Digital Commons Network^™

Scan-It: A Computer Vision Model Motivated By Human Physiology And Behavior, John G. Keller

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation details the development of a new computational vision model motivated by physiological and behavioral aspects of the human visual system. Using this model, intensity features within an artificial visual field of view are extracted and transformed into a simulated cortical representation, and a saccadic guidance system scans this field of view over an object within an image to memorize that object. The object representation is thus stored as a sequence of feature matrices describing sub-regions of the object. A new image can then be searched for the object (possibly scaled and rotated), where evidence of its presence is …

The Effectiveness Of Expert Support Technology For Decision Making: Individuals Versus Small Groups, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Jiye Mao, Izak Benbasat

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Expert support systems (ESSs) are increasingly used in organizations to support individuals and groups in decision making. Although ESSs have been shown to enhance the decision-making capabilities of individuals, their benefits in supporting group decision making are less clear. To the best of our knowledge, no empirical research has evaluated the effectiveness of the technology in the group setting or compared its usefulness for supporting individual versus group decision making. The results of this research show that ESSs benefit decision making of both individuals and groups and novices are able to gain more from ESSs than experts. The findings also …

Detection Of Gradual Transitions Through Temporal Slice Analysis, Chong-Wah Ngo, T. C. Pong, R. T. Chin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present approaches for detecting camera cuts, wipes and dissolves based on the analysis of spatio-temporal slices obtained from videos. These slices are composed of spatial ly and temporal ly coherent regions which can be perceived as shots. In the proposed methods, camera breaks are located by performing color-texture segmentation and statistical analysis on these video slices. In addition to detecting camera breaks, our methods can classify the detected breaks as camera cuts, wipes and dissolves in an efficient manner

Toboggan-Based Intelligent Scissors With A Four-Parameter Edge Model, William A. Barrett, Eric N. Mortensen

Faculty Publications

Intelligent Scissors is an interactive image segmentation tool that allows a user to select piece-wise globally optimal contour segments that correspond to a desired object boundary. We present a new and faster method of computing the optimal path by over-segmenting the image using tobogganing and then imposing a weighted planar graph on top of the resulting region boundaries. The resulting region-based graph is many times smaller than the previous pixel-based graph, thus providing faster graph searches and immediate user interaction. Further, tobogganing provides an new systematic and predictable framework for computing edge model parameters, allowing subpixel localization as well as …

Developing Techniques For Enhancing Comprehensibility Of Controlled Medical Terminologies, Huanying Gu

Dissertations

A controlled medical terminology (CMT) is a collection of concepts (or terms) that are used in the medical domain. Typically, a CMT also contains attributes of those concepts and/or relationships between those concepts. Electronic CMTs are extremely useful and important for communication between and integration of independent information systems in healthcare, because data in this area is highly fragmented. A single query in this area might involve several databases, e.g., a clinical database, a pharmacy database, a radiology database, and a lab test database.

Unfortunately, the extensive sizes of CMTs, often containing tens of thousands of concepts and hundreds of …

Porting The Sisal Functional Language To Distributed-Memory Multiprocessors, Jui-Yuan Ku

Dissertations

Parallel computing is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in recent years. The sizes of application problems continuously increase for solving real-world problems. Distributed-memory multiprocessors have been regarded as a viable architecture of scalable and economical design for building large scale parallel machines. While these parallel machines can provide computational capabilities, programming such large-scale machines is often very difficult due to many practical issues including parallelization, data distribution, workload distribution, and remote memory latency.

This thesis proposes to solve the programmability and performance issues of distributed-memory machines using the Sisal functional language. The programs written in Sisal will be automatically parallelized, scheduled and …

Automatic Document Classification And Extraction System (Adoces), Xuhong Li

Dissertations

Document processing is a critical element of office automation. Document image processing begins from the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) phase with complex processing for document classification and extraction. Document classification is a process that classifies an incoming document into a particular predefined document type. Document extraction is a process that extracts information pertinent to the users from the content of a document and assigns the information as the values of the “logical structure” of the document type. Therefore, after document classification and extraction, a paper document will be represented in its digital form instead of its original image file format, …

Knowledge Management For Texpros, Jianshun Hu

Dissertations

Most of the document processing systems today have applied Al technologies to support their system intelligent behaviors. For the application of Al technologies in such systems, the core problem is how to represent and manage different kinds of knowledge to support their inference engine components' functionalities. In other words, knowledge management has become a critical issue in the document processing systems. In this dissertation, within the scope of the TEXt PROcessing System (TEXPROS), we identify knowledge of various kinds that are applicable in the system. We investigate several problems of managing this knowledge and then develop a knowledge base for …

Modeling Controlled Vocabularies Using Oodbs And Multilevel Area Diagrams, Li-Min Liu

Dissertations

A Controlled Vocabulary (CV) is a software system of domain knowledge that consolidates and unifies the terminology of a large application domain. With a common, centralized CV, costly and time-consuming translations can be eliminated between pairs of organizations and pairs of software systems. Unfortunately, the more knowledge we put into a CV, the harder it is to understand and maintain it. In this dissertation, a comprehensive theoretical methodology for modeling CVs using Object-Oriented Database (OODB) technology is presented. We present two methods for representing a semantic network CV as an equivalent OODB, which we call an Object-Oriented Vocabulary Repository (OOVR). …

Recasting Cohn's Many Sorted Logic Into A Constrained Logic, Christopher Brendan Koelbl

Theses

The use of a many sorted logic for theorem proving carries many advantages over a traditional unsorted logic. By placing restrictions on the search space, a many sorted logic can significantly reduce the amount steps in the resolution process. However, as a logic becomes more efficient, it increases in complexity.

