Engineering Commons^™

A Semantic Web Approach To Fault Tolerant Autonomous Manufacturing, Fadi El Kalach

Theses and Dissertations

The next phase of manufacturing is centered on making the switch from traditional automated to autonomous systems. Future Factories are required to be agile, allowing for more customized production, and resistant to disturbances. Such production lines would have the capability to reallocate resources as needed and eliminate downtime while keeping up with market demands. These systems must be capable of complex decision making based on different parameters such as machine status, sensory data, and inspection results. Current manufacturing lines lack this complex capability and instead focus on low level decision making on the machine level without utilizing the generated data …

Real-Time Facial Expression Recognition Using Edge Ai Accelerators, Mark Heath Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Facial expression recognition is a popular and challenging area of research in machine learning applications. Facial expressions are critical to human communication and allow us to convey complex thoughts and emotions beyond spoken language. The complexity of facial expressions creates a difficult problem for computer vision systems, especially edge computing systems. Current Deep Learning (DL) methods rely on large-scale Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) which require millions of floating point operations (FLOPS) to accomplish similar image classification tasks. However, on edge and IoT devices, large-scale convolutional models can cause problems due to memory and power limitations. The intent of this work …

Initiating Change In Care: Socially Assistive Robots, Sooraj Sushama

Theses and Dissertations

Socially assistive robots (SAR) are autonomous machines equipped with sensors and software that allow them to interact socially with humans. SAR robots are commonly used in healthcare settings to provide patients with non-clinical support, such as conversation and emotional companionship. SARs can also deliver reminders, monitor vital signs, and provide educational information about health conditions or medications. Researchers have studied SAR applications in detail. Additionally, there has been prior research on SAR where users' sociodemographic factors and technology acceptance were studied. But even though the backbone of SAR is an advanced technology, no known research has been done on users' …

Wifi Sensing At The Edge Towards Scalable On-Device Wireless Sensing Systems, Steven M. Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

WiFi sensing offers a powerful method for tracking physical activities using the radio-frequency signals already found throughout our homes and offices. This novel sensing modality offers continuous and non-intrusive activity tracking since sensing can be performed (i) without requiring wearable sensors, (ii) outside the line-of-sight, and even (iii) through the wall. Furthermore, WiFi has become a ubiquitous technology in our computers, our smartphones, and even in low-cost Internet of Things devices. In this work, we consider how the ubiquity of these low-cost WiFi devices offer an unparalleled opportunity for improving the scalability of wireless sensing systems. Thus far, WiFi sensing …

Real-Time Motion Controller For Human-Robot Teams Utilizing Artificial Potential Fields, Gabriella Graziani

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a real-time robotic motion control system for human-robot teams. The framework utilizes artificial potential fields (APFs) to guide robotic agents towards a “goal” agent while navigating around “obstacle” agents; these goals and obstacles are also dynamic agents with their own set of tasks. This system is also developed for a live-programming environment, where a controlling agent updates the tasks of all agents within the system at any time during the system’s runtime. This motion controller was created and tested for a human-robot choreographic team. After the controller was fully integrated on a Trossen Robotic LoCobot Wx200 robotic …

Improving The Performance, Energy Efficiency And Security Of Gpus, Xin Wang

Theses and Dissertations

The work in this dissertation achieves to enhance the performance, energy-efficiency, and security of the GPUs. We noticed that, as the demand of hardware resources keeps rising in GPUs, the energy consumption becomes unaffordable and places barriers for further performance boost. To resolve this issue, we have proposed several novel GPU micro-architectures that are able to assist the GPUs to execute in an energy-efficient manner. They also provide the potential for further performance enhancement in GPUs. Firstly, we proposed a GPU register packing scheme that stores multiple narrow-width operands to a single register to save register file resources. The unoccupied …

Machine Learning Models To Automate Radiotherapy Structure Name Standardization, Priyankar Bose

Theses and Dissertations

Structure name standardization is a critical problem in Radiotherapy planning systems to correctly identify the various Organs-at-Risk, Planning Target Volumes and `Other' organs for monitoring present and future medications. Physicians often label anatomical structure sets in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images with nonstandard random names. Hence, the standardization of these names for the Organs at Risk (OARs), Planning Target Volumes (PTVs), and `Other' organs is a vital problem. Prior works considered traditional machine learning approaches on structure sets with moderate success. We compare both traditional methods and deep neural network-based approaches on the multimodal vision-language prostate cancer …

Virtual Plc Platform For Security And Forensics Of Industrial Control Systems, Syed Ali Qasim

Theses and Dissertations

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are vital in managing critical infrastructures, including nuclear power plants and electric grids. With the advent of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), these systems have been integrated into broader networks, enhancing efficiency but also becoming targets for cyberattacks. Central to ICS are Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), which bridge the physical and cyber worlds and are often exploited by attackers. There's a critical need for tools to analyze cyberattacks on PLCs, uncover vulnerabilities, and improve ICS security. Existing tools are hindered by the proprietary nature of PLC software, limiting scalability and efficiency.

