Digital Commons Network^™

Genetically Evolved Dynamic Control For Quadruped Walking, Giorgio Grasso

Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to show that dynamic control of quadruped locomotion is achievable through the use of genetically evolved central pattern generators. This strategy is tested both in simulation and on a walking robot. The design of the walker has been chosen to be statically unstable, so that during motion less than three supporting feet may be in contact with the ground.

The control strategy adopted is capable of propelling the artificial walker at a forward locomotion speed of ~1.5 Km/h on rugged terrain and provides for stability of motion. The learning of walking, based on simulated …

A Meta-Semantic Language For Smart Component-Adapters, Leon K. Jololian

Dissertations

The issues confronting the software development community today are significantly different from the problems it faced only a decade ago. Advances in software development tools and technologies during the last two decades have greatly enhanced the ability to leverage large amounts of software for creating new applications through the reuse of software libraries and application frameworks. The problems facing organizations today are increasingly focused around systems integration and the creation of information flows.

Software modeling based on the assembly of reusable components to support software development has not been successfully implemented on a wide scale. Several models for reusable software …

Component-Based Software Engineering, Zhiyuan Wang

Dissertations

To solve the problems coming with the current software development methodologies, component-based software engineering has caught many researchers' attention recently. In component-based software engineering, a software system is considered as a set of software components assembled together instead of as a set of functions from the traditional perspective. Software components can be bought from third party vendors as off-the-shelf components and be assembled together.

Component-based software engineering, though very promising, needs to solve several core issues before it becomes a mature software development strategy. The goal of this dissertation is to establish an infrastructure for component-based software development. The author …

Applications Of Agent Architectures To Decision Support In Distributed Simulation And Training Systems, Plamen V. Petrov

Dissertations

This work develops the approach and presents the results of a new model for applying intelligent agents to complex distributed interactive simulation for command and control. In the framework of tactical command, control communications, computers and intelligence (C₄I), software agents provide a novel approach for efficient decision support and distributed interactive mission training. An agent-based architecture for decision support is designed, implemented and is applied in a distributed interactive simulation to significantly enhance the command and control training during simulated exercises. The architecture is based on monitoring, evaluation, and advice agents, which cooperate to provide alternatives to the …

Universal Access In Digital Libraries, Igg Adiwijaya

Theses

Digital libraries are concerned with the creation and management of information sources, the movement of information across global networks and the effective use of this information by a wide range of users. A digital library is a vast collection of obj ects that are of multimedia nature, e.g., text, video, images, and audio. Users wishing to access the digital library objects may possess varying capabilities, preferences, domain expertise, and may use different information appliances. With the phenomenal growth of the Internet, the number of different information appliances will, if not already, increase substantially in the near future. Facilitating access to …

Development And Characterization Of Techniques For Neuro-Imaging Registration, Carlo Ciulla

Theses

Three automated techniques were developed for the alignment of Neuro-Images acquired during distinct scanning periods and their performance were characterized. The techniques are based on the assumption that the human brain is a rigid body and will assume different positions during different scanning periods. One technique uses three fiducial markers, while the other two uses eigenvectors of the inertia matrix of the Neuro-Image, to compute the three angles (pitch, yaw and roll) needed to register the test Neuro-Image to the reference Neuro-Image. A rigid body transformation is computed and applied to the test Neuro-Image such that it results aligned to …

Naming And Sharing Resources Across Administrative Boundaries, Jonathan R. Howell

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

I tackle the problem of naming and sharing resources across administrative boundaries. Conventional systems manifest the hierarchy of typical administrative structure in the structure of their own mechanism. While natural for communication that follows hierarchical patterns, such systems interfere with naming and sharing that cross administrative boundaries, and therefore cause headaches for both users and administrators. I propose to organize resource naming and security, not around administrative domains, but around the sharing patterns of users.