One of these efficient log ics is Cohn's Many Sorted Logic, LLAMA. It uses complex data structures such as the sort lattice and sort arrays to maintain information about the sorts. Recasting LLAMA into Bürckert's constrained logic will keep the functionality of LLAMA while using a format that reduces the …

Improved Su320 Nir Camera Image Processing System, Weimin Shi

Theses

This paper describes an improved image processing system which is applied in solar observation. In order to get the higher performance in frame grabbing rate, the system is using, PCI Master Bus with on-board memory frame-grabber. From software side, the application program has been modified to reduce the grabbing time, which speeds up the whole process significantly. The paper described them in detail.

Tracking The Trochoid On Safari, Andrew Simoson

ACMS Conference Proceedings 1999

While on sabbatical in Dar es Salaam in 1997–98, I was tasked to be the department’s seminar director and discovered that a dearth of speakers roam about in east Africa; so I opted to set up a lecture tour for myself to include Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana as well as Tanzania—and spoke about the envelope of curves generated by a series of line segments obtained when two runners attached by an ideal bungee cord (the line segments) proceed about a circular track. Herein we describe life in east Africa and show that those envelopes are trochoids.

Using Haptic Vector Fields For Animation Motion Control, Bruce Randall Donald, Frederick Henle

Computer Science Technical Reports

We are exploring techniques for animation authoring and editing using a haptic force-feedback device. In our system, a family of animations is encoded by a bundle of trajectories. This bundle in turn defines a time-varying, higher-order vector field on a configuration space for the animation. A haptic input device provides a low-dimensional parameterization of the resulting dynamical system, and the haptic force feedback permits browsing and editing of the space of animations, by allowing the user to experience the vector field as physical forces.

Asymptotic Behavior Of The Height In A Digital Search Tree And The Longest Phrase Of The Lempel-Ziv Scheme, Charles Knessl, Wojciech Szpankowski

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Parallel Algorithms For Large Sparse Generalized Elgin Problems (Ph.D. Thesis), Zhanye Tong

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Notepals: Lightweight Note Sharing By The Group, For The Group, Richard C. Davis, James A. Landay, Victor Chen, Jonathan Huang, Rebecca B. Lee, Francis Li, James Lin, Charles B. Morrey, Morgan N. Price, Bill N. Schilit

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

NotePals is a lightweight note sharing system that gives group members easy access to each others experiences through their personal notes. The system allows notes taken by group members in any context to be uploaded to a shared repository. Group members view these notes with browsers that allow them to retrieve all notes taken in a given context or to access notes from other related notes or documents. This is possible because NotePals records the context in which each note is created (e.g., its author, subject, and creation time). The system is lightweight because it fits easily into group members …

The Open Source Revolution: Transforming The Software Industry With Help From The Government, Mitchell L. Stoltz

Pomona Senior Theses

A new method for making software is stealthily gaining ground in the computer industry, offering a promise of better, cheaper software and the empowerment of the user. The open source movement could revolutionize the software industry...if it succeeds. Open source means software that you are allowed to copy, modify, and give to friends. Source code , the lists of instructions which tell computers how to run, is readily available, allowing you to look inside the workings of a program and change it to suit your needs. A group of programmers, companies, users, and activists have gathered in support of this …

Designing An Integrated Environment For Artificial Intelligence, Andrew B. Ritger '99

Honors Projects

The SHELLEY RESEARCH GROUP (part of the Illinois Wesleyan Intelligence Network on Knowledge -IWINK) has been in existence for several years, and has benefited immensely from various student contributors who have added such components as robotic arm control, cross platform networking, an artificially intelligent tic-tac-toe player, and an interactive teaching tool demonstrating the functionality of artificial neural networks. What is lacking, however, amidst these undergraduate contributions to the SHELLEY Project, is an effective means of integrating existing components into a single cohesive functional unit, let alone any easy means of making further contributions within a simple unified context. The focus …

Collaborative Decision-Support And The Human-Machine Relationship, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

Human beings are inquisitive creatures who seek explanations for all that they observe and experience in their living environment. While this quest for understanding is central to our success in adapting to a changing environment, it is also a major cause of our willingness to accept partial understandings and superficial explanations when the degree of complexity of the problem situation confounds our current cognitive capabilities. In other words, a superficial or partial explanation is considered better than no explanation at all. As flawed as this approach may be, it has helped us to solve difficult problems in stages. By first …

An Examination Of Codewords With Optimal Merit Factor, Michael W. Cammarano, Anthony G. Kirilusha

Department of Math & Statistics Technical Report Series

We examine the codewords with best possible merit factor (minimum sum of squares of periodic autocorrelations) for a variety of lengths. Many different approaches were tried in an attempt to find construction methods for such codewords, or for codewords with good but non-optimal merit factors.