To overcome these challenges, …

Portable Robotic Navigation Aid For The Visually Impaired, Lingqiu Jin

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to address the limitations of existing visual-inertial (VI) SLAM methods - lack of needed robustness and accuracy - for assistive navigation in a large indoor space. Several improvements are made to existing SLAM technology, and the improved methods are used to enable two robotic assistive devices, a robot cane, and a robotic object manipulation aid, for the visually impaired for assistive wayfinding and object detection/grasping. First, depth measurements are incorporated into the optimization process for device pose estimation to improve the success rate of VI SLAM's initialization and reduce scale drift. The improved method, called depth-enhanced visual-inertial …

Improving The Flexibility And Robustness Of Machine Tending Mobile Robots, Richard Ethan Hollingsworth

Theses and Dissertations

While traditional manufacturing production cells consist of a fixed base robot repetitively performing tasks, the Industry 5.0 flexible manufacturing cell (FMC) aims to bring Autonomous Industrial Mobile Manipulators (AIMMs) to the factory floor. Composed of a wheeled base and a robot arm, these collaborative robots (cobots) operate alongside people while autonomously performing tasks at different workstations. AIMMs have been tested in real production systems, but the development of the control algorithms necessary for automating a robot that is a combination of two cobots remains an open challenge before the large scale adoption of this technology occurs in industry. Currently popular …

Comparing Importance Of Knowledge And Professional Skill Areas For Engineering Programming Utilizing A Two Group Delphi Survey, John F. Hutton

Theses and Dissertations

All engineering careers require some level of programming proficiency. However, beginning programming classes are challenging for many students. Difficulties have been well-documented and contribute to high drop-out rates which prevent students from pursuing engineering. While many approaches have been tried to improve the performance of students and reduce the dropout rate, continued work is needed. This research seeks to re-examine what items are critical for programming education and how those might inform what is taught in introductory programming classes (CS1). Following trends coming from accreditation and academic boards on the importance of professional skills, we desire to rank knowledge and …

Design, Development And Evaluation Of The Ruggedized Edge Computing Node (Recon), Sahil Girin Patel

Theses and Dissertations

The increased quality and quantity of sensors provide an ever-increasing capability to collect large quantities of high-quality data in the field. Research devoted to translating that data is progressing rapidly; however, translating field data into usable information can require high performance computing capabilities. While high performance computing (HPC) resources are available in centralized facilities, bandwidth, latency, security and other limitations inherent to edge location in field sensor applications may prevent HPC resources from being used in a timely fashion necessary for potential United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) field applications. To address these limitations, the design requirements for RECON …

Assessment Of Simulated And Real-World Autonomy Performance With Small-Scale Unmanned Ground Vehicles, William Peyton Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Off-road autonomy is a challenging topic that requires robust systems to both understand and navigate complex environments. While on-road autonomy has seen a major expansion in recent years in the consumer space, off-road systems are mostly relegated to niche applications. However, these applications can provide safety and navigation to dangerous areas that are the most suited for autonomy tasks. Traversability analysis is at the core of many of the algorithms employed in these topics. In this thesis, a Clearpath Robotics Jackal vehicle is equipped with a 3D Ouster laser scanner to define and traverse off-road environments. The Mississippi State University …

Modeling, Verification, And Simulation Of A Uav Swarm Consensus Protocol, Rohit Martin Menghani

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), particularly electrically powered multi-rotors, are becoming increasingly popular in the entertainment, transportation, logistics, and military sectors. One of the main drawbacks presented by these vehicles at the time of writing is the limited range achieved as a consequence of the limits of battery technology. One common method used to overcome such limitations, is the use of multiple vehicles in cooperation to achieve a certain goal. This application of UAVs is called swarming, where multiple agents can coordinate their actions to fly in a certain formation, to access a certain challenging area, or to fly further. As …

Towards Orchestration In The Cloud-Fog Continuum, Xavier Jesus Merino Aguilera

Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of the Internet-of-Things has raised demand for computing, storage, and network resources. The cloud model is ill-equipped to handle the volume and variety of data travelling to and from the cloud’s core as more data is generated and consumed at the network’s edge. Some applications necessitate low-latency connectivity and geographical awareness, highlighting the cloud’s centralization shortcomings. By localizing resources, minimizing bandwidth utilization, and lowering latency, the fog and edge layers are proposed to circumvent these limitations. At these layers, resource orchestration is crucial because poor resource management has an impact on service delivery. The aim of this study …