The dissertation is organized into four main parts. First, I discuss the challenges and tradeoffs involved in naming resources and consider a variety of existing …

Approximation Algorithms For The Minimum Bends Traveling Salesman Problem, Cliff Stein, David P. Wagner

Computer Science Technical Reports

The problem of traversing a set of points in the order that minimizes the total distance traveled (traveling salesman problem) is one of the most famous and well-studied problems in combinatorial optimization. It has many applications, and has been a testbed for many of the must useful ideas in algorithm design and analysis. The usual metric, minimizing the total distance traveled, is an important one, but many other metrics are of interest. In this paper, we introduce the metric of minimizing the number of turns in the tour, given that the input points are in the Euclidean plane. To our …

Structured Web Databases, Shuang Li

Dissertations and Theses

Recent research has focused on the cooperation of web server and database server software in the deployment of data-intensive web sites. That work has focused either on storing data in a database that can be used to generate the contents of a web site, or on providing interfaces and gateways to enable queries to be invoked from web pages and executed at external database servers.

This thesis describes the implementation of a prototype of the Data Web system that is being implemented at Portland State University. With Data Web, a user can embed in a web page virtual tables that …

Proceedings Of The 2000 Onr Decision-Support Workshop Series: The Human-Computer Partnership In Decision-Support, Collaborative Agent Design Research Center

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

The Decision Support Workshop of May 2-4, 2000 held in San Luis Obispo, Cal., was the second in a series that was started one year earlier as a joint project of the Office of Naval Research and the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center of Cal Poly.

The goal of this series of Workshops is to provide a forum where connections can be established on one hand between developers and proponents of decision support tools, with potential users such as managers of large, complex organizations/systems on the other. Clearly, the military belong to this class of users and it is therefore …

Performance Analysis Of Mobile Agents For Filtering Data Streams On Wireless Networks, David Kotz, Guofei Jiang, Robert Gray, George Cybenko, Ronald A. Peterson

Computer Science Technical Reports

Wireless networks are an ideal environment for mobile agents, because their mobility allows them to move across an unreliable link to reside on a wired host, next to or closer to the resources they need to use. Furthermore, client-specific data transformations can be moved across the wireless link, and run on a wired gateway server, with the goal of reducing bandwidth demands. In this paper we examine the tradeoffs faced when deciding whether to use mobile agents to support a data-filtering application, in which numerous wireless clients filter information from a large data stream arriving across the wired network. We …

Privacy On The Internet : A Study Of Ethical Issues, Jatara C. Brown

Electronic Dissertations and Theses

This paper will explore the ethical issues of privacy as it relates to computer use or more specifically, the Internet. The information for this paper will be gleaned through books on computer ethics and priv acy, Internet web sites as well as through personal experience. This paper will explore the social and legal aspects ofInternet privacy by examining various real-life cases where Internet privacy was perceived to have been breached. In addition, it will showcase the issues of privacy from two sides: from the perspective of ordinary private citizens and from government agencies and marketing companies who feel that they …

Local Properties Of Query Languages, Guozhu Dong, Leonid Libkin, Limsoon Wong

Kno.e.sis Publications

In this paper we study the expressiveness of local queries. By locality we mean — informally — that in order to check if a tuple belongs to the result of a query, one only has to look at a certain predetermined portion of the input. Examples include all relational calculus queries. We start by proving a general result describing outputs of local queries. This result leads to many easy inexpressibility proofs for local queries. We then consider a closely related property, namely, the bounded degree property. It describes the outputs of local queries on structures that locally look “simple.” Every …

An Infrastructure For A Mobile-Agent System That Provides Personalized Services To Mobile Devices, Debbie O. Chyi

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

In this paper, we present the design of a mobile-agent system that provides a mobile user with a personalized information retrieval service and we describe the implementation of the infrastructure for such a system. This "Personal Agent System" gathers information from the Internet and uses context-aware mechanisms to manage the information according to a mobile user's needs and preferences. The user's schedule and location are the context indicators in this system. These indicators are critical in ensuring that users obtain only the information they want, receive information in a form that is most useful for viewing on their mobile device, …

