Computer Engineering Commons^™

Investigating Autonomous Ground Vehicles For Weed Elimination, Abraham Mitchell

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The management of weeds in crop fields is a continuous agricultural problem. The use of herbicides is the most common solution, but herbicidal resistance decreases effectiveness, and the use of herbicides has been found to have severe adverse effects on human health and the environment. The use of autonomous drone systems for weed elimination is an emerging solution, but challenges in GPS-based localization and navigation can impact the effectiveness of these systems. The goal of this thesis is to evaluate techniques for minimizing localization errors of drones as they attempt to eliminate weeds. A simulation environment was created to model …

Cybersecurity In Critical Infrastructure Systems: Emulated Protection Relay, Mitchell Bylak

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cyber-attacks on Critical Systems Infrastructure have been steadily increasing across the world as the capabilities of and reliance on technology have grown throughout the 21st century, and despite the influx of new cybersecurity practices and technologies, the industry faces challenges in its cooperation between the government that regulates law practices and the private sector that owns and operates critical infrastructure and security, which has directly led to an absence of eas- ily accessible information and learning resources on cybersecurity for use in public environments and educational settings. This honors research thesis addresses these challenges by submitting the development of an …

Culture In Computing: The Importance Of Developing Gender-Inclusive Software, Creighton France

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The field of computing as we know it today exists because of the contributions of numerous female mathematicians, computer scientists, and programmers. While working with hardware was viewed as “a man’s job” during the mid-20th century, computing and programming was viewed as a noble and high-paying field for women to occupy. However, as time has progressed, the U.S. has seen a decrease in the number of women pursuing computer science. The idea that computing is a masculine discipline is common in the U.S. today for reasons such as male-centered marketing of electronics and gadgets, an inaccurate representation of what it …

Svar: A Virtual Machine For Portable Code On Reconfigurable Accelerators, Nathaniel Fredricks

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The SPAR-2 array processor was designed as an overlay architecture for implementation on Xilinx Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). As an overlay, the SPAR-2 array processor can be configured to take advantage of the specific resources available on different FPGAs. However once configured, the SPAR-2 requires programmer’s to have knowledge of the low level architecture, and write platform-specific code. In this thesis SVAR, a hardware/software co-designed virtual machine, is proposed that runs on the SPAR-2. SVAR allows programmers to write portable, platform-independent code once and have it interpreted for any specific configuration. Results are presented that verify the virtual machine …

Digital Simulations Of Memristors Towards Integration With Reconfigurable Computing, Ivris Raymond

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The end of Moore’s Law has been predicted for decades. Demand for increased parallel computational performance has been increased by improvements in machine learning. This past decade has demonstrated the ever-increasing creativity and effort necessary to extract scaling improvements in CMOS fabrication processes. However, CMOS scaling is nearing its fundamental physical limits. A viable path for increasing performance is to break the von Neumann bottleneck. In-memory computing using emerging memory technologies (e.g. ReRam, STT, MRAM) offers a potential path beyond the end of Moore’s Law. However, there is currently very little support from industry tools for designers wishing to incorporate …

Reverse Engineering Post-Quantum Cryptography Schemes To Find Rowhammer Exploits, Sam Lefforge

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Post-quantum cryptography is a necessary countermeasure to protect against attacks from quantum computer. However, the post-quantum cryptography schemes are potentially vulnerable to side channel attacks. One such method of attacking involves creating bit-flips in victim memory through a process called Rowhammer. These attacks can vary in nature, but can involve rowhammering bits to raise the encryption scheme's decryption failure rate, or modifying the scheme's random seed. With a high enough decryption failure rate, it becomes feasible to generate sufficient information about the secret key to perform a key recovery attack. This thesis proposed two attacks on proposed post-quantum cryptography algorithms, …

Preserving User Data Privacy Through The Development Of An Android Solid Library, Alexandria Lim

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In today’s world where any and all activity on the internet produces data, user data privacy and autonomy are not prioritized. Companies called data brokers are able to gather data elements of personal information numbering in the billions. This data can be anything from purchase history, credit card history, downloaded applications, and service subscriptions. This information can be analyzed and inferences can be drawn from analysis, categorizing people into groups that range in sensitivity — from hobbies to race and income classes. Not only do these data brokers constantly overlook data privacy, this mass amount of data makes them extremely …

Fuel Prediction: Determining The Desirable Stops For The Cheapest Road Trips, Maxx Smith