Analyzing Microarchitectural Residue In Various Privilege Strata To Identify Computing Tasks, Tor J. Langehaug

Theses and Dissertations

Modern multi-tasking computer systems run numerous applications simultaneously. These applications must share hardware resources including the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and memory while maximizing each application’s performance. Tasks executing in this shared environment leave residue which should not reveal information. This dissertation applies machine learning and statistical analysis to evaluate task residue as footprints which can be correlated to identify tasks. The concept of privilege strata, drawn from an analogy with physical geology, organizes the investigation into the User, Operating System, and Hardware privilege strata. In the User Stratum, an adversary perspective is taken to build an interrogator program that …

Preserving Users’ Privacy In Iot Systems Through Network-Based Access Control, Ahmed Khalid A Alhazmi

Theses and Dissertations

Privacy issues have plagued the rapid proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Resource-constrained IoT devices often obscure transparency for end-users. A lack of transparency and control complicates user trust in IoT. Additionally, a growing history of misuse and abuse exists in IoT. Notably, a smart TV has periodically scanned and collected users’ private information without consent, while power companies have adjusted the temperature of smart thermostats during heat waves. Due to a hybrid of distributed ecosystems within IoT, users cannot easily implement traditional access control over their devices as data flows within different nodes for storage and processing. …

Automotive Sensor Fusion Systems For Traffic Aware Adaptive Cruise Control, Jonah T. Gandy

Theses and Dissertations

The autonomous driving (AD) industry is advancing at a rapid pace. New sensing technology for tracking vehicles, controlling vehicle behavior, and communicating with infrastructure are being added to commercial vehicles. These new automotive technologies reduce on road fatalities, improve ride quality, and improve vehicle fuel economy. This research explores two types of automotive sensor fusion systems: a novel radar/camera sensor fusion system using a long shortterm memory (LSTM) neural network (NN) to perform data fusion improving tracking capabilities in a simulated environment and a traditional radar/camera sensor fusion system that is deployed in Mississippi State’s entry in the EcoCAR Mobility …

The Effects Of Ecological Simulation For Ground Vehicle Mobility Forecasting, Christopher R. Hudson

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) are being explored for use in military domains. Military UGVs operate in complex off-road environments. Vehicle mobility forecasting plays an important role in understanding how and where a vehicle can operate. Traditional mobility forecasting has been done using an analytical model known as the NATO Reference Mobility Model (NRMM). There has been a push to extend the forecasting capabilities of NRMM by integrating more simulation methods. Simulation enables the repeated testing of UGVs in scenarios that would be difficult or dangerous to study in real world testing. To accurately capture UGV performance in simulation, the operating …

Detecting Cybersecurity And Behavioral Anomalies In Smart Grid Substation, Anfal Yahya Hathah

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the increasing number of cyberattacks on smart grid networks globally in the last decade, maintaining a stable electric power supply has become increasingly challenging. The shift from traditional means of measurement instrumentation to smarter devices in electrical substations is experiencing increasing incidents of intrusion. Defense against those intrusions is now a global trending research topic and is attracting governments’ attention. Various techniques have been developed to mitigate the effect of cyberattacks on national power grid systems. The state estimation technique has proven its capability in detecting random false data-injection attacks (FDIAs). However, attackers may have considerable knowledge of …

Efficient And Scalable Algorithms For Estimating Structural Properties Of Large Graphs, Shiju Li

Theses and Dissertations

Large complex networks and graphs are everywhere. Examples include social networks, web graphs, communication networks, power grids, and transportation networks. The ongoing rapid expansion of such networks has triggered a tremendous amount of attention in various disciplines. Estimating the structural and topological properties of the large complex networks has been at the heart of the understanding of the networks. However, such estimations often become technically challenging. This dissertation is focused on how to estimate three non-trivial structural quantities on large networks efficiently and scalably by transcending the current state-of-the-art algorithms. The structural quantities to estimate are (1) a function of …

A Component-Based Analysis For Online Proctoring, Salma Roshdy Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The switch to online learning due to the COVID-19 revealed flaws in the existing learning methods, especially with online proctored assessments. Hence, online proctoring using computers was needed for a fair evaluation. Many studies develop cheating detection systems using several approaches. However, to the best of our knowledge, none of the existing studies investigated the impact of their system components in detecting cheating behaviors. Combining system components, even if they do not significantly improve the system performance in cheating detection, can cause an overload on the system. Therefore, our goal is to investigate the system components’ impact, individually and combined, …

Managing Radio Frequency Interference In Vehicular Multi-Antenna Transceivers, Jakob W. Kunzler