A Simulation Of Auroral Absorption, Eric Michael Greenberg

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

HF radio transmissions propagate long distances by reflecting off the ionosphere. At high latitudes radio propagation is strongly affected by the northern lights (aurora borealis), which causes ionization at low altitudes and hence the absorption of radio waves. Models of this process are still in a primitive state. A simulation of radio wave propagation was created in order to test Foppiano and Bradley's empirical model of auroral absorption. The simulation attempts to predict the net absorption of signals at a receiver by simulating a large number of transmitters, even though the exact sources of the signals are unknown. Although the …

Mpi Collective Operations Over Ip Multicast, Amy Apon, H A. Chen, Y O. Carrasco

Publications

Many common implementations of Message Passing Inter- face (MPI) implement collective operations over point-to-point operations. This work examines IP multicast as a framework for collective operations. IP multicast is not reliable. If a receiver is not ready when a message is sent via IP multicast, the message is lost. Two techniques for ensuring that a message is not lost due to a slow receiving process are examined. The techniques are implemented and compared experimentally over both a shared and a switched Fast Ethernet. The average performance of collective operations is improved as a function of the number of participating processes …

Operational Evaluation Of A Knowledge-Based Sea Ice Classification System, Denise Gineris, Cheryl Bertoia, Mary Ruth Keller, Leen-Kiat Soh, Costas Tsatsoulis

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

ARKTOS (Advanced Reasoning Using Knowledge for Typing of Sea Ice) is a fully automated intelligent sea ice classification system. ARKTOS is in use at the U.S. National Ice Center (NIC) for daily operations related to the NIC’S task of mapping the ice covered oceans. ARKTOS incorporates image processing, input from ancillary data, and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze and classify RADARSAT Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. The NIC and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL/ERIM) have been testing and evaluating ARKTOS through the freeze-up, winter, melt-out and summer seasons of the Beaufort Sea. In this paper we outline the development and evolution …

Pembangunan Laman Web Bermultimedia Bagi Sebuah Sekolah, Kaliappan Malathi

Student Works (2000-2009)

Laman web sekolah ini merupakan sebuah laman web bermultimedia yang mengandungi unsur-unsur multimedia seperti bunyi, grafik, imej dan animasi. Objektif utama laman web ini adalah untuk membangunkan satu sistem multimedia yang bermutu tinggi, mengetahui keputusan peperiksaan awam, mengetahui maklumat ahli-ahli organisasi sekolah iaitu guru-guru dan kakitangan lain kerana ke semua maklumat ini telah dimasukkan dalam pangkalan data, memberi maklumat tentang aktiviti tahunan dan ko-kurikulum sekolah. Dengan adanya laman web ini, maklumat dapat diperoleh tanpa mengunjungi sekolah tersebut. Secara amnya, laman web ini mengandungi semua maklumat tentang sekolah tersebut seperti sejarah sekolah, organisasi sekolah, pencapaian akademik, kurikulum, kokurikulum, aktiviti tahunan, kemudahan …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 16, Number 5, May 2000, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

A nineteen page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

Decision Support Methods In Diabetic Patient Management By Insulin Administration Neural Network Vs. Induction Methods For Knowledge Classification, B. V. Ambrosiadou, S. Vadera, Venky Shankaraman, D. Goulis, G. Gogou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Diabetes mellitus is now recognised as a major worldwide public health problem. At present, about 100 million people are registered as diabetic patients. Many clinical, social and economic problems occur as a consequence of insulin-dependent diabetes. Treatment attempts to prevent or delay complications by applying ‘optimal’ glycaemic control. Therefore, there is a continuous need for effective monitoring of the patient. Given the popularity of decision tree learning algorithms as well as neural networks for knowledge classification which is further used for decision support, this paper examines their relative merits by applying one algorithm from each family on a medical problem; …

A Study Of Disk Performance Optimization., Richard Scott Gray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Response time is one of the most important performance measures associated with a typical multi-user system. Response time, in turn, is bounded by the performance of the input/output (I/O) subsystem. Other than the end user and some external peripherals, the slowest component of the I/O subsystem is the disk drive.

