Computer Engineering Commons^™

Context-Sensitive Auto-Sanitization For Php, Jared M. Smith, Richard J. Connor, David P. Cunningham, Kyle G. Bashour, Walter T. Work

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Scheduling For Timely Passenger Delivery In A Large Scale Ride Sharing System, Yang Zhang

Masters Theses

Taxi ride sharing is one of the most promising solutions to urban transportation issues, such as traffic congestion, gas insufficiency, air pollution, limited parking space and unaffordable parking charge, taxi shortage in peak hours, etc. Despite the enormous demands of such service and its exciting social benefits, there is still a shortage of successful automated operations of ride sharing systems around the world. Two of the bottlenecks are: (1) on-time delivery is not guaranteed; (2) matching and scheduling drivers and passengers is a NP-hard problem, and optimization based models do not support real time scheduling on large scale systems.

This …

Architecture For Real-Time, Low-Swap Embedded Vision Using Fpgas, Steven Andrew Clukey

Masters Theses

In this thesis we designed, prototyped, and constructed a printed circuit board for real-time, low size, weight, and power (SWaP) HDMI video processing and developed a general purpose library of image processing functions for FPGAs.

The printed circuit board is a baseboard for a Xilinx Zynq based system-on-module (SoM). The board provides power, HDMI input, and HDMI output to the SoM and enables low-SWaP, high-resolution, real-time video processing.

The image processing library for FPGAs is designed for high performance and high reusability. These objectives are achieved by utilizing the Chisel hardware construction language to create parameterized modules that construct low-level …

Achieving High Reliability And Efficiency In Maintaining Large-Scale Storage Systems Through Optimal Resource Provisioning And Data Placement, Lipeng Wan

Doctoral Dissertations

With the explosive increase in the amount of data being generated by various applications, large-scale distributed and parallel storage systems have become common data storage solutions and been widely deployed and utilized in both industry and academia. While these high performance storage systems significantly accelerate the data storage and retrieval, they also bring some critical issues in system maintenance and management. In this dissertation, I propose three methodologies to address three of these critical issues.

First, I develop an optimal resource management and spare provisioning model to minimize the impact brought by component failures and ensure a highly operational experience …

Topology Design And Delay Control For Communication Networks In Smart Grid, Xiaodong Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Stability is a critical concern in the design and maintenance of power systems. Different approaches have been proposed for the analysis of power grid stability in various scenarios depending on small or large perturbations and the speed of the phenomenon of interest. In this work, we consider the power grid as a group of flocking birds, as synchronization is the key issue in both contexts. The framework of partial difference equation (PdE) is used to analyze the system stability, when designing the communication network of the power grid network for conveying measurements between different power stations. Both the cases where …

Face Centered Image Analysis Using Saliency And Deep Learning Based Techniques, Rui Guo

Doctoral Dissertations

Image analysis starts with the purpose of configuring vision machines that can perceive like human to intelligently infer general principles and sense the surrounding situations from imagery. This dissertation studies the face centered image analysis as the core problem in high level computer vision research and addresses the problem by tackling three challenging subjects: Are there anything interesting in the image? If there is, what is/are that/they? If there is a person presenting, who is he/she? What kind of expression he/she is performing? Can we know his/her age? Answering these problems results in the saliency-based object detection, deep learning structured …

The Design And Validation Of A Wireless Bat-Mounted Sonar Recording System, Jeremy Joseph Langford

Masters Theses

Scientists studying the behavior of bats monitor their echolocation calls, as their calls are important for navigation and feeding, but scientist are typically restricted to ground-based recording. Recording bat calls used for echolocation from the back of the bat as opposed to the ground offers the opportunity to study bat echolocation from a vantage otherwise only offered to the bats themselves. However, designing a bat mounted in-flight audio recording system, (bat-tag), capable of recording the ultra-sound used in bat echolocation presents a unique set of challenges. Chiefly, the bat-tag must be sufficiently light weight as to not overburden the bat, …

An Application Of The Universal Verification Methodology, Rui Ma

Masters Theses

The Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) package is an open-source SystemVerilog library, which is used to set up a class-based hierarchical testbench. UVM testbenches improve the reusability of Verilog testbenches. Direct Memory Access (DMA) plays an important role in modern computer architecture. When using DMA to transfer data between a host machine and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) accelerator, a modularized DMA core on the FPGA frees the host side Central Processing Unit(CPU) during the transfer, helps to save FPGA resources, and enhances performance. Verifying the functionality of a DMA core is essential before mapping it to the FPGA. In this thesis, …

Extending Capability And Implementing A Web Interface For The Xalt Software Monitoring Tool, Kapil Agrawal

Masters Theses

As high performance computing centers evolve in terms of hardware, software, and user-base, the act of monitoring and managing such systems requires specialized tools. The tool discussed in this thesis is XALT, which is a collaborative effort between the National Institute for Computational Sciences and Texas Advanced Computing Center. XALT is designed to track link-time and job level information for applications that are compiled and executed on any Linux cluster, workstation, or high-end supercomputer. The key objectives of this work are to extend the existing functionality of XALT and implement a real-time web portal to easily visualize the tracked data. …

Autonomous Android: Autonomous 3d Environment Mapping With Android Controlled Multicopters, Tate Glick Hawkersmith

Masters Theses

Autonomous robots are robotic platforms with a high degree of autonomy, programmed to perform various behaviors or tasks. They can either be semi-autonomous, only operable within the strict confines of their direct environment, or fully autonomous, capable of sensing and navigating their environments without any human interaction.

In this thesis, I focus on fully autonomous robotic platforms, specifically multicopters, controlled by an onboard Android-driven device, a widely available operating system for smartphones and tablets with over 1.4 billion active monthly users worldwide [Callaham 2015]. The main objective of this research is to create a plug and play solution for autonomous …

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 …

Interactive Debriefing Application (Ida), Quentin Eastridge, Erik Vass

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Health Information Technology & Simulation Lab (HITS Lab) is an interprofessional effort aimed at enhancing consumer and professional health education through the advancement of health information technology. The HITS Lab brings together expertise from multiple disciplines to promote active simulated learning and the development and testing of new health technology. The lab’s latest development is the Interactive Debriefing Application (IDA). This tablet application will engage students as they observe medical simulations. The IDA will transform students from passive to active observers as they engage with what they are seeing in the simulation. The application will also enhance the face-to-face debriefing …