Engineering Commons^™

Tournament Wizard: Simple And Lightweight Software For Running Fencing Tournaments, John Ryan Daley

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Many sports use technology to assist in officiating and administration. Fencing tournament organizers use specialized software to help determine how their matches occur, and to help them administer a tournament. However, the software most commonly used to run these tournaments has some significant limitations, and is not well-suited for use with small events. As a former President of Cal Poly’s Fencing Club, I have had a chance to interact with one popular application for running fencing tournaments a number of times, and made note of its shortcomings. These included issues with operating system compatibility, license transference, and amount of space …

Polyratings Website Update, Cody Sears, Connor Krier, Anil Thattayathu

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Polyratings is a well known website amongst Cal Poly students. Over the past 14 years it has been in existence the site has been viewed 2.5 million times. This is a drastic number because the average student population on campus every year nears 20,000. This being said, when class registration came around every quarter there was always talk about the Polyratings scores for professors. However, with this talk also came much negativity towards the site.

The problem that we found was that everyone needed Polyratings for help with class searching, but were also very dissatisfied with the website. The main …

Fulfilling A Restful Commitment: Test-Suite Generation For Swagger-Based Rest Apis, Noah Dietz

Computer Science and Software Engineering

An application programming interface (API) can be the most integral part of a product or service. APIs drive businesses and innovation in all aspects of technology and they rely on descriptive frameworks to detail what they have to offer. These descriptive frameworks are a rich source of information on a variety of levels, such as usage, best-practices and even basic implications towards the underlying implementation. The motivation of this project during my internship was to exploit this wealth of information in order to create a description-based, or contract-based, unit test generation tool specifically for Swagger-based REST APIs and to encourage …

Micronaut: A 2d Action Side Scrolling Platformer For The Apple Tv, Christopher Michael Williams

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Micronaut is a 2D side scrolling platformer video game application developed for the Apple TV with the tvOS SDK version 9.1. It explores human­computer interaction of platformer video games on the Apple TV and aims to give the player the most control to maximize enjoyment. Micronaut features five engaging levels with each level designed to focus on teaching the player the mechanics one at a time. Micronaut has been submitted and is undergoing submission for the Apple TV App Store at the time of this paper. Christopher Williams managed the software development and design, and Jacob Johannesen created the graphical …

The Effects Of Latency On 3d Interactive Data Visualizations, Allen Korenevsky

Master's Theses

Interactive data visualizations must respond fluidly to user input to be effective, or so we assume. In fact it is unknown exactly how fast a visualization must run to present every facet within a dataset. An engineering team with limited resources is left with intuition and estimates to determine if their application performs sufficiently well.

This thesis studies how latency affects users' comprehension of data visualizations, specifically 3D geospatial visualizations with large data sets. Subjects used a climate visualization showing temperatures spanning from the 19th to the 21st century to answer multiple choice questions. Metrics like their eye movements, time …

Graph-Based Data Visualization In Virtual Reality: A Comparison Of User Experiences, Paul Andrew Sullivan

Master's Theses

Virtual reality is currently in the spotlight, attracting intense scrutiny by the press, technology companies, and consumers. After twenty years of dormancy, the technology has experienced a renaissance following advancements in both hardware and software. Most of these developments, and thus press attention, have been centered on entertainment. However, if the technology is going to continue to grow, it must be useful in a wide variety of situations. This paper explores the effectiveness of visualizing data in virtual reality in comparison to traditional presentations.

In this thesis, we present an approach to displaying data in a virtual reality environment. We …

Polyfs Visualizer, Paul Martin Fallon

Master's Theses

One of the most important operating system topics, file systems, control how we store and access data and form a key point in a computer scientists understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a computer. However, file systems, with their abstract concepts and lack of concrete learning aids, is a confusing subjects for students. Historically at Cal Poly, the CPE 453 Introduction to Operating Systems has been on of the most failed classes in the computing majors, leading to the need for better teaching and learning tools. Tools allowing students to gain concrete examples of abstract concepts could be used to …

Anex: Automated Network Exploitation Through Penetration Testing, Eric Francis Dazet

