hardware is often capable of being used in these types of situations, the ability of human operators to control robots in an effective manner is often limited. This deficiency is often related to the control interface of the robot and the level of autonomy that control system affords the human operator. This thesis describes a robot control system, called the safe/unsafe system, which gives a human operator the …
Conceptual Xml For Systems Analysis, Reema Al-Kamha
Conceptual Xml For Systems Analysis, Reema Al-Kamha
Theses and Dissertations
Because XML has become a new standard for data representation, there is a need for a simple conceptual model that works well with XML-based development. In this research we present a conceptual model for XML, called C-XML, which meets this new need of systems analysts who store their data using XML. We describe our implementation of an automatic conversion from XML Schema to C-XML that preserves information and constraints. With this conversion, we can view an XML Schema instance graphically at a higher level of abstraction. We also describe our implementation of an automatic conversion from C-XML to XML Schema. …
Intelligent Rotoscoping: A Semi-Automated Interactive Boundary Tracking Approach To Video Segmentation, Seth R. Holladay
Intelligent Rotoscoping: A Semi-Automated Interactive Boundary Tracking Approach To Video Segmentation, Seth R. Holladay
Theses and Dissertations
Video segmentation is an application of computer vision aimed at automating the extraction of an object from a series of video frames. However, it is a difficult problem, especially to compute at real-time, interactive rates. Although general application to video is difficult because of the wide range of image scenarios, user interaction can help to reduce the problem space and speed up the computation. This thesis presents a fast object-tracking tool that selects an object from a series of frames based on minimal user input. Our Intelligent Rotoscoping tool aims for increased speed and accuracy over other video segmentation tools, …
Finding Termination And Time Improvement In Predicate Abstraction With Under-Approximation And Abstract Matching, Dritan Kudra
Finding Termination And Time Improvement In Predicate Abstraction With Under-Approximation And Abstract Matching, Dritan Kudra
Theses and Dissertations
The focus of current formal verification methods is mitigating the state explosion problem. One of these formal methods is predicate abstraction, which reduces concrete states of a system to bitvectors of true/false valuations of a set of predicates. Predicate abstraction comes in two flavors, over-approximation and under-approximation. A drawback of over-approximation is that it produces too many spurious errors for data-intensive applications. A more recent under-approximation technique which does not produce spurious errors, does abstract matching on concrete states (AMCS). AMCS adds behaviors to an abstract system by augmenting the set of initial predicates, making use of a theorem prover. …
Cognitive And Behavioral Model Ensembles For Autonomous Virtual Characters, Jeffrey S. Whiting
Cognitive And Behavioral Model Ensembles For Autonomous Virtual Characters, Jeffrey S. Whiting
Theses and Dissertations
Cognitive and behavioral models have become popular methods to create autonomous self-animating characters. Creating these models presents the following challenges: (1) Creating a cognitive or behavioral model is a time intensive and complex process that must be done by an expert programmer (2) The models are created to solve a specific problem in a given environment and because of their specific nature cannot be easily reused. Combining existing models together would allow an animator, without the need of a programmer, to create new characters in less time and would be able to leverage each model's strengths to increase the character's …
Vision-Based Control And Flight Optimization Of A Rotorcraft Uav, David Christian Hubbard
Vision-Based Control And Flight Optimization Of A Rotorcraft Uav, David Christian Hubbard
Theses and Dissertations
A Rotorcraft UAV provides an ideal experimental platform for vision-based navigation. This thesis describes the flight tests of the US Army PALACE pro ject, which implements Moravec's pseudo-normalized correlation tracking algorithm. The tracker uses the movement of the landing site in the camera, a laser range, and the aircraft attitude from an IMU to estimate the relative motion of the UAV. The position estimate functions as a GPS equivalent to enable the rotorcraft to maneuver without the aid of GPS. Flight tests were performed with obstacles and over concrete, asphalt, and grass in daylight conditions with a safe landing area …
Manifold Sculpting, Michael S. Gashler
Manifold Sculpting, Michael S. Gashler
Theses and Dissertations
Manifold learning algorithms have been shown to be useful for many applications of numerical analysis. Unfortunately, existing algorithms often produce noisy results, do not scale well, and are unable to benefit from prior knowledge about the expected results. We propose a new algorithm that iteratively discovers manifolds by preserving the local structure among neighboring data points while scaling down the values in unwanted dimensions. This algorithm produces less noisy results than existing algorithms, and it scales better when the number of data points is much larger than the number of dimensions. Additionally, this algorithm is able to benefit from existing …
T-Spline Simplification, David L. Cardon
T-Spline Simplification, David L. Cardon
Theses and Dissertations
This work focuses on generating approximations of complex T-spline surfaces with similar but less complex T-splines. Two approaches to simplifying T-splines are proposed: a bottom-up approach that iteratively refines an over-simple T-spline to approximate a complex one, and a top-down approach that evaluates existing control points for removal in producing an approximations. This thesis develops and compares the two simplification methods, determining the simplification tasks to which each is best suited. In addition, this thesis documents supporting developments made to T-spline research as simplification was developed.
Hop-By-Hop Transport Control For Multi-Hop Wireless Networks, Daniel N. Scofield
Hop-By-Hop Transport Control For Multi-Hop Wireless Networks, Daniel N. Scofield
Theses and Dissertations
TCP can perform poorly in multi-hop wireless networks due to problems with contention and poor feedback from end-to-end control algorithms. This thesis explores the design of a hop-by-hop transport protocol (HxH). By allowing intermediate nodes to actively participate, the protocol can respond more quickly to changing network conditions and exploit the unique characteristics of wireless networks. Results indicate that hop-by-hop transport can achieve throughput rates that are double those of TCP, depending on the speed of the wireless links.
