Computer Engineering Commons^™

Major Advancements In Personal Computing, Brandon Brooks

Senior Seminars

This research essay expounds on the history and the journey of the Personal Computer. You will read about some of the most important items that the author felt contributed to the advancement of the PC over the years. The dates of the information ranges from the late 1960s up until the last year or so. The author talks about hardware components and software components, but the bulk of the material in this paper explains the history of each major milestone and what contributed to making it better, or more useful than the last. Each sub-topic will bring us closer to …

The Design Of A Mobile, Animatronic Bald Eagle, Eric Burns

Phi Kappa Phi Research Symposium (Archived)

Modern animatronics are used as a tool to help engage audiences in realistic and entertaining experiences. Many animatronic figures are dynamic in movement, but static in mobility. The research presented covers the beginnings of mobile animatronic research. An animatronic bald eagle, Opportunity, was designed for that purpose. Animations for Opportunity are generated by integration of Arduino, Pololu Mini Maestro, and Hitec Servo Motors. Arduino receives signals from flex sensors which cause voltage variations when “flexed”. The 1:1 scale, animatronic eagle can be perched on the arm of an “actor” who simulates an eagle’s caretaker. The flex sensors are located within …

Flame-Enhanced Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, L. Liu, S. Li, X. N. He, X. Huang, C. F. Zhang, L. S. Fan, M. X. Wang, Y. S. Zhou, K. Chen, L. Jiang, J. F. Silvain, Yongfeng Lu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Flame-enhanced laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) was investigated to improve the sensitivity of LIBS. It was realized by generating laser-induced plasmas in the blue outer envelope of a neutral oxy-acetylene flame. Fast imaging and temporally resolved spectroscopy of the plasmas were carried out. Enhanced intensity of up to 4 times and narrowed full width at half maximum (FWHM) down to 60% for emission lines were observed. Electron temperatures and densities were calculated to investigate the flame effects on plasma evolution. These calculated electron temperatures and densities showed that high-temperature and low-density plasmas were achieved before 4 μs in the flame environment, …

A Multi-Case Study Of Student Interactions With Educational Robots And Impact On Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math (Stem) Learning And Attitudes, Stephanie Holmquist

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The demand for STEM trained workers continues to increase not only in the United States, but globally. Reports have indicated that the United States is not doing a good job encouraging students to pursue STEM oriented degrees. In particular, it has become increasingly important to emphasize STEM connections at an early level in order to encourage student career exploration as they continue their education. Educational robots represent a unique alternative to traditional methods, especially at the elementary level. Considering the use of educational robots have largely been ignored at this level, the purpose of this study was to describe the …

Eliminating Mutual Views In Fusion Of Ranging And Rgb-D Data From Robot Teams Operating In Confined Areas, Damian M. Lyons, Karma Shrestha

Faculty Publications

We address the problem of fusing laser and RGB-Data from multiple robots operating in close proximity to one another. By having a team of robots working together, a large area can be scanned quickly, or a smaller area scanned in greater detail. However, a key aspect of this problem is the elimination of the spurious readings due to the robots operating in close proximity. While there is an extensive literature on the mapping and localization aspect of this problem, our problem differs from the dynamic map problem in that it involves at one kind of transient map feature, robots viewing …

A Framework For Synthesizing Agent-Based Heterogeneous Population Model For Epidemic Simulation, Madih Sahar

Open Access Theses

Social interactions play an important role in spread of a disease. In this thesis we propose a probabilistic approach to synthesize an agent-based heterogeneous population interaction model to study the spatio-temporal dynamics of an air-born epidemic, such as influenza, in a metropolitan area. The proposed methodology is generic in nature and can generate a baseline population for the cities for which detailed population summary tables are not available. The joint probabilities of population demographics are estimated using the International Public Use Microsimulation Data (IPUMS) sample data set. Based on the population density and the socio-economic status, the population is divided …

A Sensor Ontology For The Domain Of Firefighting Robots, Amy Renae Wagoner

Open Access Theses

Fires create thousands of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths each year. Firefighters risk their lives everyday and are often killed in action. Firefighting robots may be able to reduce the loss of lives and damage due to fires. Robots are often used for redundant tasks that require the consistency and efficiency of a machine. They are especially optimal for tasks that require strength that exceeds that of a typical human being or for environments that are hazardous to people. Robots' metallic exteriors are far more durable and easier to replace than flesh and blood, thus they are ideal …

