Electrical and Electronics Commons^™

Towards Improving Human-Robot Interaction For Social Robots, Saad Khan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous robots interacting with humans in a social setting must consider the social-cultural environment when pursuing their objectives. Thus the social robot must perceive and understand the social cultural environment in order to be able to explain and predict the actions of its human interaction partners. This dissertation contributes to the emerging field of human-robot interaction for social robots in the following ways: 1. We used the social calculus technique based on culture sanctioned social metrics (CSSMs) to quantify, analyze and predict the behavior of the robot, human soldiers and the public perception in the Market Patrol peacekeeping scenario. 2. …

Lyapunov-Based Robust And Adaptive Control Design For Nonlinear Uncertain Systems, Kun Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The control of systems with uncertain nonlinear dynamics is an important field of control science attracting decades of focus. In this dissertation, four different control strategies are presented using sliding mode control, adaptive control, dynamic compensation, and neural network for a nonlinear aeroelastic system with bounded uncertainties and external disturbance. In Chapter 2, partial state feedback adaptive control designs are proposed for two different aeroelastic systems operating in unsteady flow. In Chapter 3, a continuous robust control design is proposed for a class of single input and single output system with uncertainties. An aeroelastic system with a trailingedge flap as …

Performance Optimization Of Lateral-Mode Thin-Film Piezoelectric-On-Substrate Resonant Systems, Hedy Fatemi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The main focus of this dissertation is to characterize and improve the performance of thin-film piezoelectric-on-substrate (TPoS) lateral-mode resonators and filters. TPoS is a class of piezoelectric MEMS devices which benefits from the high coupling coefficient of the piezoelectric transduction mechanism while taking advantage of superior acoustic properties of a substrate. The use of lateral-mode TPoS designs allows for fabrication of dispersed-frequency filters on a single substrate, thus significantly reducing the size and manufacturing cost of devices. TPoS filters also offer a lower temperature coefficient of frequency, and better power handling capability compared to rival technologies all in a very …

Autonomous Robot Sphere, Robert Haver, Melissa Haver, Daniel Madden, Noah Robertson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Autonomous Robot Sphere is an interactive robot toy meant to entertain kids. The robot will locate its target and execute algorithms to autonomously evade or chase a child. The sphere will contain a platform equipped with four omni-wheels, which will allow the sphere to maneuver and change direction almost instantaneously. The robot will be configured to maintain a fixed distance from the transmitter, allowing it to chase or evade the child in response to their movement. The primary advantage of our design lies in its capability to quickly adapt to changes in direction.

Computational Electronics For The 21st Century: Reflections On The Past, Present, And Future, Mark S. Lundstrom

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The author’s career has coincided with the development of numerical simulation into an essential component of semiconductor device technology research and development. We now have a sophisticated suite of simulation capabilities along with new challenges for 21st Century electronics. This talk presents a short history of the field and a description of the current state of the art, but it concentrates on lessons learned and thoughts about how computational electronics can continue to contribute effectively to the development of new electronic device technologies. The author will argue that electronics is changing, and that computational electronics can play a key role …

Led Learning Guitar, Kellen C. Reusser, Justin Fiser

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of this project is to create an electric guitar that detects and displays chords in different tunings for learning and exploration purposes. A hexaphonic pickup will generate the required signals and a processor will detect the pitch. The computer software will apply the pitch information to determine the tuning and the voicings of chords. LEDs mounted on the fretboard of the guitar will indicate a note to be played.

