Theory and Algorithms Commons^™

Enhancing Pedestrian-Autonomous Vehicle Safety In Low Visibility Scenarios: A Comprehensive Simulation Method, Zizheng Yan, Yang Liu, Hong Yang

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

Self-driving cars raise safety concerns, particularly regarding pedestrian interactions. Current research lacks a systematic understanding of these interactions in diverse scenarios. Autonomous Vehicle (AV) performance can vary due to perception accuracy, algorithm reliability, and environmental dynamics. This study examines AV-pedestrian safety issues, focusing on low visibility conditions, using a co-simulation framework combining virtual reality and an autonomous driving simulator. 40 experiments were conducted, extracting surrogate safety measures (SSMs) from AV and pedestrian trajectories. The results indicate that low visibility can impair AV performance, increasing conflict risks for pedestrians. AV algorithms may require further enhancements and validations for consistent safety performance …

A Nature-Inspired Approach For Scenario-Based Validation Of Autonomous Systems, Quentin Goss, Mustafa Akbas

Beyond: Undergraduate Research Journal

Scenario-based approaches are cost and time effective solutions to autonomous cyber-physical system testing to identify bugs before costly methods such as physical testing in a controlled or uncontrolled environment. Every bug in an autonomous cyber-physical system is a potential safety risk. This paper presents a scenario-based method for finding bugs and estimating boundaries of the bug profile. The method utilizes a nature-inspired approach adapting low discrepancy sampling with local search. Extensive simulations demonstrate the performance of the approach with various adaptations.

Simulating Polistes Dominulus Nest-Building Heuristics With Deterministic And Markovian Properties, Benjamin Pottinger

Undergraduate Honors Theses

European Paper Wasps (Polistes dominula) are social insects that build round, symmetrical nests. Current models indicate that these wasps develop colonies by following simple heuristics based on nest stimuli. Computer simulations can model wasp behavior to imitate natural nest building. This research investigated various building heuristics through a novel Markov-based simulation. The simulation used a hexagonal grid to build cells based on the building rule supplied to the agent. Nest data was compared with natural data and through visual inspection. Larger nests were found to be less compact for the rules simulated.

Evaluating Driving Performance Of A Novel Behavior Planning Model On Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Keyur Shah

Honors Scholar Theses

Many current algorithms and approaches in autonomous driving attempt to solve the "trajectory generation" or "trajectory following” problems: given a target behavior (e.g. stay in the current lane at the speed limit or change lane), what trajectory should the vehicle follow, and what inputs should the driving agent apply to the throttle and brake to achieve this trajectory? In this work, we instead focus on the “behavior planning” problem—specifically, should an autonomous vehicle change lane or keep lane given the current state of the system?

In addition, current theory mainly focuses on single-vehicle systems, where vehicles do not communicate with …

Agent-Based Modeling And Simulation Approaches In Stem Education Research, Shanna R. Simpson-Singleton, Xiangdong Che

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The development of best practices that deliver quality STEM education to all students, while minimizing achievement gaps, have been solicited by several national agencies. ABMS is a feasible approach to provide insight into global behavior based upon the interactions amongst agents and environments. In this review, we systematically surveyed several modeling and simulation approaches and discussed their applications to the evaluation of relevant theories in STEM education. It was found that ABMS is optimal to simulate STEM education hypotheses, as ABMS will sensibly present emergent theories and causation in STEM education phenomena if the model is properly validated and calibrated.

Optimal Layout For A Component Grid, Michael W. Ebert

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Several puzzle games include a specific type of optimization problem: given components that produce and consume different resources and a grid of squares, find the optimal way to place the components to maximize output. I developed a method to evaluate potential solutions quickly and automated the solving of the problem using a genetic algorithm.