Numerical Examination Of The Nonlinear Dynamics Of A Hybrid Acousto-Optic Bragg Cell With Positive Feedback Under Profiled Beam Propagation, Fares S. Almehmadi, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In standard weak interaction theory, acousto-optic Bragg analysis typically assumes that the incident light and sound beams are uniform plane waves. Acousto-optic Bragg diffraction with nonuniform profiled input beams is numerically examined under open loop via a transfer function formalism. Unexpected deviations in the first-order diffracted beam from the standard theory are observed for high �� values. These deviations are significant because the corresponding closed-loop system is sensitive to input amplitudes and initial conditions, and the overall impact on the dynamical behavior has not been studied previously in standard analyses. To explore the effect of such nonuniform output profiles on …

Avida Checkpoint/Restart Implementation, Nilab Mohammad Mousa

McNair Scholars Research Journal

As high performance computing centers (HPCC) continue to grow in popularity, issues of resource management and reliability are becoming limiting factors in scheduling long-running jobs. One of the factors is time. Efficacy of Avida, the platform of research for digital evolution, is limited by the allocated time available on HPCC. Saving the state of the software at a point and restarting the execution from the paused state will allow for better resource utilization, as well as help reduce restrictions that constrain the potential of the software. This research examines whether or not Berkeley Lab Checkpoint/Restart (BLCR) can be integrated with …

Characterizing The Intra-Warp Address Distribution And Bandwidth Demands Of Gpgpus, Calvin Holic

Open Access Theses

General-purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) are an important class of architectures that offer energy-efficient, high performance computation for data- parallel workloads. GPGPUs use single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) hardware as the core execution engines with (typically) 32 to 64 lanes of data width. Such SIMD operation is key to achieving high-performance; however, if memory demands of the different lanes in the "warp" cannot be satisfied, overall system performance can suffer.

There are two challenges in handling such heavy demand for memory bandwidth. First, the hardware necessary to coalesce multiple accesses to the same cache block--a key function necessary to reduce the demand …

Dynamic Characteristic Identification Of Seismic-Excited Multi-Story Buildings Through Response-Only Technique, Agung Budipriyanto, Priyo Suprobo

Makara Journal of Technology

Identifying dynamic characteristics of civil engineering structures is still a challenging task. It intends to assess behavior of the structures under time-dependent loads. This paper discusses a methodology suitable for identifying the characteristics of multi-story buildings using only their measured response under earthquake ground excitations. Appropriateness of technique used for structural identification was corroborated through coherence of the structure’s responses. The methodology was applied for identifying the characteristics of 14-story and 20-story office buildings located in a high seismic region. Responses of these two buildings recorded during three different seismic ground motions were investigated. The buildings’ response spectral densities and …

Performance Evaluation Of An Optimized Floating Breakwater In Oblique Waves With A Higher-Order Boundary Element Method, Faisal Mahmuddin, Masashi Kashiwagi

Makara Journal of Technology

In the previous study, the optimal performance of a two-dimensional (2D) floating breakwater shape was obtained. The performance of this shape was also confirmed with a model experiment in a towing tank. Moreover, the shape’s performance in three dimensions (3D) was investigated in a subsequent study. However, to predict the shape’s performance in a real application more accurately, the shape’s characteristics in oblique waves must also be evaluated. In this study, the performance and characteristics of the model (hydrodynamic forces, body motions, wave elevations, and drift forces) are computed using a higher-order boundary element method (HOBEM). The HOBEM, which is …

Developing An Embedded System Solution For High-Speed, High-Capacity Data Logging For A Size-Constrained, Low-Power Biomechanical Telemetry System And Investigating Components For Optimal Performance, Brandon Blaine Gardner

Open Access Theses

The Purdue Neurotrauma Group (PNG) seeks to develop a biomechanical telemetry system capable of monitoring and storing athletes' head motions with the intention of identifying when a player may be at risk of neurophysiological damage, especially brain damage. A number of commercially-available systems exist with a similar goal; however, each of these systems discards information below an acceleration threshold. Research by PNG indicates that any acceleration may contribute to brain damage and that, because of this, an event-based model is insufficient for a proper understanding of an athlete's neurophysiological health. Continuous-time monitoring of head accelerations is therefore necessary. To facilitate …

Software Architecture And Development For Controlling A Hubo Humanoid Robot, Manas Ajit Paldhe

Open Access Theses

Due to their human-like structure, humanoid robots are capable of doing some complex tasks. Since a humanoid robot has a large number of actuators and sensors, controlling it is a difficult task. For various tasks like balancing, driving a car, and interacting with humans, real-time response of the robot is essential. Efficiently controlling a humanoid robot requires a software that guarantees real-time interface and control mechanism so that real-time response of the robot is possible. Addition- ally, to reduce the development effort and time, the software should be open-source, multi-lingual and should have high-level constructs inbuilt in it.