An On-Orbit Calibration Procedure For Spaceborne Microwave Radiometers Using Special Spacecraft Attitude Maneuvers, Spencer Farrar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation revisits, develops, and documents methods that can be used to calibrate spaceborne microwave radiometers once in orbit. The on-orbit calibration methods discussed within this dissertation can provide accurate and early results by utilizing Calibration Attitude Maneuvers (CAM), which encompasses Deep Space Calibration (DSC) and a new use of the Second Stokes (SS) analysis that can provide early and much needed insight on the performance of the instrument. This dissertation describes pre-existing and new methods of using DSC maneuvers as well as a simplified use of the SS procedure. Over TRMM's 17 years of operation it has provided invaluable …

Implementation Of A Raptorq-Based Protocol For Peer To Peer Network, Yuzhu Bai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The object of this thesis is to develop and test a Ruby based implementation of the RaptorQP2P protocol. The RaptorQP2P protocol is a novel peer-to-peer protocol based on RaptorQ forward error correction. This protocol facilitates delivery of a single file to a large number of peers. It applies two levels of RaptorQ encoding to the source file before packet transmission. Download completion time using RaptorQP2P was found to be significantly improved comparing to BitTorrent. We developed a Ruby interface to the Qualcomm proprietary RaptorQ software development kit library. Then we achieved the two levels of RaptorQ encoding and decoding with …

Mcmc- Based Optimization And Application, Xiaobin Wu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the thesis, we study the theory of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and its application in statistical optimization. The MCMC method is a class of evolutionary algorithms for generating samples from given probability distributions. In the thesis, we first focus on the methods of slice sampling and simulated annealing. While slice sampling has a merit to generate samples based on the underlying distribution with adjustable step size, simulated annealing can facilitate samples to jump out of local optima and converge quickly to the global optimum. With this MCMC method, we then solve two practical optimization problems. The first problem …

Visualization Of 4d Q2psk And Ce Q2psk In Ideal Bandlimited Channels, Milton I. Quinteros, Edit J. Kaminsky, Kenneth V. Cartwright

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents new visualization techniques for 4D Quadrature-Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (Q2PSK), Saha’s Constant Envelope (CE) Q2PSK, and Cartwright’s CEQ2PSK in ideal bandlimited channels. The signal diagrams analyzed are: time-signal eye patterns for 4D passband signals, 2D complex trajectory diagrams of baseband signals, and time-signal eye patterns for the 1D outputs of the baseband matched filter. These methods may be applied to other multidimensional modulation systems to obtain insight into the effects of noise, interference, and channel filtering.

Nanostructured Semiconductor Device Design In Solar Cells, Hongmei Dang

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

We demonstrate the use of embedded CdS nanowires in improving spectral transmission loss and the low mechanical and electrical robustness of planar CdS window layer and thus enhancing the quantum efficiency and the reliability of the CdS-CdTe solar cells. CdS nanowire window layer enables light transmission gain at 300nm-550nm. A nearly ideal spectral response of quantum efficiency at a wide spectrum range provides an evidence for improving light transmission in the window layer and enhancing absorption and carrier generation in absorber. Nanowire CdS/CdTe solar cells with Cu/graphite/silver paste as back contacts, on SnO₂/ITO-soda lime glass substrates, yield the …

Explorations For Efficient Reversible Barrel Shifters And Their Mappings In Qca Nanocomputing, Ke Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

This thesis is based on promising computing paradigm of reversible logic which generates unique outputs out of the inputs and. Reversible logic circuits maintain one-to-one mapping inside of the inputs and the outputs. Compared to the traditional irreversible computation, reversible logic circuit has the advantage that it successfully avoids the information loss during computations. Also, reversible logic is useful to design ultra-low-power nanocomputing circuits, circuits for quantum computing, and the nanocircuits that are testable in nature. Reversible computing circuits require the ancilla inputs and the garbage outputs. Ancilla input is the constant input in reversible circuits. Garbage output is the …

Multifrequency Averaging Of Hysteresis-Current-Controlled Dc-Dc Converters, Yingying Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Multifrequency averaging is one of the widely used modeling and simulation techniques today for the analysis and design of power electronic systems. This technique is capable of providing the average behavior as well as the ripple behavior of power electronic systems. Hysteresis current control has fast response and internal current stability through controlling switches to maintain the current within a given hysteresis band of a given current command. However the state space variables in a hysteresis controlled system cannot be directly approached by multifrequency averaging method because of time varing switching frequency. In this thesis, a method of applying multifrequency …

Average-Value Modeling Of Hysteresis Current Control In Power Electronics, Hanling Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Hysteresis current control has been widely used in power electronics with the advantages of fast dynamic response under parameter, line and load variation and ensured stability. However, a main disadvantage of hysteresis current control is the uncertain and varying switching frequency which makes it difficult to form an average-value model. The changing switching frequency and unspecified switching duty cycle make conventional average-value models based on PWM control difficult to apply directly to converters that are controlled by hysteresis current control.

