Computer Engineering Commons^™

Semantic-Guided Diffusion Autoencoder For Medical Image Synthesis And Representation Learning, Neda Yousefi, Abbas Koochari, Azadeh Zamanifar

Makara Journal of Technology

The development of robust machine learning models for medical diagnostics is constrained by the scarcity of large, annotated imaging datasets, a challenge rooted in high acquisition costs and stringent privacy regulations. To address this, generative approaches for data synthesis have emerged as an essential tool, and this study explores the use of diffusion models to generate medical images. This study introduces a novel Diffusion Autoencoder Model (DAM) integrated with a semantic encoder framework to generate interpretable and decodable image representations. Our DAM learns disentangled latent features via its encoder, which then conditions a diffusion probabilistic model acting as the decoder, …

Advanced Ai Deployment On Smallsats: A Mixed Precision Approach To Onboard Perception And Fpga-Gated Inference, Margaret Michelsen, Jackson Gardner, Shawn Jones, Jackson Kulik, Mario Harper

Small Satellite Conference

MOTIVATION:

SmallSats are asked to make time-sensitive calls (vessel detection, cloud filtering, debris tracking) but CubeSat-class compute is starved for power, memory, and radiation-tolerant silicon.

Most missions still downlink raw imagery for ground processing, costing hours-to-days of latency and scarce bandwidth. Running inference onboard means solving two separate problems:

• When to run inference: compute and power budgets can’t tolerate a neural network firing on every frame.
• Whether it fits when it does run: the model has to live inside a memory and compute envelope measured in megabytes, not gigabytes.

Ensuring Safety In Battery Management Systems: A Control Barrier Function Approach, Magdalena Kossek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Safe and efficient operation of batteries is paramount to extending their lifespan and ensuring reliability in battery management systems. This work presents a new approach for maximizing safety and performance of lithium-ion batteries in a variety of applications with a view towards efficiency in computation. The aim is to maximize a battery’s output (its power, speed of charging, and overall efficiency) while preserving its longevity and ensuring operational safety. This challenge is tackled by developing a novel control algorithm for advanced lithium-ion battery management leveraging control barrier functions (CBFs) to ensure safe and efficient operation during fast charging and discharging. …

The Implications Of Autonomous Vehicle Adoption For Parking Dynamics And Traffic Flow, Hamid Bagha

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

Parking dynamics directly influence land use and transportation efficiency. While conventional vehicles remain stationary for roughly 95% of their operational lifetime, private autonomous vehicles (AVs) can actively reposition themselves using strategies such as empty cruising, returning home, or seeking cheaper peripheral parking. This shifts space occupation from parking stalls to the active road network.

Using a high-fidelity microscopic simulation dataset for the City of Melbourne, this thesis examines the spatiotemporal trade-offs between parking dynamics and traffic flow across heterogeneous Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs). Experimental results show that at a 30% AV adoption rate, alternative parking strategies decrease network-wide parking search …

Creating An Updated Risc-V Platform With Hypervisor Support, Carter A. Glatt

Masters Theses

Virtualization has become an important methodology for implementing security and efficiency in embedded systems design. Virtualized environments provide flexibility and scalability of user-space environments, as hardware capabilities allow for multiple environments to run concurrently using the same hardware without impacting system performance or cost metrics. The ability to implement virtualized environments is fundamentally based on the instruction set architecture (ISA), which implements the necessary commands to facilitate the interface between physical hardware and virtual components.

RISC-V is an open-source ISA that can be used to generate platforms that support virtualization through the use of the H-Extension ISA. Previous research into …

On Shrinkage Estimators For Pareto Ii Parameters For Right Censored Type Ii Data, Jubran Abdulameer Labban, Hadeel Alkutubi

Iraqi Journal for Computer Science and Mathematics

The aim of this study is to estimate the first two shrinkage estimators for the parameters of the Pareto II distribution with right-censored Type II data. The methods we used in this study are: maximum likelihood and Bayesian. In the Bayesian method, we use non-informative priority, which is Jeffries priority, and we use the squared error loss function. These estimators were compared through Monte Carlo simulation to indicate preference based on the mean square error criterion.

The Self-Aware Room: A Framework For Operational Self-Awareness In Evolvable Blended Environments, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

The Self-Aware Room (SAR) is a room-scale research environment developed within the larger Balanced Blended Space and Blended Reality Performance System research trajectory. Rather than treating the room as a conventional “smart” environment composed of fixed automation technologies, SAR approaches it as an evolvable blended environment made from physical, virtual, conceptual, sensory, computational, and performative relationships. Its defining feature is not any particular sensor, model, or output device, but the set of transformations through which physical activity becomes structured observation, bounded representation, interpreted state, governed decision, and mediated response.

