Engineering Commons^™

The Potential Of The Implementation Of Offline Robotic Programming Into Automation-Related Pedagogy, Max Rios Carballo, Xavier Brown

Publications and Research

In this study, the offline programming tool RoboDK is used to program industrial robots for the automation sector. The study explores the feasibility of using this non-disruptive robot programming software for classroom use; assesses how well RoboDK can be used to program various robots used in the industry; creates and tests various applications; and pinpoints technical obstacles that prevent a smooth link between offline programming and actual robots. Initial results indicate that RoboDK is an effective tool for deploying its offline programming code to a Universal Robot, UR3e. There are many potential for advanced applications. The goal of the project …

Development Of A Raspberry Pi-Controlled Vex Robot For A Robotics Technology Course, Lili Ma, Justin Bartholomew, Yu Wang, Xiaohai Li

Publications and Research

This paper describes the development of a Raspberry PI-controlled VEX robot for an undergraduate robotic course. The Raspberry PI controls the mobile base built using the VEX robotics kit without using the Cortex micro-controller that comes with the kit. The aim is to create a physical robot that is manageable, easily replicable, and capable of performing advanced robotic control tasks such as vision-based control.

The constructed robot adopts the great features of the PI and the VEX hardware. Firstly, the VEX hardware consists of various sensors and actuators for students to practice the construction and assembly of an autonomous robot. …

Introducing Ros-Projects To Undergraduate Robotic Curriculum, Lili Ma, Yu Wang, Chen Xu, Xiaohai Li

Publications and Research

This paper describes three MATLAB-ROS-based simulation projects developed for an undergraduate robotics course. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is an open-source framework that helps researchers and developers build and reuse code between robotics applications. Adoption of ROS in the undergraduate curricula is still rare due to its demanding requirements of C++/Python/Java programming skills and familiarity with Linux. Recently, MathWorks released its ROS Toolbox, making it easier to interact with simulators like the Gazebo and ROS-supported physical robots. The MATLAB-ROS-Gazebo simulation platform allows students to utilize other MATLAB Toolboxes, such as Image Processing, Computer Vision, Visualization, and Navigation Toolboxes, for fast …

Types Of Cyber Attacks And Incident Responses, Kaung Myat Thu

Publications and Research

Cyber-attacks are increasingly prevalent in today's digital age, and their impact can be severe for individuals, organizations, and governments. To effectively protect against these threats, it is essential to understand the different types of attacks and have an incident response plan in place to minimize damage and restore normal operations quickly.

This research aims to contribute to the field by addressing the following questions: What are the main types of cyber-attacks, and how can organizations effectively respond to these incidents? How can the incident response process be improved through post-incident activities?

The study examines various cyber-attack types, including malware, phishing, …

Spotlight Report #6: Proffering Machine-Readable Personal Privacy Research Agreements: Pilot Project Findings For Ieee P7012 Wg, Noreen Y. Whysel, Lisa Levasseur

Publications and Research

What if people had the ability to assert their own legally binding permissions for data collection, use, sharing, and retention by the technologies they use? The IEEE P7012 has been working on an interoperability specification for machine-readable personal privacy terms to support this ability since 2018. The premise behind the work of IEEE P7012 is that people need technology that works on their behalf—i.e. software agents that assert the individual’s permissions and preferences in a machine-readable format.

Thanks to a grant from the IEEE Technical Activities Board Committee on Standards (TAB CoS), we were able to explore the attitudes of …

Designing Respectful Tech: What Is Your Relationship With Technology?, Noreen Y. Whysel

Publications and Research

According to research at the Me2B Alliance, people feel they have a relationship with technology. It’s emotional. It’s embodied. And it’s very personal. We are studying digital relationships to answer questions like “Do people have a relationship with technology?” “What does that relationship feel like?” And “Do people understand the commitments that they are making when they explore, enter into and dissolve these relationships?” There are parallels between messy human relationships and the kinds of relationships that people develop with technology. As with human relationships, we move through states of discovery, commitment and breakup with digital applications as well. Technology …

Messiness: Automating Iot Data Streaming Spatial Analysis, Christopher White, Atilio Barreda Ii

Publications and Research

The spaces we live in go through many transformations over the course of a year, a month, or a day; My room has seen tremendous clutter and pristine order within the span of a few hours. My goal is to discover patterns within my space and formulate an understanding of the changes that occur. This insight will provide actionable direction for maintaining a cleaner environment, as well as provide some information about the optimal times for productivity and energy preservation.