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Current technology has given rise to many advanced route-planning applications that are available for use by the general public. Gone are the days of preparing for road trips by looking at a paper map for hours on end trying to determine the correct exits or calculate the distance to be traveled. However, with the use of modern technology, there is a certain aspect of forward-thinking that is now lost with planning a road trip. One of the biggest constraints that often gets left on the backburner is deciding when and where to stop to refuel the car. This report is …

Critical Infrastructure Workforce Development Pods For Teaching Cybersecurity Using Netlab+, Gideon Sutterfield

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As digital automation for Industrial Control Systems has grown, so has its
vulnerability to cyberattacks. The world of industry has responded effectively to this, but the world of academia is still lagging as its emphasis is still almost entirely on information technology. Considering this, we created a workforce development pod that serves as a hands-on learning module for teaching students key cybersecurity ideas surrounding operational technology using the NETLAB+ platform. A pod serves as the virtual environment where the learning exercise takes place. This project’s implementation involved the creation of a segmented network within the pod where a student starts …

Comparative Study Of Snort 3 And Suricata Intrusion Detection Systems, Cole Hoover

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) are one layer of defense that can be used to protect a network from cyber-attacks. They monitor a network for any malicious activity and send alerts if suspicious traffic is detected. Two of the most common open-source NIDS are Snort and Suricata. Snort was first released in 1999 and became the industry standard. The one major drawback of Snort has been its single-threaded architecture. Because of this, Suricata was released in 2009 and uses a multithreaded architecture. Snort released Snort 3 last year with major improvements from earlier versions, including implementing a new multithreaded architecture …

A Versatile Python Package For Simulating Dna Nanostructures With Oxdna, Kira Threlfall

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The ability to synthesize custom DNA molecules has led to the feasibility of DNA nanotechnology. Synthesis is time-consuming and expensive, so simulations of proposed DNA designs are necessary. Open-source simulators, such as oxDNA, are available but often difficult to configure and interface with. Packages such as oxdna-tile-binding pro- vide an interface for oxDNA which allows for the ability to create scripts that automate the configuration process. This project works to improve the scripts in oxdna-tile-binding to improve integration with job scheduling systems commonly used in high-performance computing environments, improve ease-of-use and consistency within the scripts compos- ing oxdna-tile-binding, and move …

Using Bluetooth Low Energy And E-Ink Displays For Inventory Tracking, David Whelan

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The combination of Bluetooth Low energy and E-Ink displays allow for a low energy wire-less display. The application of this technology is far reaching especially given how the Bluetooth Low Energy specification can be extended. This paper proposes an extension to this specification specifically for inventory tracking. This extension combined with the low energy E-Ink display results in a smart label that can keep track of additional meta data and inventory counts for physical inventory. This label helps track the physical inventory and can help mitigate any errors in the logical organization of inventory.

Side-Channel Analysis On Post-Quantum Cryptography Algorithms, Tristen Teague

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The advancements of quantum computers brings us closer to the threat of our current asymmetric cryptography algorithms being broken by Shor's Algorithm. NIST proposed a standardization effort in creating a new class of asymmetric cryptography named Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). These new algorithms will be resistant against both classical computers and sufficiently powerful quantum computers. Although the new algorithms seem mathematically secure, they can possibly be broken by a class of attacks known as side-channels attacks (SCA). Side-channel attacks involve exploiting the hardware that the algorithm runs on to figure out secret values that could break the security of the system. …

Analysis Of Gpu Memory Vulnerabilities, Jarrett Hoover

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Graphics processing units (GPUs) have become a widely used technology for various purposes. While their intended use is accelerating graphics rendering, their parallel computing capabilities have expanded their use into other areas. They are used in computer gaming, deep learning for artificial intelligence and mining cryptocurrencies. Their rise in popularity led to research involving several security aspects, including this paper’s focus, memory vulnerabilities. Research documented many vulnerabilities, including GPUs not implementing address space layout randomization, not zeroing out memory after deallocation, and not initializing newly allocated memory. These vulnerabilities can lead to a victim’s sensitive data being leaked to an …

Automated Report Based System To Encourage A Greener Commute To Campus, Ronald Velasquez

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project consists of the design and implementation of a tool to encourage greener commutes to the University of Arkansas. Trends in commuting of the last few years show a decline in not so environment-friendly commute modes. Nevertheless, ensuring that this trend continues is vital to assure a significant impact. The created tool is an automated report system. The report displays information about different commute options. A Google form allows users to submit report requests, and a web app allows the sustainability office to process them in batches. This system was built in the Apps Script platform. It implements several …