This paper develops the conceptual and methodological foundations of SAR as …

Engineering For Compromise, Ron Ross

Other Faculty Materials

Modern systems cannot credibly depend on every component, account, service, person, supplier, and supporting dependency remaining trustworthy secure throughout the system life cycle. Prevention-centered cybersecurity remains essential, but for mission-critical systems it is not a sufficient engineering strategy. This paper introduces the concept of Engineering for Compromise (EfC), a systems security engineering strategy that deliberately assumes selected system elements may fail, become malicious, lose integrity, or fall under adversary control and then asks whether the system can continue to prevent unacceptable loss. EfC separates component compromise, system compromise, and mission loss as distinct events and uses architecture to place barriers …

A Comparative Classical And Data-Driven Facial Analysis Of Wide-Field-Of-View Lens Captures, Andrew Murphy, Giovanni C. Decapua, Anthony M. Cafiso, Max E. Raabe, Kaden E. Van Leuven

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

WFOV lenses are becoming popular in facial recognition due to the fact that they enhance subject coverage and improve the chances of detecting target faces. However, wide-angle optics introduce nonlinear distortion around the image periphery, which degrades the performance of recognition pipelines. In this poster presentation, we use WFOV lens captures to analyze facial recognition using classical low-complexity algorithms based on the discrete Fourier transform (DFT), discrete cosine transform (DCT), principal component analysis (PCA), and data-driven learning with convolutional neural networks. Finally, we present computational efficiency, compression, accuracy, and precision of recognizing distorted images with qualitative and quantitative measures.

Hydroquad - A Drone Quadruped Hybrid, Haitish Gandhi, Dheer Chhabria

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

The HyDroQuad is a hybrid robotic system designed to navigate environments where traditional robots face limitations. By combining a quadrupedal walking mechanism with an aerial drone, the platform is able to walk efficiently on stable terrain and transition to flight when encountering obstacles such as rocks, gaps, or steep slopes. This adaptability makes it a strong candidate for future planetary exploration, where terrain is often uneven and unpredictable. This work focuses on developing and evaluating a functional prototype of the system. A fully integrated platform, HDQ-MK1, was designed and constructed by combining a lightweight multirotor drone with a compact quadruped …

A Cyber-Physical Flight Simulation Platform For Real-Time Visualization Of Aircraft Dynamics And Sensor-Based Control, Gabriel Martinez, Michael Poinsett

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Understanding aircraft dynamics through traditional simulations can be limiting, as results are often confined to screen-based visualization. This project aims to enhance learning and experimentation by creating a system where aircraft motion can be both simulated and physically observed in real time. The primary objective is to develop a cyber-physical flight simulation platform that links mathematical models with physical hardware. The system is designed to (1) represent aircraft dynamic behavior through real-time motion and (2) provide a foundation for integrating sensors and control strategies for responsive flight behavior. The platform combines aircraft dynamic models with a hardware interface capable of …

Radaround: A Field-Expedient Direction Finder For Contested Iot Sensing & Em Situational Awareness, Owen Maute, Blake Roberts

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This paper presents RadAround, a passive 2-D direction-finding system designed for adversarial IoT sensing in contested environments. Using mechanically steered narrowbeam antennas and field-deployable SCADA software, it generates high-resolution electromagnetic (EM) heatmaps using low-cost COTS or 3D-printed components. The microcontroller-deployable SCADA coordinates antenna positioning and SDR sampling in real time for resilient, on-site operation. Its modular design enables rapid adaptation for applications such as EMC testing in disaster-response deployments, battlefield spectrum monitoring, electronic intrusion detection, and tactical EM situational awareness (EMSA). Experiments show RadAround detecting computing machinery through walls, assessing utilization, and pinpointing EM interference (EMI) leakage sources from Faraday …

Improving Multi-Agent Swarm Collision Avoidance Using Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles, Nick Wilson

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

As multi-agent systems grow increasingly complex, physical robotic swarms are essential to bridge the gap between limited software simulations and real-world application. The BID4R STARS swarm provides a physical platform for testing diverse algorithms, yet its success relies heavily on fundamental agent capabilities—most notably, obstacle avoidance. Preventing intra-swarm collisions is critical to avoid hardware damage and experimental disruption. To address this challenge, this project implements the Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles (RVO) algorithm onto the STARS swarm. While standard collision avoidance algorithms often overcorrect and induce oscillatory agent movement, RVO factors in the velocity and anticipated responses of all agents involved in …

Honeybee-Inspired Swarm Intelligence For Autonomous Adaptability Of Martian Infrastructure, Morgan Kendall