An Interview With David Brin, Switch Staffs

SWITCH

This is an interview with David Brin, a science fiction author, and the Switch staff. They discuss some topics of Brin’s book, "The Transparent Society". The main hypothesis of this book is reciprocal surveillance for accountability and decentralization of power. Brin discusses his thoughts on privacy, such as real privacy, illusory privacy, and a third kind of privacy. He goes on to connect surveillance with power and the government. He continues with how people react to the advances of technology and how they learn from past generations.

The Rate-Based Execution Model, Kevin Jeffay, Steve Goddard

School of Computing: Technical Reports

We present a new task model for the real-time execution of event-driven tasks in which no a priori characterization of the actual arrival rates of events is known; only the expected arrival rates of events is known. We call this new task model rate-based execution (RBE), and it is a generalization of the common sporadic task model. The RBE model is motivated naturally by distributed multimedia and digital signal processing applications.
We identify necessary and sufficient conditions for determining the feasibility of an RBE task set, and an optimal scheduling algorithm (based on preemptive earliest-deadline-first (EDF) scheduling) for scheduling the …

A Systematic Integration Of Register Allocation And Instruction Scheduling, Yukong Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

In order to achieve high performance, processor architecture has become more and more complicated. As a result, compiler-time optimizations have become more and more important for the effective use of a complex processor. One of the promising compiler-time optimizations is the integration of register allocation and instruction scheduling based on register-reuse chains. In the previous approach, however, the generation of register-reuse chains was not completely systematic and consequently created many unnecessary dependencies that restrict instruction scheduling.

This research proposes a new register allocation technique based on a systematic generation of register-reuse chains. The first phase of the proposed technique is …

Automated Estimation Of Relaxation Parameters For Interface Relaxation, John R. Rice, P. Tsompanopoulou, E. Vavalis

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Limit Laws For Heights In Generalized Tries And Patricia Tries, Charles Knessl, Wojciech Szpankowski

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Pythia-Ii: A Knowledge/Data Base System For Testing And Recommending Scientific, Elias N. Houstis, Vassilios S. Verykios, Ann C. Caitlin, Naren Ramakrishnan, John R. Rice

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

A Systolic Algorithm To Process Compressed Binary Images, Fikret Erçal, Mark Allen, Hao Feng

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new systolic algorithm which computes image differences in run-length encoded (RLE) format is described. The binary image difference operation is commonly used in many image processing applications including automated inspection systems, character recognition, fingerprint analysis, and motion detection. The efficiency of these operations can be improved significantly with the availability of a fast systolic system that computes the image difference as described in this paper It is shown that for images with a high similarity measure, the time complexity of the systolic algorithm is small and in some cases constant with respect to the image size. The time for …

Information Modeling And Method Engineering: A Psychological Perspective, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information modeling is the cornerstone of information systems analysis and design. Information models, the products of information modeling, not only provide the abstractions required to facilitate communication between the analysts and end users, but they also provide a formal basis for developing tools and techniques used in information systems development. The process of designing, constructing, and adapting information modeling methods for information systems development is known as method engineering. Despite the pivotal role of modeling methods in successful information systems development, most modeling methods are designed based on common sense and intuition of the method designers with little or no …

Greedy Approximation Algorithms For K-Medians By Randomized Rounding, Neal E. Young

Computer Science Technical Reports

We give an improved approximation algorithm for the general k-medians problem. Given any \epsilon>0, the algorithm finds a solution of total distance at most D(1+\epsilon) using at most k ln(n+n/\epsilon) medians (a.k.a. sites), provided some solution of total distance D using k medians exists. This improves over the best previous bound (w.r.t. the number of medians) by a factor of \Omega(1/\epsilon) provided 1/\epsilon=n^O(1). The algorithm is a greedy algorithm, derived using the method of oblivious randomized rounding. It requires at most k ln(n+n/\epsilon) linear-time iterations. We also derive algorithms for fractional and weighted variants of the problem.

Analysis Of Usaf Battlelabs' Communication Infrastructure Over Various Protocols, Rocky A. Favorito, David M. Mcillece

Theses and Dissertations

As a result of the doctrines exposed in the Air Force's "Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century Air Force," the concept of a "Battlelab" was devised to support and develop the key warfighting capabilities needed in the next century. Although geographically separated, these labs must have the capability to exchange information with each other in a "Virtual Battlelab Environment" (VBE). Although many types of data will be exchanged, only variable-bit-rate (VBR) video and distributed interactive simulation (DIS) traffic are modeled in the VBE. The research described in this thesis utilizes a systems engineering approach to investigate the performance …