Contrastive Learning For Unsupervised Auditory Texture Models, Christina Trexler

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sounds with a high level of stationarity, also known as sound textures, have perceptually relevant features which can be captured by stimulus-computable models. This makes texture-like sounds, such as those made by rain, wind, and fire, an appealing test case for understanding the underlying mechanisms of auditory recognition. Previous auditory texture models typically measured statistics from auditory filter bank representations, and the statistics they used were somewhat ad-hoc, hand-engineered through a process of trial and error. Here, we investigate whether a better auditory texture representation can be obtained via contrastive learning, taking advantage of the stationarity of auditory textures to …

Malicious Hardware & Its Effects On Industry, Gustavo Perez

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In recent years advancements have been made in computer hardware security to circumnavigate the threat of malicious hardware. Threats come in several forms during the development and overall life cycle of computer hardware and I aim to highlight those key points. I will illustrate the various ways in which attackers exploit flaws in a chip design, or how malicious parties take advantage of the many steps required to design and fabricate hardware. Due to these exploits, the industry and consumers have suffered damages in the form of financial loss, physical harm, breaches of personal data, and a multitude of other …

Data Forgery Detection In Automatic Generation Control: Exploration Of Automated Parameter Generation And Low-Rate Attacks, Yatish R. Dubasi

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) is a key control system utilized in electric power systems. AGC uses frequency and tie-line power flow measurements to determine the Area Control Error (ACE). ACE is then used by the AGC to adjust power generation and maintain an acceptable power system frequency. Attackers might inject false frequency and/or tie-line power flow measurements to mislead AGC into falsely adjusting power generation, which can harm power system operations. Various data forgery detection models are studied in this thesis. First, to make the use of predictive detection models easier for users, we propose a method for automated generation …

Lexicon Based Approaches To Sentiment Analysis Of Spanish Tweets: A Comparative Study, Jean Roca

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sentiment analysis is a natural language processing technique that aims to classify text based on the emotions expressed in them. It is a research area that has been around for almost 20 years and has seen a lot of development. The works presented in this paper attempts to target a less-developed area in sentiment analysis known as multilingual sentiment analysis. More specifically, multilingual sentiment analysis of micro-texts. Using the existing WordNet lexicon and a domain-specific lexicon for a corpus of Spanish tweets, we analyze the effectiveness of these techniques.

A Capacitive Sensing Gym Mat For Exercise Classification & Tracking, Adam Goertz

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Effective monitoring of adherence to at-home exercise programs as prescribed by physiotherapy protocols is essential to promoting effective rehabilitation and therapeutic interventions. Currently physical therapists and other health professionals have no reliable means of tracking patients' progress in or adherence to a prescribed regimen. This project aims to develop a low-cost, privacy-conserving means of monitoring at-home exercise activity using a gym mat equipped with an array of capacitive sensors. The ability of the mat to classify different types of exercises was evaluated using several machine learning models trained on an existing dataset of physiotherapy exercises.

Multiple Face Detection And Recognition System Design Applying Deep Learning In Web Browsers Using Javascript, Cristhian Gabriel Espinosa Sandoval

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Deep learning has advanced progressively in the last years and now demonstrates state-of-the-art performance in various fields. In the era of big data, transformation of data into valuable knowledge has become one of the most important challenges in computing. Therefore, we will review multiple algorithms for face recognition that have been researched for a long time and are maturely developed, and analyze deep learning, presenting examples of current research.

To provide a useful and comprehensive perspective, in this paper we categorize research by deep learning architecture, including neural networks, convolutional neural networks, depthwise Separable Convolutions, densely connected convolutional networks, and …

Image-Driven Automated End-To-End Testing For Mobile Applications, Caleb Fritz

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The increasing complexity and demand of software systems and the greater availability of test automation software is quickly rendering manual end-to-end (E2E) testing techniques for mobile platforms obsolete. This research seeks to explore the potential increase in automated test efficacy and maintainability through the use of computer vision algorithms when applied with Appium, a leading cross-platform mobile test automation framework. A testing framework written in a Node.js environment was created to support the development of E2E test scripts that examine and report the functional capabilities of a mobile test app. The test framework provides a suite of functions that connect …

Optimization Of Ultra-Low Power Application-Specific Asynchronous Deep Learning Integrated Circuit Design, Cole Sherrill