Master's Theses

Cyber attacks are a growing concern in our modern world, making security evaluation a critical venture. Penetration testing, the process of attempting to compromise a computer network with controlled tests, is a proven method of evaluating a system's security measures. However, penetration tests, and preventive security analysis in general, require considerable investments in money, time, and labor, which can cause them to be overlooked. Alternatively, automated penetration testing programs are used to conduct a security evaluation with less user effort, lower cost, and in a shorter period of time than manual penetration tests. The trade-off is that automated penetration testing …

A Comparison Of Algorithms And Heuristics For Solving The O 1 I N D 1 Shortest Route Problems, Steven D. Young

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Shortest-path problems have seen a huge amount of study over the course of the last 50 years. Not surprisingly, this means the original problem of finding the shortest path from some starting location to some destination location has been thoroughly studied. However a large number of slight variations on the original problem still have yet to be thoroughly examined. In this paper we examine one of those variations, namely the problem of determining the optimal route from some source location to some destination location such that at least one location in an intermediate set is included in the route. Three …

Comparative Study Of Dimension Reduction Approaches With Respect To Visualization In 3-Dimensional Space, Pooja Chenna

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

In the present big data era, there is a need to process large amounts of unlabeled data and find some patterns in the data to use it further. If data has many dimensions, it is very hard to get any insight of it. It is possible to convert high-dimensional data to low-dimensional data using different techniques, this dimension reduction is important and makes tasks such as classification, visualization, communication and storage much easier. The loss of information should be less while mapping data from high-dimensional space to low-dimensional space. Dimension reduction has been a significant problem in many fields as …

Improving The Security Of Wireless Sensor Networks, Mauricio Tellez Nava

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

With the rapid technological advancements of sensors, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have become the main technology for the Internet of Things (IoT). We investigated the security of WSNs in an environmental monitoring system with the goal to improve the overall security. We implemented a Secure Temperature Monitoring System (STMS), which served as our investigational environment. Our results revealed a security flaw found in the bootstrap loader (BSL) password used to protect firmware in the MSP430 MCU chips. We demonstrated how the BSL password could be brute forced in a matter of days. Furthermore, we illustrate how an attacker can reverse …

Campusbookshare, Aditya Varkhedi

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Every few months, students in the US and abroad face the expensive and time consuming task of buying textbooks for the classes they are enrolled in. Despite the advent of the internet and social networking websites the ability for peer to peer textbook exchange is still limited. There are few if any dedicated websites for general purpose peer to peer textbook transfer for every university and college.

The project I have created for my Senior Project is a peer to peer solution for buying and selling textbooks on US college campuses. The underlying idea is to create an authentication system …

Standardizing Functional Safety Assessments For Off-The-Shelf Instrumentation And Controls, Andrew Michael Nack

Masters Theses

It is typical for digital instrumentation and controls, used to manage significant risk, to undergo substantial amounts of scrutiny. The equipment must be proven to have the necessary level of design integrity. The details of the scrutiny vary based on the particular industry, but the ultimate goal is to provide sufficient evidence that the equipment will operate successfully when performing their required functions.

To be able to stand up to the scrutiny and more importantly, successfully perform the required safety functions, the equipment must be designed to defend against random hardware failures and also to prevent systematic faults. These design …

Virtual Reality Simulator For Training In Myringotomy With Tube Placement, Caiwen Huang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Myringotomy refers to a surgical incision in the eardrum, and it is often followed by ventilation tube placement to treat middle-ear infections. The procedure is difficult to learn; hence, the objectives of this work were to develop a virtual-reality training simulator, assess its face and content validity, and implement quantitative performance metrics and assess construct validity.