Using a Raspberry Pi, I will set up automated image capture in a room in my home. These images will …

Plasmonic Field-Effect Transistors (Terafets) For 6g Communications, Michael Shur, Gregory Aizin, Taiichi Otsuji, Victor Ryzhii

Publications and Research

Ever increasing demands of data traffic makes the transition to 6G communications in the 300 GHz band inevitable. Short-channel field-effect transistors (FETs) have demonstrated excellent potential for detection and generation of terahertz (THz) and sub-THz radiation. Such transistors (often referred to as TeraFETs) include short-channel silicon complementary metal oxide (CMOS). The ballistic and quasi-ballistic electron transport in the TeraFET channels determine the TeraFET response at the sub-THz and THz frequencies. TeraFET arrays could form plasmonic crystals with nanoscale unit cells smaller or comparable to the electron mean free path but with the overall dimensions comparable with the radiation wavelength. Such …

Needle In A Haystack: Detecting Subtle Malicious Edits To Additive Manufacturing G-Code Files, Caleb Beckwith, Harsh Sankar Naicker, Svara Mehta, Viba R. Udupa, Nghia Tri Nim, Varun Gadre, Hammond Pearce, Gary Mac

Publications and Research

Increasing usage of Digital Manufacturing (DM) in safety-critical domains is increasing attention on the cybersecurity of the manufacturing process, as malicious third parties might aim to introduce defects in digital designs. In general, the DM process involves creating a digital object (as CAD files) before using a slicer program to convert the models into printing instructions (e.g. g-code) suitable for the target printer. As the g-code is an intermediate machine format, malicious edits may be difficult to detect, especially when the golden (original) models are not available to the manufacturer. In this work we aim to quantify this hypothesis through …

Inverse Kinematics Of The 6dof C12xl, Carl Liu, Lili Ma

Publications and Research

Industrial robotic manipulators are widely used in applications such as pick & place, welding, and assembly to perform repeated tasks in replace of human labor. Such tasks typically require fully autonomous mechanical arms that are capable of identifying the parts to operate, path planning, and trajectory generation & tracking. A robotic arm consists of a sequence of rigid links connected by movable components (the joints). Proper control of the arm’s motion requires the knowledge of inverse kinematics, which computes/outputs the joint variables, i.e., angles for revolute joints and displacement for prismatic joints, causing the robotic arm’s end effector (e.g., gripper, …

Predicting Vasovagal Responses: A Model-Based And Machine Learning Approach, Theodore Raphan, Sergei B. Yakushi

Publications and Research

Vasovagal syncope (VVS) or neurogenically induced fainting has resulted in falls, fractures, and death. Methods to deal with VVS are to use implanted pacemakers or beta blockers. These are often ineffective because the underlying changes in the cardiovascular system that lead to the syncope are incompletely understood and diagnosis of frequent occurrences of VVS is still based on history and a tilt test, in which subjects are passively tilted from a supine position to 20◦ from the spatial vertical (to a 70◦ position) on the tilt table and maintained in that orientation for 10–15 min. Recently, is has been shown …

Cooperative Target Tracking In Concentric Formations, Lili Ma

Publications and Research

This paper considers the problem of coordinating multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a circular formation around a moving target. The main contribution is allowing for versatile formation patterns on the basis of the following components. Firstly, new uniform spacing control laws are proposed that spread the agents not necessarily over a full circle, but over a circular arc. Uniform spacing formation controllers are proposed, regulating either the separation distances or the separation angles between agents. Secondly, the use of virtual agents is proposed to allow for different radii in agents’ orbits. Thirdly, a hierarchical combination of formation patterns is …

Distributed Cross-Community Collaboration For The Cloud-Based Energy Management Service, Yu-Wen Chen, J. Morris Chang

Publications and Research

Customers’ participation is a critical factor for inte-grating the distributed energy resources via demand response and demand-side management programs, especially when customers become prosumers. Incentives need to be delivered by the energy management service to attract prosumers to operate their distributed energy resources and electricity loads grid-friendly actively. The cloud-based energy management service enables virtual trading for customers within the same community to minimize cost and smooth the fluctuation. With the potential fast-growing number of service providers and customers, the needs exist for efficiently collaborating across multiple service providers and customers. This paper proposes the distributed cross-community collaboration (XCC) for …

Object Recognition And Voice Assistant With Augmented Reality, Juan Estrella

Publications and Research

Our research project aims to provide a visually impaired person with a superimposed map that will guide the individual to the desired destination through a voice controlled virtual assistant application that integrates Augmented Reality (AR) with Artificial Intelligence (AI) Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing (subfields of AI) will be combined to identify the spatial environment and then create a graphic enhancement that provides the most direct route to the specific destination These technologies will be incorporated into the Microsoft Hololens which will be controlled by the user.