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Internet of Things (IoT) consists of all devices connected to the internet, including battery-powered devices like surveillance cameras and smart watches. IoT devices are often idle, making leakage power a crucial design constraint. Currently, there are only a few low-power application-specific processors for deep learning. Recently, the Trustable Logic Circuit Design (TruLogic) laboratory at the UofA designed an asynchronous Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) system. However, the original design suffered from delay-sensitivity issues undermining its reliable operation. The aim of this thesis research is to modify the existing CNN circuit to achieve increased reliability and to optimize the improved design …

Prototyping A Capacitive Sensing Device For Gesture Recognition, Chenglong Lin

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Capacitive sensing is a technology that can detect proximity and touch. It can also be utilized to measure position and acceleration of gesture motions. This technology has many applications, such as replacing mechanical buttons in a gaming device interface, detecting respiration rate without direct contact with the skin, and providing gesture sensing capability for rehabilitation devices. In this thesis, an approach to prototype a capacitive gesture sensing device using the Eagle PCB design software is demonstrated. In addition, this paper tested and evaluated the resulting prototype device, validating the effectiveness of the approach.

Identifying Fake News Using Emotion Analysis, Brady Gilleran

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper presents research applying Emotional Analysis to “Fake News” and “Real News” articles to investigate whether or not there is a difference in the emotion used in these two types of news articles. The paper reports on a dataset for Fake and Real News that we created, and the natural language processing techniques employed to process the collected text. We use a lexicon that includes predefined words for eight emotions (anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness, joy, trust) to measure the emotional impact in each of these eight dimensions. The results of the emotion analysis are used as features …

Different Approaches To Blurring Digital Images And Their Effect On Facial Detection, Erich-Matthew Pulfer

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the usage of multiple image blurring techniques and determine their effectiveness in combatting facial detection algorithms. This type of analysis is anticipated to reveal potential flaws in the privacy expected from blurring images or, rather, portions of images. Three different blurring algorithms were designed and implemented: a box blurring method, a Gaussian blurring method, and a differential privacy-based pixilation method. Datasets of images were collected from multiple sources, including the AT&T Database of Faces. Each of these three methods were implemented via their own original method, but, because of how common they …

Applications Of Fog Computing In Video Streaming, Kyle Smith

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to show the viability of fog computing in the area of video streaming in vehicles. With the rise of autonomous vehicles, there needs to be a viable entertainment option for users. The cloud fails to address these options due to latency problems experienced during high internet traffic. To improve video streaming speeds, fog computing seems to be the best option. Fog computing brings the cloud closer to the user through the use of intermediary devices known as fog nodes. It does not attempt to replace the cloud but improve the cloud by allowing faster …

Exploring Photo Privacy Protection On Smartphones, David Darling

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The proliferation of modern smartphone camera use in the past decade has resulted in unprecedented numbers of personal photos being taken and stored on popular devices. However, it has also caused privacy concerns. These photos sometimes contain potentially harmful information if they were to be leaked such as the personally identifiable information found on ID cards or in legal documents. With current security measures on iOS and Android phones, it is possible for 3rd party apps downloaded from official app stores or other locations to access the photo libraries on these devices without user knowledge or consent. Additionally, the prevalence …

A Scalable, Chunk-Based Slicer For Cooperative 3d Printing, Jace J. Mcpherson

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cooperative 3D printing is an emerging technology that aims to increase the 3D printing speed and to overcome the size limit of the printable object by having multiple mobile 3D printers (printhead-carrying mobile robots) work together on a single print job on a factory floor. It differs from traditional layer-by-layer 3D printing due to requiring multiple mobile printers to work simultaneously without interfering with each other. Therefore, a new approach for slicing a digital model and generating commands for the mobile printers is needed, which has not been discussed in literature before. We propose a chunk-by-chunk based slicer that divides …

Comparison Of Data Transfer Alternatives In Asynchronous Circuits, Mark Howard

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Digital integrated circuits (ICs) have become progressively complex in their functionality. This has sped up the demand for asynchronous architectures, which operate without any clocking scheme, considering new challenges in the timing of synchronous systems. Asynchronous ICs have less stringent environmental constraints and are capable of maintaining reliable operation in extreme environments, while also enjoying potential benefits such as low power consumption, high modularity, and improved performance. However, when the traditional bus architecture of synchronous systems is applied to asynchronous designs, handshaking protocols required for asynchronous circuit operation result in significantly increased power consumption, offsetting the low power benefit of …