A commercial digital gaming engine (Unity3D) was used to implement the simulator with support for 3D visualization of digital ear models and support for major surgical tasks. A haptic arm co-located with the stereo scene was used to manipulate virtual surgical tools and to …

Pre-R, Brian Carreon, Mariel Sanchez

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The project that PomTech worked on for Capstone is the Pre­R iOS Application for Dr. Sam Slishman. The main objective for this project was to create a functional prototype of the iOS application and deliver it to Dr. Slishman by the end of the 2016 Winter quarter. The prototype features the ability for patients to contact Dr. Slishman for consultation through a phone call, a Facetime video call, email, or a house call. In addition, the user of the prototype is able to see the proximity and availability of Dr. Slishman. Other features include a profile page of Dr. Slishman, …

Development Of An Autonomous Robotic Mushroom Harvester, Nikita Alexeevich Kuchinskiy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The process of development of a new robot is one of the modern technological arts. This process involves multiple complex steps and recursive approach. In this project, a solution for automatic harvesting of mushrooms is developed. In order to design an effective solution, it is necessary to explore and take into consideration the limitations of grasping very soft and fragile objects (particularly mushrooms). We will elaborate several strategies of picking and analyze each strategy to formulate the design requirements, develop a solution, and finally, evaluate the efficiency of the proposed solution in actual farm conditions for real mushrooms. The mushroom …

Autonomous Navigation With Obstacle Avoidance For Unmanned Aircraft Systems Using Milp, James A. Devens

Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous coordination among multiple aerial vehicles to ensure a collision free airspace is a critical aspect of today’s airspace. With the rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the military and commercial sectors, obstacle avoidance in a densely populated airspace is necessary. This thesis investigates finding optimal or near-optimal trajectories in real-time for aircraft in complex airspaces containing a large number of obstacles. The solution for the trajectories is described as a linear program subject to mixed integer constraints, known as a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP). The resulting MILP problem is solved in real time using a well-known, public …

Representation And Analysis Of Multi-Modal, Nonuniform Time Series Data: An Application To Survival Prognosis Of Oncology Patients In An Outpatient Setting, Jennifer Winikus

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The representation of nonuniform, multi-modal, time-limited time series data is complex and explored through the use of discrete representation, dimensionality reduction with segmentation based techniques, and with behavioral representation approaches. These explorations are done with a focus on an outpatient oncology setting with the classification and regression analysis being used for length of survival prognosis. Each decision of representation and analysis is not independent, with implications of each decision in method for how the data is represented and then which analysis technique is used. One unique aspect of the work is the use of outpatient clinical data for patients, which …

Mitigating Interference During Virtual Machine Live Migration Through Storage Offloading, Morgan S. Stuart

Theses and Dissertations

Today's cloud landscape has evolved computing infrastructure into a dynamic, high utilization, service-oriented paradigm. This shift has enabled the commoditization of large-scale storage and distributed computation, allowing engineers to tackle previously untenable problems without large upfront investment. A key enabler of flexibility in the cloud is the ability to transfer running virtual machines across subnets or even datacenters using live migration. However, live migration can be a costly process, one that has the potential to interfere with other applications not involved with the migration. This work investigates storage interference through experimentation with real-world systems and well-established benchmarks. In order to …

Can You Hack It? Validating Predictors For It Boot Camps, Courtney Gear

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Given the large number of information technology jobs open and lack of qualified individuals to fill them, coding boot camps have sprung up in response to this skill gap by offering a specialized training program in an accelerated format. This fast growth has created a need to measure these training programs and understand their effectiveness. In the present study, a series of analyses examined whether specific or combinations of predictors were valid for training performance in this coding academy. Self-rated, daily efficacy scores were used as outcome variables of training success and correlation results showed a positive relationship with efficacy …

Pothole Reporting System, Alissa L. Mcgill, Brian G. Simmons, Sean D. Querry, Elizabeth J. Hammell

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this project is to create a pothole detection device that can be attached to the underside of a commercial vehicle. Potholes cost motorists around 6.4 billion dollars annually, thus demonstrating the need for a system to aid with the detection and reporting of potholes. The four systems we needed to consider for the implementation of this project were the power system, the sensing system, the data processing system, and the reporting and logging system. Power pulled from the vehicle will enable the sensors and data processing module. The data processing module will analyze the readings from the …

Public Key Cryptography With The Brin-Thompson Group 2v, Cyril Xavier Kuhns

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The Brin-Thompson group 2V is a simple, finitely presented group of functions with solvable word problem and unsolvable torsion problem, which makes it a promising platform group for the Anshel-Anshel-Goldfeld key agreement protocol. The primary results of this project are an implementation of 2V and the AAG protocol in Java, which is shown to be susceptible to the heuristic length based attack.