In this work, a new method for average-value modeling of hysteresis current control in boost converters, three-phase inverters, and brushless …

Design Of An All-In-One Embedded Flight Control System, Joel D. Elmore

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes an all-in-one flight control system (FCS) that was designed for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The project focuses on the embedded hardware aspect of a stand-alone system with low-cost and reliability in mind.

Ultra-Fast, Autonomous, Reconfigurable Communication System, Paul Bupe Jr

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The recent years have witnessed an increase in natural disasters in which the destruction of essential communication infrastructure has significantly affected the number of casualties. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina in the United States resulted in over 1,900 deaths, three million land-line phones disconnections, and more than 2000 cell sites going out of service. This incident highlighted an urgent need for a quick-deployment, efficient communication network for emergency relief purposes. In this research, a fully autonomous system to deploy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as the first phase disaster recovery communication network for wide-area relief is presented. As part of this system, …

Enhanced Quality Of Experience Based On Enriched Network Centric And Access Control Mechanisms, Andreas Roos

Doctoral

In the digital world service provisioning in user satisfying quality has become the goal of any content or network provider. Besides having satisfied and therefore, loyal users, the creation of sustainable revenue streams is the most important issue for network operators [1], [2], [3]. The motivation of this work is to enhance the quality of experience of users when they connect to the Internet, request application services as well as to maintain full service when these users are on the move in WLAN based access networks. In this context, the aspect of additional revenue creation for network operators is considered …

Molecular Dynamics Study On Defect Reduction Strategies Towards The Fabrication Of High Performance Cd1-Xznxte/Cds Solar Cells, Jose Juan Chavez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cadmium Telluride is a material widely used in terrestrial thin film photovoltaic applications due to its nearly ideal band gap (~1.5 eV) and high absorption coefficient. Due to its low manufacturing cost, this technology has the potential to become a significant energy resource if higher energy conversion efficiencies are achieved. However, the module efficiencies (~14%) are still far from the theoretical maximum (~30%) for this material in a single junction configuration. The reason behind this low performance is attributed to the high number of defects that are present within the device materials. The physics behind the formation mechanisms of these …

Novel Classification Of Slow Movement Objects In Urban Traffic Environments Using Wideband Pulse Doppler Radar, Berta Rodriguez Hervas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Every year thousands of people are involved in traffic accidents, some of which are fatal. An important percentage of these fatalities are caused by human error, which could be prevented by increasing the awareness of drivers and the autonomy of vehicles. Since driver assistance systems have the potential to positively impact tens of millions of people, the purpose of this research is to study the micro-Doppler characteristics of vulnerable urban traffic components, i.e. pedestrians and bicyclists, based on information obtained from radar backscatter, and to develop a classification technique that allows automatic target recognition with a vehicle integrated system. For …

Modeling Of The Response Of A Memcapacitor For An Impulse, Step, Ramp, And Sinusiodal Inputs, Ghassan Khalil Kachmar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or MEMS, is a technology of very small scale devices. The dimensions of MEMS can vary from below one micron to several millimeters. MEMS have some mechanical functionalities such as the moving plate of a parallel plate capacitor (memcapacitor). MEMS researchers and developers have demonstrated an extremely large number of microsensors for almost every possible sensing modality including temperature, pressure, inertial forces, and chemical species. The equation of motion of the moving plate of a memcapacitor is governed by a non-linear differential equation with no known exact solution. Most research into determining the theoretical response of a memcapacitor …