Computer Engineering Commons^™

Diagnosing Faults In Electrical Power Systems Of Spacecraft And Aircraft, Ole J. Mengshoel, Adnan Darwichse, Keith Cascio, Mark Chavira, Scott Poll, Serdar Uckun

Ole J Mengshoel

Electrical power systems play a critical role in spacecraft and aircraft. This paper discusses our development of a diagnostic capability for an electrical power system testbed, ADAPT, using probalistic techniques. In the context of ADAPT, we present two challenges, regarding modelling and real-time performance, often encountered in real-world diagnostic applications. To meet the modelling challenge, we discuss our novel high-level specification language which supports auto-generation of Bayesian networks. To meet the real-time challenge, we compile Bayesian networks intro arithmetic circuits. Arithmetic circuits typically have small footprints and are optimized for the real-time avionics systems found in spacecraft and aircraft. Using …

Evaluating Software Engineering Processes In Commercial And Community Open Source Projects, Tony Wasserman, Eugenio Capra

Tony Wasserman

We describe a current study for obtaining information about management of commercial and community open source projects. We have interviewed and surveyed leaders of more than 75 open source projects. Questions focused on the styles of leadership and communication, with a technical focus on testing and quality assurance processes. This paper describes the methods used to identify and contact subjects, as well as the questions posed and some results.

Using Flossmole Data In Determining Business Readiness Ratings, Tony Wasserman, Ashutosh Das

Tony Wasserman

This paper is a preliminary report on using FLOSSmole data retrieved from open source repositories (forges) to calculate Business Readiness Rating scores.

Methods And Tools For Developing Interactive Information Systems: An Historical Perspective, Tony Wasserman

Tony Wasserman

This paper describes the evolution of hardware and software technology over the past three decades, focusing on approaches for building interactive information systems and web applications. Successive generations of technology have used advances in hardware and software technology, along with increasingly sophisticated development methods and tools, to reduce development times and to produce a better user experience. After describing the key technology characteristics of each generation, this paper also describes the evolution of a specific methodology, User Software Engineering, from its origins in the 1970’s to its applicability to the development of modern applications.

Using Triz To Design The Future Keyboard, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A keyboard is the most common and widely used input device for a computer. Using the keyboard is often vital to interact with a computer. There are several aspects of a keyboard such as size, key layout, convenience and ergonomic features etc., which are continuously under improvement by keyboard designers and manufacturers. TRIZ is an efficient methodology in product designing. Using IFR and Trends we can well predict the directions of the future keyboards and using Contradictions and Principles we can overcome the current limitations. This article analyses the critical features of a keyboard, does a functional analysis, derives the …

Inventions On Gui For Eye Cursor Controls Systems, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Operating a GUI through eyeball is a complex mechanism and not used as often as mouse or trackball. But there are situations where eye-mouse devices can play a tremendous role especially where the hands of the user are not available or busy to perform other activities. The difficulties of implementing an eye-cursor control system are many. The article illustrates some inventions on eye-cursor control system, which attempt to eliminate the difficulties of the prior art mechanisms.

Keyboards For Inputting Japanese Language: A Study Based On Us Patents, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The most commonly used Japanese alphabets are Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. The Kanji alphabet includes pictographs or ideographic characters that were adopted from the Chinese alphabet. Hiragana is used to spell words of Japanese origin, while Katakana is used to spell words of western or other foreign origin.

Two methods are commonly used to input Japanese to the computer. One, the “kana input method” that uses a keyboard having 46 Japanese iroha (or kana) letter keys. The other method is “Roma-ji input method”, where the Japanese letters are composed of English input from a standard QWERTY keyboard. Both the methods …

10 Inventions On Reducing Keyboard Size, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A conventional computer keyboard consists of as many as 101 keys. The keyboard has several sections, such as text entry section, navigation section, and numeric keypad etc. and each having several keys on the keyboard. The size of the keyboard is a major inconvenience for portable computers, as they cannot be carried easily. Thus there are certain circumstances which compels to reduce the size of a keyboard. Reducing the size of a keyboard leads to several problems. A reduced size keyboard may not contain all the keys available on a full size keyboard; a reduced size keyboard may not be …

10 Inventions On Keyboard Attachments: A Triz Based Analysis, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although the primary objective of the keyboard to input data into the computer, the advanced keyboards keep various other things in mind, such as, how to use the same keyboard for various other purposes, or how to use the same keyboard efficiently by using various other attachments to the keyboard. This objective led to various inventions on keyboard attachments, some of which are illustrated below in this article. This article illustrates 10 inventions on various keyboard attachments from US patent database. Each different attachment improves the usability of the keyboard in some way or other. Some attachments illustrated are template …