On-The-Fly Dynamic Dead Variable Analysis, Joel P. Self
On-The-Fly Dynamic Dead Variable Analysis, Joel P. Self
Theses and Dissertations
State explosion in model checking continues to be the primary obstacle to widespread use of software model checking. The large input ranges of variables used in software is the main cause of state explosion. As software grows in size and complexity the problem only becomes worse. As such, model checking research into data abstraction as a way of mitigating state explosion has become more and more important. Data abstractions aim to reduce the effect of large input ranges. This work focuses on a static program analysis technique called dead variable analysis. The goal of dead variable analysis is to discover …
Improving Machine Learning Through Oracle Learning, Joshua Ephraim Menke
Improving Machine Learning Through Oracle Learning, Joshua Ephraim Menke
Theses and Dissertations
The following dissertation presents a new paradigm for improving the training of machine learning algorithms, oracle learning. The main idea in oracle learning is that instead of training directly on a set of data, a learning model is trained to approximate a given oracle's behavior on a set of data. This can be beneficial in situations where it is easier to obtain an oracle than it is to use it at application time. It is shown that oracle learning can be applied to more effectively reduce the size of artificial neural networks, to more efficiently take advantage of domain experts …
Obstacle Annotation By Demonstration, Michael David Clement
Obstacle Annotation By Demonstration, Michael David Clement
Theses and Dissertations
By observing human driving with a “digital head" (combined video camera and accelerometers) and taking a few hand annotations, we can automatically annotate regions in a robot's field of view that should be interpreted as obstacles to be avoided. This is accomplished by detecting the movement for a given frame in a video. Some hand annotations of video frames are necessary and they are used to create Probability Grids. Using the movement data and the Probability Grids, it is possible to annotate large amounts of video data quickly in an automated system.
Observational Studies Of Software Engineering Using Data From Software Repositories, Daniel Pierce Delorey
Observational Studies Of Software Engineering Using Data From Software Repositories, Daniel Pierce Delorey
Theses and Dissertations
Data for empirical studies of software engineering can be difficult to obtain. Extrapolations from small controlled experiments to large development environments are tenuous and observation tends to change the behavior of the subjects. In this thesis we propose the use of data gathered from software repositories in observational studies of software engineering. We present tools we have developed to extract data from CVS repositories and the SourceForge Research Archive. We use these tools to gather data from 9,999 Open Source projects. By analyzing these data we are able to provide insights into the structure of Open Source projects. For example, …
Stylized Hatching For 3d Animation, Trent Fielding Crow
Stylized Hatching For 3d Animation, Trent Fielding Crow
Theses and Dissertations
Much research has been done in creating non-photorealistic renderings of objects that mimic the look of hand-made drawings by traditional artists. This thesis extends work in this area by presenting an NPR hatching method that can be applied to 3D animated films to help them feel more hand drawn. In contrast to most other NPR methods, this method preserves the 3D lighting and effects of the film that make it interesting to watch. This process includes a procedural algorithm to create a hatching pattern that can be easily integrated into any film's pipeline that uses Renderman. In addition, we create …
Live Surface, Christopher J. Armstrong
Live Surface, Christopher J. Armstrong
Theses and Dissertations
Live Surface allows users to segment and render complex surfaces from 3D image volumes at interactive (sub-second) rates using a novel, Cascading Graph Cut (CGC). Live Surface consists of two phases. (1) Preprocessing for generation of a complete 3D watershed hierarchy followed by tracking of all catchment basin surfaces. (2) User interaction in which, with each mouse movement, the 3D object is selected and rendered in real time. Real-time segmentation is ccomplished by cascading through the 3D watershed hierarchy from the top, applying graph cut successively at each level only to catchment basins bordering the segmented surface from the previous …
Feature-Based Mini Unmanned Air Vehicle Video Euclidean Stabilization With Local Mosaics, Damon Dyck Gerhardt
Feature-Based Mini Unmanned Air Vehicle Video Euclidean Stabilization With Local Mosaics, Damon Dyck Gerhardt
Theses and Dissertations
Video acquired using a camera mounted on a mini Unmanned Air Vehicle (mUAV) may be very helpful in Wilderness Search and Rescue and many other applications but is commonly plagued with limited spatial and temporal field of views, distractive jittery motions, disorienting rotations, and noisy and distorted images. These problems collectively make it very difficult for human viewers to identify objects of interest as well as infer correct orientations throughout the video. In order to expand the temporal and spatial field of view, stabilize, and better orient users of noisy and distorted mUAV video, a method is proposed of estimating …
System For Collision Detection Between Deformable Models Built On Axis Aligned Bounding Boxes And Gpu Based Culling, David Owen Tuft
System For Collision Detection Between Deformable Models Built On Axis Aligned Bounding Boxes And Gpu Based Culling, David Owen Tuft
Theses and Dissertations
Collision detection between deforming models is a difficult problem for collision detection systems to handle. This problem is even more difficult when deformations are unconstrained, objects are in close proximity to one another, and when the entity count is high. We propose a method to perform collision detection between multiple deforming objects with unconstrained deformations that will give good results in close proximities. Currently no systems exist that achieve good performance on both unconstrained triangle level deformations and deformations that preserve edge connectivity. We propose a new system built as a combination of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) based culling and …