Currently Robot …

Analysis Of Eye Tracking Data Obtained By Customers’ Product Evaluations, Shweta Sanjay Sareen

Open Access Theses

Within the mechanical engineering discipline, product representational studies have been used to inform engineers on the suitability of their product designs for prospective customers. Mainly based in customers' oral responses, engineers would modify the product design accordingly. The incorporation of eye tracking data, in addition to the oral responses, in these product representational studies is a recent addition. This case study performs data analysis of a product representational study conducted by Reid, MacDonald and Du (2012), which considers the impact of 2D and 3D product representation on customer judgments with associated eye gaze patterns. The aim of this thesis is …

Reliability Guided Resource Allocation For Large-Scale Supercomputing Systems, Shruti Umamaheshwaran

Open Access Theses

In high performance computing systems, parallel applications request a large number of resources for long time periods. In this scenario, if a resource fails during the application runtime, it would cause all applications using this resource to fail. The probability of application failure is tied to the inherent reliability of resources used by the application. Our investigation of high performance computing systems operating in the field has revealed a significant difference in the measured operational reliability of individual computing nodes. By adding awareness of the individual system nodes' reliability to the scheduler along with the predicted reliability needs of parallel …

Towards A Sustainable Modular Robot System For Planetary Exploration, S. G. M. Hossain

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis investigates multiple perspectives of developing an unmanned robotic system suited for planetary terrains. In this case, the unmanned system consists of unit-modular robots. This type of robot has potential to be developed and maintained as a sustainable multi-robot system while located far from direct human intervention. Some characteristics that make this possible are: the cooperation, communication and connectivity among the robot modules, flexibility of individual robot modules, capability of self-healing in the case of a failed module and the ability to generate multiple gaits by means of reconfiguration. To demonstrate the effects of high flexibility of an individual …

Transparent Spectrum Co-Access In Cognitive Radio Networks, Jonathan Daniel Backens

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The licensed wireless spectrum is currently under-utilized by as much as 85%. Cognitive radio networks have been proposed to employ dynamic spectrum access to share this under-utilized spectrum between licensed primary user transmissions and unlicensed secondary user transmissions. Current secondary user opportunistic spectrum access methods, however, remain limited in their ability to provide enough incentive to convince primary users to share the licensed spectrum, and they rely on primary user absence to guarantee secondary user performance. These challenges are addressed by developing a Dynamic Spectrum Co-Access Architecture (DSCA) that allows secondary user transmissions to co-access transparently and concurrently with primary …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Soy-Based Polyurethane Foam With Utilization Of Ethylene Glycol In Polyol, Flora Elvistia Firdaus

Makara Journal of Technology

The use of vegetable oils on replacing petroleum has attracted attention of many researchers. The chemical structure of vegetable oils are different from petrochemicals, so the structure of soybean oil has to be chemically modified through its unsaturated fatty acid chain in triglyceride. A two step process was conducted for the preparation of soy-polyol in designated temperatures; 50 °C, 60 °C, and 70 °C. Ethylene glycol (EG) as co-reagent was taking part in soy-polyol synthesis, and the soy-polyol was used as a sole polyol for polyurethane synthesis. Referred to the previous study, the existence of EG in polyurethane synthesis can …

Performances Of Free-Space Optical Communication System Over Strong Turbulence, Ucuk Darusalam, Purnomo Sidi Priambodo, Harry Sudibyo, Eko Tjipto Rahardjo

Makara Journal of Technology

We report an experimental of free-space optical communication (FSOC) system that use tube propagation simulator (TPS) as the turbulence medium. The FSOC system use wavelength of 1550 nm at the rate transmission of 1000 Mbps and amplified with EDFA at the output of +23 dBm. Index structure of 10-15–10-13 as the representation of atmosphere index turbulences are used for simulation of intensity distribution model or scintillation. The simulation use gammagamma and K model as well. The beam wave propagation models used in simulation are plane wave, spherical wave and Gaussian wave. Spherical wave achieves highest performance via gamma-gamma in strong …