Challenging The Efficient Market Hypothesis With Dynamically Trained Artificial Neural Networks, Kevin M. Harper

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A review of the literature applying Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) based Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to market forecasting leads to three observations: 1) It is clear that simple ANNs, like other nonlinear machine learning techniques, are capable of approximating general market trends 2) It is not clear to what extent such forecasted trends are reliably exploitable in terms of profits obtained via trading activity 3) Most research with ANNs reporting profitable trading activity relies on ANN models trained over one fixed interval which is then tested on a separate out-of-sample fixed interval, and it is not clear to what extent these …

In-Shoe Plantar Pressure System To Investigate Ground Reaction Force Using Android Platform, Ahmed A. Mostfa

Theses and Dissertations

Human footwear is not yet designed to optimally relieve pressure on the heel of the foot. Proper foot pressure assessment requires personal training and measurements by specialized machinery. This research aims to investigate and hypothesize about Preferred Transition Speed (PTS) and to classify the gait phase of explicit variances in walking patterns between different subjects. An in-shoe wearable pressure system using Android application was developed to investigate walking patterns and collect data on Activities of Daily Living (ADL). In-shoe circuitry used Flexi-Force A201 sensors placed at three major areas: heel contact, 1st metatarsal, and 5th metatarsal with a PIC16F688 microcontroller …

Determining Unique Agents By Evaluating Web Form Interaction, Ben Cooley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because of the inherent risks in today’s online activities, it becomes imperative to identify a malicious user masquerading as someone else. Incorporating biometric analysis enhances the confidence of authenticating valid users over the Internet while providing additional layers of security with no hindrance to the end user. Through the analysis of traffic patterns and HTTP Header analysis, the detection and early refusal of robot agents plays a great role in reducing fraudulent login attempts.

Hyperspectral Data Acquisition And Its Application For Face Recognition, Woon Cho

Doctoral Dissertations

Current face recognition systems are rife with serious challenges in uncontrolled conditions: e.g., unrestrained lighting, pose variations, accessories, etc. Hyperspectral imaging (HI) is typically employed to counter many of those challenges, by incorporating the spectral information within different bands. Although numerous methods based on hyperspectral imaging have been developed for face recognition with promising results, three fundamental challenges remain: 1) low signal to noise ratios and low intensity values in the bands of the hyperspectral image specifically near blue bands; 2) high dimensionality of hyperspectral data; and 3) inter-band misalignment (IBM) correlated with subject motion during data acquisition.

This dissertation …

Hands-Free Computer Interaction Using A Sip/Puff Sensor As A Mouse, Daniel Williams

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Free2play, Corey Lee Wilson

Computer Engineering

Free2Play is a website based upon the wildly popular PC video game League of Legends created by Riot Gaming. The website contains helpful information for new and old players of the game, such as articles containing the latest League of Legends new, a rune calculator, and recommended item builds for characters. The website uses HTML5, jquery, node.js, MySQL, and PHP to pull data from Riot’s web API and Champion.gg’s website.

Real-Time Digital Effects Processing Using Ios, Jonah W. Clinard

Computer Engineering

In today’s society, we are seeing incredible improvements in terms of creating smaller technological devices that behave more and more like the personal computers of yesterday. Mobile “Smart” devices, in particular, are becoming incredibly powerful not just in terms of processing power, but in the fact that they are able to provide assistance to users in their everyday lives. Application developers are now able utilize the power and size of these devices, to create and realize ideas that would have been previously viewed as impossible. This project applies the fields of digital signal processing, music, and mobile application development, to …

Exclusive-Or Preprocessing And Dictionary Coding Of Continuous-Tone Images., Takiyah K. Cooper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The field of lossless image compression studies the various ways to represent image data in the most compact and efficient manner possible that also allows the image to be reproduced without any loss. One of the most efficient strategies used in lossless compression is to introduce entropy reduction through decorrelation. This study focuses on using the exclusive-or logic operator in a decorrelation filter as the preprocessing phase of lossless image compression of continuous-tone images. The exclusive-or logic operator is simply and reversibly applied to continuous-tone images for the purpose of extracting differences between neighboring pixels. Implementation of the exclusive-or operator …