Theses and Dissertations

Radio frequency interference is an ever growing problem in the wireless community. This dissertation presents methods to reduce interference for vehicular multi-antenna devices. This document is organized into two parts: the main chapters and the appendices. The main chapters present research conducted primarily by the author. These deserve the reader's primary attention. The appendices showcase contributions made by the author serving in a supporting role to projects led by others and/or do not fit the vehicular theme. These should receive secondary attention. The main chapter contributions are summarized as follows. A device was created that provides over 105 dB of …

Exploiting The Iot Through Network-Based Covert Channels, Kyle S. Harris

Theses and Dissertations

Information leaks are a top concern to industry and government leaders. The IoT is a technology capable of sensing real-world events. A method for exfiltrating data from these devices is by covert channel. This research designs a novel IoT CTC without the need for inter-packet delays to encode data. Instead, it encodes data within preexisting network information, namely ports or addresses. Additionally, the CTC can be implemented in two different modes: Stealth and Bandwidth. Performance is measured using throughput and detectability. The Stealth methods mimic legitimate traffic captures while the Bandwidth methods forgo this approach for maximum throughput. Detection results …

Evaluating The Use Of Boot Image Encryption On Talos Ii Architecture, Calvin M. Muramoto

Theses and Dissertations

Sensitive devices operating in unprotected environments are vulnerable to hardware attacks like reverse engineering and side channel analysis. This represents a security concern because the root of trust can be invalidated through boot firmware manipulation. For example, boot data is rarely encrypted and typically travels across an accessible bus like the LPC bus, allowing data to be easily intercepted and possibly manipulated during system startup. The ash chip storing the boot data can also be removed from these devices and examined to reveal detailed boot information. This paper details an implementation of encrypting a section of the boot image and …

Securing Infiniband Networks With End-Point Encryption, Noah B. Diamond

Theses and Dissertations

The NVIDIA-Mellanox Bluefield-2 is a 100 Gbps high-performance network interface which offers hardware offload and acceleration features that can operate directly on network traffic without routine involvement from the ARM CPU. This allows the ARM multi-core CPU to orchestrate the hardware to perform operations on both Ethernet and RDMA traffic at high rates rather than processing all the traffic directly. A testbed called TNAP was created for performance testing and a MiTM verification process called MiTMVMP is used to ensure proper network configuration. The hardware accelerators of the Bluefield-2 support a throughput of nearly 86 Gbps when using IPsec to …

Uav Payload Identification With Acoustic Emissions And Cell Phone Devices, Hunter G. Doster

Theses and Dissertations

The growing presence of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) brings new threats to the civilian and military front. In response, the Department of Defense (DoD) is developing many drone detection systems. Current systems use Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR), Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), and Radio Frequency (RF). Although useful, these technologies are becoming easier to spoof every year, and some are limited to line of sight. Acoustic emissions are a unique quality all drones emit. Acoustics are difficult to spoof and do not require line of sight for detection. This research expands the research field of study by creating HurtzHunter, …

Implementation And Characterization Of Ahr On A Xilinx Fpga, Andrew J. Dittrich

Theses and Dissertations

A new version of the Adaptive-Hybrid Redundancy (AHR) architecture was developed to be implemented and tested in hardware using Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The AHR architecture was developed to mitigate the effects that the Single Event Upset (SEU) and Single Event Transient (SET) radiation effects have on processors and was tested on a Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages (MIPS) architecture. The AHR MIPS architecture was implemented in hardware using two Xilinx FPGAs. A Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART) based serial communication network was added to the AHR MIPS design to enable inter-board communication between the two FPGAs. The …

Considerations Using Iterative Closest Point In Presence Of Occlusions In Automated Aerial Refueling, Joel M. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force is researching vision-based AAR and different methods for this actualization. Previous work has established a computer vision based pipeline with ICP. This work focuses on how ICP can become resilient to boom occlusion by minimizing errors and discusses the limitations of ICP in the face of occlusions. Specifically, we look at various filtering techniques to remove non-salient points. To register point clouds while maintaining real time interactivity, this work also presents a method for downsampling high resolution camera calibrations to preserve real-time processing and significantly decrease the vision pipeline latency.

Evaluating Neural Network Decoder Performance For Quantum Error Correction Using Various Data Generation Models, Brett M. Martin

Theses and Dissertations

Neural networks have been shown in the past to perform quantum error correction (QEC) decoding with greater accuracy and efficiency than algorithmic decoders. Because the qubits in a quantum computer are volatile and only usable on the order of milliseconds before they decohere, a means of fast quantum error correction is necessary in order to correct data qubit errors within the time budget of a quantum algorithm. Algorithmic decoders are good at resolving errors on logical qubits with only a few data qubits, but are less efficient in systems containing more data qubits. With neural network decoders, practical quantum computation …