Proportional Voting Based Semi-Unsupervised Machine Learning Intrusion Detection System, Yang G. Kim, Ohbong Kwon, John Yoon

Publications and Research

Feature selection of NSL-KDD data set is usually done by finding co-relationships among features, irrespective of target prediction. We aim to determine the relationship between features and target goals to facilitate different target detection goals regardless of the correlated feature selection. The unbalanced data structure in NSL-KDD data can be relaxed by Proportional Representation (PR). However, adopting PR would deny the notion of winner-take-all by attracting a majority of the vote and also provide a fairly proportional share for any grouping of like-minded data. Furthermore, minorities and majorities would get a fair share of power and representation in data structure …

Sharing And Organizing Research Products As R Packages, Matti Vuorre, Matthew J. C. Crump

Publications and Research

A consensus on the importance of open data and reproducible code is emerging. How should data and code be shared to maximize the key desiderata of reproducibility, permanence, and accessibility? Research assets should be stored persistently in formats that are not software restrictive, and documented so that others can reproduce and extend the required computations. The sharing method should be easy to adopt by already busy researchers. We suggest the R package standard as a solution for creating, curating, and communicating research assets. The R package standard, with extensions discussed herein, provides a format for assets and metadata that satisfies …

The Law Of Black Mirror - Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Using episodes from the show Black Mirror as a study tool - a show that features tales that explore techno-paranoia - the course analyzes legal and policy considerations of futuristic or hypothetical case studies. The case studies tap into the collective unease about the modern world and bring up a variety of fascinating key philosophical, legal, and economic-based questions.

Tech Policy And Legal Theory Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Technology has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Currently, virtually all business industries are powered by large quantities of data. The potential as well as actual uses of business data, which oftentimes includes personal user data, raise complex issues of informed consent and data protection. This course will explore many of these complex issues, with the goal of guiding students into thinking about tech policy from a broad ethical perspective as well as preparing students to responsibly conduct themselves in different areas and industries in a world growingly dominated by technology.

Cooperative Target Tracking In Balanced Circular And Elliptical Formations, Lili Ma, Naira Hovakimyan

Publications and Research

This paper extends our earlier results on cooperative target tracking in cyclic pursuit using a group of mobile robots by further prescribing the formation radius and achieving an elliptical formation pattern. Prescribing the formation radius of a balanced circular formation is achieved by adjusting a parameter in the existing control input to each robot. The new elliptical formation pattern is obtained via a transformation matrix. Both single-integrator and double-integrator robot models are considered. The effectiveness of the proposed schemes is demonstrated by simulation examples.

Artificial Intelligence And Game Theory Controlled Autonomous Uav Swarms, Janusz Kusyk, M. Umit Uyar, Kelvin Ma, Eltan Samoylov, Ricardo Valdez, Joseph Plishka, Sagor E. Hoque, Giorgio Bertoli, Jefrey Boksiner

Publications and Research

Autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating as a swarm can be deployed in austere environments, where cyber electromagnetic activities often require speedy and dynamic adjustments to swarm operations. Use of central controllers, UAV synchronization mechanisms or pre-planned set of actions to control a swarm in such deployments would hinder its ability to deliver expected services. We introduce artificial intelligence and game theory based flight control algorithms to be run by each autonomous UAV to determine its actions in near real-time, while relying only on local spatial, temporal and electromagnetic (EM) information. Each UAV using our flight control algorithms positions itself …

Cyber Security Techniques- What Is The Internet?, Amy J. Ramson

Open Educational Resources

The lecture presents information about how the Internet works so students studying cyber security can better understand how cybercriminals commit their crimes. The lecture provides elemental concepts so students of all disciplines, from computer engineering to criminal justice and law can obtain a basic foundation.