One standard strategy for improving I/O subsystem performance uses high-performance hardware like Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) drives to improve overall response time. SCSI hardware, unfortunately, is often too expensive to use in low-end multi-user systems. The low-end multi-user systems commonly use inexpensive Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) disk drives to …

Enhancing Partitionable Group Membership Service In Asynchronous Distrib Systems, Marwa Mohamed Mansour

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Anytime Algorithms For Maximal Constraint Satisfaction Problems, Noha Kaptan

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Gx-Tree, Amgad Mohamed Abdelkader Al-Sisi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Vas (Visual Analysis System): An Information Visualization Engine To Interpret World Wide Web Structure, Tarkan Karadayi

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

People increasingly encounter problems of interpreting and filtering mass quantities of information. The enormous growth of information systems on the World Wide Web has demonstrated that we need systems to filter, interpret, organize and present information in ways that allow users to use these large quantities of information. People need to be able to extract knowledge from this sometimes meaningful but sometimes useless mass of data in order to make informed decisions. Web users need to have some kind of information about the sort of page they might visit, such as, is it a rarely referenced or often-referenced page? This …

An Adaptive Hybrid Genetic-Annealing Approach For Solving The Map Problem On Belief Networks, Manar Hosny

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Genetic algorithms (GAs) and simulated annealing (SA) are two important search methods that have been used successfully in solving difficult problems such as combinatorial optimization problems. Genetic algorithms are capable of wide exploration of the search space, while simulated annealing is capable of fine tuning a good solution. Combining both techniques may result in achieving the benefits of both and improving the quality of the solutions obtained. Several attempts have been made to hybridize GAs and SA. One such attempt was to augment a standard GA with simulated annealing as a genetic operator. SA in that case acted as a …

3d Outside Cell Interference Factor For An Air-Ground Cdma ‘Cellular’ System, David W. Matolak

Faculty Publications

We compute the outside-cell interference factor of a code-division multiple-access (CDMA) system for a three-dimensional (3-D) air-to-ground (AG) "cellular-like" network consisting of a set of uniformly distributed ground base stations and airborne mobile users. The CDMA capacity is roughly inversely proportional to the outside-cell interference factor. It is shown that for the nearly free-space propagation environment of these systems, the outside-cell interference factor can be larger than that for terrestrial propagation models (as expected) and depends approximately logarithmically upon both the cell height and cell radius.

Predictive Adaptive Resonance Theory And Knowledge Discovery In Databases, Ah-Hwee Tan, Hui-Shin Vivien Soon

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper investigates the scalability of predictive Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) networks for knowledge discovery in very large databases. Although predictive ART performs fast and incremental learning, the number of recognition categories or rules that it creates during learning may become substantially large and cause the learning speed to slow down. To tackle this problem, we introduce an on-line algorithm for evaluating and pruning categories during learning. Benchmark experiments on a large scale data set show that on-line pruning has been effective in reducing the number of the recognition categories and the time for convergence. Interestingly, the pruned networks also …

Load Sharing In Distributed Multimedia-On-Demand Systems, Y. C. Tay, Hwee Hwa Pang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Service providers have begun to offer multimedia-on-demand services to residential estates by installing isolated, small-scale multimedia servers at individual estates. Such an arrangement allows the service providers to operate without relying on a highspeed, large-capacity metropolitan area network, which is still not available in many countries. Unfortunately, installing isolated servers can incur very high server costs, as each server requires spare bandwidth to cope with fluctuations in user demand. The authors explore the feasibility of linking up several small multimedia servers to a (limited-capacity) network, and allowing servers with idle retrieval bandwidth to help out servers that are temporarily overloaded; …

Computer Vision: Object Recognition, Michael Zalokar '00

Honors Projects

One of the growing fields in computer science is that of Artificial Intelligence or AI. Many theories have evolved to make a computer intelligent and so far no one has succeeded (Dreyfus 1992). One of the methods used by the Shelley Project in the past has been to use a back propagation neural network that is the backbone of the GNU Neural Network Visualizer (GNNV). GNNV uses a neural network to try to identify known objects, like faces, in the field of view. A different method, that is the focus of this research, is to identify objects in the image. …