Design And Implementation Of A Stand-Alone Tool For Metabolic Simulations, Milad Ghiasi Rad

Department of Computer Science and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, we present the design and implementation of a stand-alone tool for metabolic simulations. This system is able to integrate custom-built SBML models along with external user’s input information and produces the estimation of any reactants participating in the chain of the reactions in the provided model, e.g., ATP, Glucose, Insulin, for the given duration using numerical analysis and simulations. This tool offers the food intake arguments in the calculations to consider the personalized metabolic characteristics in the simulations. The tool has also been generalized to take into consideration of temporal genomic information and be flexible for simulation …

Game Specific Approaches To Monte Carlo Tree Search For Dots And Boxes, Jared Prince

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In this project, a Monte Carlo tree search player was designed and implemented for the child’s game dots and boxes, the computational burden of which has left traditional artificial intelligence approaches like minimax ineffective. Two potential improvements to this player were implemented using game-specific information about dots and boxes: the lack of information for decision-making provided by the net score and the inherent symmetry in many states. The results of these two approaches are presented, along with details about the design of the Monte Carlo tree search player. The first improvement, removing net score from the state information, was proven …

Electrodynamical Modeling For Light Transport Simulation, Michael G. Saunders

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Modernity in the computer graphics community is characterized by a burgeoning interest in physically based rendering techniques. That is to say that mathematical reasoning from first principles is widely preferred to ad hoc, approximate reasoning in blind pursuit of photorealism. Thereby, the purpose of our research is to investigate the efficacy of explicit electrodynamical modeling by means of the generalized Jones vector given by Azzam [1] and the generalized Jones matrix given by Ortega-Quijano & Arce-Diego [2] in the context of stochastic light transport simulation for computer graphics. To augment the status quo path tracing framework with such a modeling …

A Predictor Analysis Framework For Surface Radiation Budget Reprocessing Using Design Of Experiments, Patricia Allison Quigley

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Earth’s Radiation Budget (ERB) is an accounting of all incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy reflected and radiated to space by earth’s surface and atmosphere. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) project produces and archives long-term datasets representative of this energy exchange system on a global scale. The data are comprised of the longwave and shortwave radiative components of the system and is algorithmically derived from satellite and atmospheric assimilation products, and acquired atmospheric data. It is stored as 3-hourly, daily, monthly/3-hourly, and monthly averages of 1°x1° …

Active Tile Self-Assembly And Simulations Of Computational Systems, Daria Karpenko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Algorithmic self-assembly has been an active area of research at the intersection of computer science, chemistry, and mathematics for almost two decades now, motivated by the natural self-assembly mechanism found in DNA and driven by the desire for precise control of nanoscale material manufacture and for the development of nanocomputing and nanorobotics. At the theoretical core of this research is the Abstract Tile Assembly Model (aTAM), the original abstract model of DNA tile self-assembly. Recent advancements in DNA nanotechnology have been made in developing strand displacement mechanisms that could allow DNA tiles to modify themselves during the assembly process by …

Cepsim: A Simulator For Cloud-Based Complex Event Processing, Wilson Higashino, Miriam Capretz, Luiz Bittencourt

Wilson A Higashino

As one of the Vs defining Big Data, data velocity brings many new challenges to traditional data processing approaches. The adoption of cloud environments in complex event processing (CEP) systems is a recent architectural style that aims to overcome these challenges. Validating cloud-based CEP systems at the required Big Data scale, however, is often a laborious, error-prone, and expensive task. This article presents CEPSim, a new simulator that has been developed to facilitate this validation process. CEPSim extends CloudSim, an existing cloud simulator, with an application model based on directed acyclic graphs that is used to represent continuous CEP queries. …

Precis: A Design-Time Precision Analysis Tool, Mark L. Chang, Scott Hauck

Mark L. Chang

Currently, few tools exist to aid the FPGA developer in translating an algorithm designed for a general-purpose-processor into one that is precision-optimized for FPGAs. This task requires extensive knowledge of both the algorithm and the target hardware. We present a design-time tool, Precis, which assists the developer in analyzing the precision requirements of algorithms specified in MATLAB. Through the combined use of simulation, user input, and program analysis, we demonstrate a methodology for precision analysis that can aid the developer in focusing their manual precision optimization efforts.

Biological Simulations And Biologically Inspired Adaptive Systems, Edgar Alfredo Duenez-Guzman

Doctoral Dissertations

Many of the most challenging problems in modern science lie at the interface of several fields. To study these problems, there is a pressing need for trans-disciplinary research incorporating computational and mathematical models. This dissertation presents a selection of new computational and mathematical techniques applied to biological simulations and problem solving: (i) The dynamics of alliance formation in primates are studied using a continuous time individual-based model. It is observed that increasing the cognitive abilities of individuals stabilizes alliances in a phase transition-like manner. Moreover, with strong cultural transmission an egalitarian regime is established in a few generations. (ii) A …