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Current research in autonomous space systems primarily relies on centralized control or swarm methods designed for fixed mission scenarios. These approaches lack the flexibility needed for long-duration Mars operations, where infrastructure must adapt to changing conditions, evolving mission goals, and limited human oversight. This creates a critical gap in developing autonomous systems capable of continuous self-organization. This gap is being addressed by developing a biologically inspired, adaptive Martian infrastructure using swarm intelligence. The scope includes key system domains such as power distribution, communication networks, and surface logistics. Agent-based modeling software will simulate infrastructure components as autonomous agents that evaluate local …

Nano Aircraft Using Underactuated Technology (Naut), Giol Vinyals I Roca

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

The Nano Aircraft using Underactuated Technology (NAUT) project presents a novel swashplateless rotor system that achieves cyclic pitch control using a single actuator, eliminating the need for conventional multi-servo swashplate assemblies. This approach is specifically tailored for nano unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) operating within Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) environments, where size, weight, and power constraints demand highly efficient and simplified control architectures. A functional prototype has been developed and experimentally validated, demonstrating measurable cyclic pitch variation and effective control authority. Multiple mechanism variants are currently being investigated to evaluate performance trade-offs in responsiveness, mechanical efficiency, and aerodynamic effectiveness. These configurations …

Intrinsic Memory In Digital Snns: Enhancing Performance On The Cart-Pole Task With Fractional-Order Dynamics, Niklas Karl Anderson

Dissertations and Theses

Researchers working with Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are faced with the challenge of identifying useful biologically plausible features for inclusion in neuron models. Prior research indicates that dynamics of fractional-order calculus, which impart a form of intrinsic memory, are a key feature of biological neurons. In this work, we present the development and usage of neural networks with intrinsic memory in application to the cart-pole task, a common benchmark for neural network performance. We found that usage of fractional-order neurons may allow for up to a 37.5% reduction in neural network size as compared to networks using a standard Leaky …

Ai Cyber First Responders: Bottleneck Analysis Of Heterogeneous Cpu–Gpu Pipelines For Security Operations Center Triage, Christine Pierce

Harrisburg University Other Works

Abstract — Modern Security Operations Centers (SOCs) must continuously process massive volumes of heterogeneous security telemetry while meeting stringent throughput, latency, and operational continuity requirements. Although transformer-based artificial intelligence has significantly improved threat detection and alert prioritization, most cybersecurity research evaluates model accuracy rather than the end-to-end behavior of AI-enabled operational pipelines. Consequently, relatively little is known about how heterogeneous CPU–GPU coordination, scheduling overhead, memory movement, and synchronization collectively influence operational SOC performance. This paper presents the AI Cyber First Responder, a heterogeneous SOC triage architecture that integrates GPU-accelerated transformer inference with CPU-based doctrine-driven reasoning to investigate end-to-end pipeline behavior …

Remora Ads-B In Receiver, Noah Evans, Sara Patel, Nicholas Gatto, Daniel Ingleton

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

The Remora is a compact Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) receiver, designed to enhance situational awareness for pilots operating experimental and homebuilt aircraft. Unlike conventional panel or windscreen-mounted systems, the Remora is installed externally, making it a low-profile solution to the ADS-B In challenge. The device integrates easily with the aircraft’s existing power supply. It transmits data wirelessly to electronic flight bags (EFBs) within the cockpit, using existing iOS and Android software for display and user interaction.   The primary function of the Remora is to provide public-access, real-time traffic awareness and weather forecasting, enabling pilots to make informed mission decisions. …

Orbital Servicing Calibration And Repair (O.S.C.A.R.), Samantha Rogers, Chloe Arnold, Ava Laudadio

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites operate in an environment that exposes them to cumulative radiation effects, micrometeoroids, and orbital debris, and limited opportunities for post-launch intervention. These factors can degrade satellite performance over time, leading to anomalies that may cause data corruption, mission failure, or require human intervention for repair. While previous on-orbit servicing efforts have demonstrated repair and life-extension capabilities, most have focused on Geosynchronous satellites or controlled test environments, leaving a gap in servicing concepts tailored specifically to LEO satellites.The O.S.C.A.R. (Orbital Servicing, Calibration, and Repair) project investigates the design of a robotic servicing system for inspecting, calibrating, …

Designing Under Pressure: A Comparative Study Of Ai And Manual Interface Development In A Naval Weapon System Scenario, Tsimur Babakhanau, Noah Clark, Colby Keller, Mary Grace Sorenson, Zoe Tiede

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This study implements a detailed naval scenario in which participants acted as operators on a Navy destroyer equipped with a Laser Weapon System (LaWS). Their task was to create a dashboard capable of stopping incoming suicide drone swarms while managing critical laser functions such as thermal constraints, threat prioritization, and adapting to attack dynamics. Poor management could leave the ship vulnerable. AI is increasingly integrated into design methods, fundamentally transforming the process of building user interfaces by compressing hours of work into minutes. Although AI design tools are becoming more common, little is known about how well beginners can use …