Engineering Commons^™

Volitional Control Of Lower-Limb Prosthesis With Vision-Assisted Environmental Awareness, S M Shafiul Hasan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Early and reliable prediction of user’s intention to change locomotion mode or speed is critical for a smooth and natural lower limb prosthesis. Meanwhile, incorporation of explicit environmental feedback can facilitate context aware intelligent prosthesis which allows seamless operation in a variety of gait demands. This dissertation introduces environmental awareness through computer vision and enables early and accurate prediction of intention to start, stop or change speeds while walking. Electromyography (EMG), Electroencephalography (EEG), Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and Ground Reaction Force (GRF) sensors were used to predict intention to start, stop or increase walking speed. Furthermore, it was investigated whether …

Development Of A Real-Time Single-Lead Single-Beat Frequency-Independent Myocardial Infarction Detector, Harold Martin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The central aim of this research is the development and deployment of a novel multilayer machine learning design with unique application for the diagnosis of myocardial infarctions (MIs) from individual heartbeats of single-lead electrocardiograms (EKGs) irrespective of their sampling frequencies over a given range. To the best of our knowledge, this design is the first to attempt inter-patient myocardial infarction detection from individual heartbeats of single-lead (lead II) electrocardiograms that achieves high accuracy and near real-time diagnosis. The processing time of 300 milliseconds to a diagnosis is just at the time range in between extremely fast heartbeats of around 300 …

Geographic Data Mining And Knowledge Discovery, Liangdong Deng

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Geographic data are information associated with a location on the surface of the Earth. They comprise spatial attributes (latitude, longitude, and altitude) and non-spatial attributes (facts related to a location). Traditionally, Physical Geography datasets were considered to be more valuable, thus attracted most research interest. But with the advancements in remote sensing technologies and widespread use of GPS enabled cellphones and IoT (Internet of Things) devices, recent years witnessed explosive growth in the amount of available Human Geography datasets. However, methods and tools that are capable of analyzing and modeling these datasets are very limited. This is because Human Geography …

Structural Health Monitoring Of Pipelines In Radioactive Environments Through Acoustic Sensing And Machine Learning, Michael Thompson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Structural health monitoring (SHM) comprises multiple methodologies for the detection and characterization of stress, damage, and aberrations in engineering structures and equipment. Although, standard commercial engineering operations may freely adopt new technology into everyday operations, the nuclear industry is slowed down by tight governmental regulations and extremely harsh environments. This work aims to investigate and evaluate different sensor systems for real-time structural health monitoring of piping systems and develop a novel machine learning model to detect anomalies from the sensor data. The novelty of the current work lies in the development of an LSTM-autoencoder neural network to automate anomaly detection …

Detection Of Human Vigilance State During Locomotion Using Wearable Fnirs, Masudur R. Siddiquee

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human vigilance is a cognitive function that requires sustained attention toward change in the environment. Human vigilance detection is a widely investigated topic which can be accomplished by various approaches. Most studies have focused on stationary vigilance detection due to the high effect of interference such as motion artifacts which are prominent in common movements such as walking. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy is a preferred modality in vigilance detection due to the safe nature, the low cost and ease of implementation. fNIRS is not immune to motion artifact interference, and therefore human vigilance detection performance would be severely degraded when studied …

Data Analytics And Machine Learning To Enhance The Operational Visibility And Situation Awareness Of Smart Grid High Penetration Photovoltaic Systems, Aditya Sundararajan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Electric utilities have limited operational visibility and situation awareness over grid-tied distributed photovoltaic systems (PV). This will pose a risk to grid stability when the PV penetration into a given feeder exceeds 60% of its peak or minimum daytime load. Third-party service providers offer only real-time monitoring but not accurate insights into system performance and prediction of productions. PV systems also increase the attack surface of distribution networks since they are not under the direct supervision and control of the utility security analysts.

Six key objectives were successfully achieved to enhance PV operational visibility and situation awareness: (1) conceptual cybersecurity …

Machine Learning And Image Processing For Noise Removal And Robust Edge Detection In The Presence Of Mixed Noise, Mehdi Mafi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The central goal of this dissertation is to design and model a smoothing filter based on the random single and mixed noise distribution that would attenuate the effect of noise while preserving edge details. Only then could robust, integrated and resilient edge detection methods be deployed to overcome the ubiquitous presence of random noise in images. Random noise effects are modeled as those that could emanate from impulse noise, Gaussian noise and speckle noise.

In the first step, evaluation of methods is performed based on an exhaustive review on the different types of denoising methods which focus on impulse noise, …

A Hardware-Assisted Insider Threat Detection And Prevention Framework, Kyle W. Denney

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, the USB protocol is among the most widely used protocols. However, the mass-proliferation of USB has led to a threat vector wherein USB devices are assumed innocent, leaving computers open to an attack. Malicious USB devices can disguise themselves as benign devices to insert malicious commands to connected end devices. A rogue device appears benign to the average OS, requiring advanced detection schemes to identify malicious devices. However, using system-level hooks, advanced threats may subvert OS-reliant detection schemes. This thesis showcases USB-Watch, a hardware-based USB threat detection framework. The hardware can collect live USB traffic before the data can …

Search Rank Fraud Prevention In Online Systems, Md Mizanur Rahman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The survival of products in online services such as Google Play, Yelp, Facebook and Amazon, is contingent on their search rank. This, along with the social impact of such services, has also turned them into a lucrative medium for fraudulently influencing public opinion. Motivated by the need to aggressively promote products, communities that specialize in social network fraud (e.g., fake opinions and reviews, likes, followers, app installs) have emerged, to create a black market for fraudulent search optimization. Fraudulent product developers exploit these communities to hire teams of workers willing and able to commit fraud collectively, emulating realistic, spontaneous activities …

Spectrum Sharing, Latency, And Security In 5g Networks With Application To Iot And Smart Grid, Imtiaz Parvez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The surge of mobile devices, such as smartphones, and tables, demands additional capacity. On the other hand, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and smart grid, which connects numerous sensors, devices, and machines require ubiquitous connectivity and data security. Additionally, some use cases, such as automated manufacturing process, automated transportation, and smart grid, require latency as low as 1 ms, and reliability as high as 99.99\%. To enhance throughput and support massive connectivity, sharing of the unlicensed spectrum (3.5 GHz, 5GHz, and mmWave) is a potential solution. On the other hand, to address the latency, drastic changes in the network architecture is required. The …

Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For Wireless Localization In Search And Rescue, Virgilio Acuna

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can successfully assist in search and rescue (SAR) operations using wireless localization. The zone-grid to partition to capture/detect WiFi probe requests follows the concepts found in Search Theory Method. The UAV has attached a sensor, e.g., WiFi sniffer, to capture/detect the WiFi probes from victims or lost people’s smartphones. Applying the Random-Forest based machine learning algorithm, an estimation of the user's location is determined with a 81.8% accuracy.

UAV technology has shown limitations in the navigational performance and limited flight time. Procedures to optimize these limitations are presented. Additionally, how the UAV …

Eeg Spectral Changes Before And After An Eight-Week Intervention Period Of Preksha Meditation, Chintan Joshi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Various types of meditation techniques, primarily categorized into concentrative and mindfulness meditation, have evolved over the years to enhance the physiological and psychological well-being of people in all walks of life. However, the scientific knowledge of the impact of meditation on physiological and psychological well-being is very limited. Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to study the effect of a sequence of different forms of Preksha meditation on brain activity. EEG data from 13 novice participants (10 females, 3 males; Age: 19-49 yrs) were collected while meditating for the first time (pre) and at the end of an eight week (post) intervention …