Technological Challenges And Innovations In Cybersecurity And Networking Technology Program, Syed R. Zaidi, Ajaz Sana, Aparicio Carranza

Publications and Research

This era is posing a unique challenge to the Cybersecurity and related Engineering Technology areas, stimulated by the multifaceted technological boom expressed in accelerated globalization, digital transformation, the cloud, mobile access apps, and the Internet of Things (IoT)—where more and more devices are connected to the Internet every day. As the use of new Internet-based technologies increase; so does the risk of theft and misuse of sensitive information. This demands the awareness of cyber-criminality and the need for cyber hygiene in corporations, small businesses, and the government. As the need for experienced cybersecurity specialists has skyrocketed in recent years and …

Hardware Implementation Of Assistive Technology Robot, Joycephine Li

Publications and Research

SuperHERO is an on-going research project in Computer Engineering Technology department which involves upgrading Heathkit Education Robot (HERO) hardware circuits and features by using modern hardware devices and sensors. The current phase of the project will focus on upgrading the motor drive system hardware as well as implementation and testing of features such as mobile robot obstacle detection and other assistive technologies to help people with disabilities. This involves the reattachment of the robot arm after repairing and updating with 3D printing and using modern hardware and software technology. We observed that the robotic arm has rotary and translation movements …

International Space Object Orbit Tracker, Nicole Navarro

Publications and Research

This software engineering project involves development of machine learning algorithms for embedded applications. High speed 32-bit hardware devices such as Raspberry Pi and ARM microcontrollers has become inexpensive and readily available. Machine learning algorithms for applications such as image processing and image recognition are computationally intensive. But with the availability of low cost 32-bit embedded computing devices, it is now feasible to implement then on embedded hardware. This project will explore embedded applications of machine learning algorithms by following a software engineering design and test approach.

Self-Driving Toy Car Using Deep Learning, Fahim Ahmed, Suleyman Turac, Mubtasem Ali

Publications and Research

Our research focuses on building a student affordable platform for scale model self-driving cars. The goal of this project is to explore current developments of Open Source hardware and software to build a low-cost platform consisting of the car chassis/framework, sensors, and software for the autopilot. Our research will allow other students with low budget to enter into the world of Deep Learning, self-driving cars, and autonomous cars racing competitions.

Voice Controlled Augmented Reality: A Comparison Of Speech-Recognition Tools For Ar Applications, Juan Estrella

Publications and Research

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the technologies that enhance the version of the physical environment with computer-generated sensory input such as sound and graphics overlaid on top of the user’s view of the real world. Artificial Intelligence (AI) studies how to make computer programs and machines "smart" and take decisions. Our research project focuses on exploring the Integration of AI in AR applications. Specifically, on using Speech Recognition or Natural Language Processing for controlling virtual AR objects and enhancing the human-computer interaction. It is obvious that integration of AI and AR is of great value. However, for developers, it is …

How To Create And Maintain An Effective Information Architecture And Navigation System For Science Gateway Websites, Noreen Y. Whysel, Omni Marketing Interactive

Publications and Research

Whether you have an existing Science Gateway website or are creating your first one, this hands-on tutorial will show you, step by step, how to create and update gateway websites so that their content is easier to find and easier to use.

As a Science Gateway provides its web-based tools and resources, it is essential that these sites utilize specific usability tests and other research methods to ensure positive and productive experiences with the sites. Successful information architecture (IA), intuitive site navigation, and clear user interfaces (UIs) all rely on knowing where various users expect to find needed information.

Since …

An Optimized Encoding Algorithm For Systematic Polar Codes, Xiumin Wang, Zhihong Zhang, Jun Li, Yu Wang, Haiyan Cao, Zhengquan Li, Liang Shan

Publications and Research

Many different encoding algorithms for systematic polar codes (SPC) have been introduced since SPC was proposed in 2011. However, the number of the computing units of exclusive OR (XOR) has not been optimized yet. According to an iterative property of the generator matrix and particular lower triangular structure of the matrix, we propose an optimized encoding algorithm (OEA) of SPC that can reduce the number of XOR computing units compared with existing non-recursive algorithms. We also prove that this property of the generator matrix could extend to different code lengths and rates of the polar codes. Through the matrix segmentation …

Operating Systems Laboratory, Emt 2390l, Course Outline, Jose Reyes Alamo

Open Educational Resources

Students study the characteristics of operating systems used in IBM systems. They learn how to install the operating systems and set it up to control the computer hardware. They also learn to use the features of the operating systems to manage the computer system.

Enhanced Security System With Image Feature Identification, Musharrat Chowdhury

Publications and Research

Open source hardware and software will be used to acquire camera images and recognize and identify objects of interest in the image that would be used in new or existing personal security system. The mechanism of this system rotates either automatically or manually to track a face when a human is within view of the camera. The biometric security recognition system is a real world applications with complex effects of illumination and imaging conditions on live images.