Digital Commons Network^™

Anomaly Detection On Small Wind Turbine Blades Using Deep Learning Algorithms, Bridger Altice, Edwin Nazario, Mason Davis, Mohammad Shekaramiz, Todd K. Moon, Mohammad A. S. Masoum

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Wind turbine blade maintenance is expensive, dangerous, time-consuming, and prone to misdiagnosis. A potential solution to aid preventative maintenance is using deep learning and drones for inspection and early fault detection. In this research, five base deep learning architectures are investigated for anomaly detection on wind turbine blades, including Xception, Resnet-50, AlexNet, and VGG-19, along with a custom convolutional neural network. For further analysis, transfer learning approaches were also proposed and developed, utilizing these architectures as the feature extraction layers. In order to investigate model performance, a new dataset containing 6000 RGB images was created, making use of indoor and …

Forest Composition Change And Biophysical Climate Feedbacks Across Boreal North America, Richard Massey, Brendan M. Rogers, Logan T. Berner, Sol Cooperdock, Michelle C. Mack, Xanthe J. Walker, Scott J. Goetz

Aspen Bibliography

Deciduous tree cover is expected to increase in North American boreal forests with climate warming and wildfire. This shift in composition has the potential to generate biophysical cooling via increased land surface albedo. Here we use Landsat-derived maps of continuous tree canopy cover and deciduous fractional composition to assess albedo change over recent decades. We find, on average, a small net decrease in deciduous fraction from 2000 to 2015 across boreal North America and from 1992 to 2015 across Canada, despite extensive fire disturbance that locally increased deciduous vegetation. We further find near-neutral net biophysical change in radiative forcing associated …

Extension Of Cloud Computing To Small Satellites, Kathryn O'Donnell, Meghan Weber, Joy Fasnacht, Jeff Maynard, Margaret Cote, Shayn Hawthorne

Small Satellite Conference

Time-to-insight is a critical measure in a number of satellite mission applications: detection and warning of fast-moving events like fires and floods, or identification and tracking of satellites or missiles, for example. Current data flows delay the time-to-insight on the order of minutes or hours, as all collected data must be downlinked in one or more contact windows, then transited over terrestrial networks to the location of the analytic software. Additionally, mission applications on spacecraft are often static: built prior to launch, they cannot rapidly adapt to changing needs based on these insights.

To reduce time-to-insight and provide a dynamic …

A Decision Framework For Allocation Of Constellation-Scale Mission Compute Functionality To Ground And Edge Computing, Jaime Ramirez, Caleb Royer, Brian Free, Owen Brown, Robert Polutchko

Small Satellite Conference

This paper explores constellation-scale architectural trades, highlights dominant factors, and presents a decision framework for migrating or sharing mission compute functionality between ground and space segments. Over recent decades, sophisticated logic has been developed for scheduling and tasking of space assets, as well as processing and exploitation of satellite data, and this software has been traditionally hosted in ground computing. Current efforts exist to migrate this software to ground cloud-based services. The option and motivation to host some of this logic “at the edge” within the space segment has arisen as space assets are proliferated, are interlinked via transport networks, …

Lessons Learned On Building And Operating Software Defined Cubesat For Scalable Satellites, Minsik Lee, Naeem Altaf, Hanna Sohn

Small Satellite Conference

Software Defined CubeSats are small and low-cost satellites that utilize software-based technologies for their operations and functionalities. While traditional hardware based CubeSats in large-scale systems have limitations for scalability due to their fixed environments, Software Defined CubeSats offer many advantages such as flexibility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, reliability, and rapid deployments.

IBM Endurance CubeSat is a Software Defined CubeSat that aims to pave the way for future space missions. On May 25th, 2022, IBM Endurance CubeSat launched successfully in Florida, USA, and now it provides CubeSat as a Service to users who need to conduct space missions or experiments. The CubeSat uses …

Accuracy Vs. Energy: An Assessment Of Bee Object Inference In Videos From On-Hive Video Loggers With Yolov3, Yolov4-Tiny, And Yolov7-Tiny, Vladimir A. Kulyukin, Aleksey V. Kulyukin

Computer Science Faculty and Staff Publications

A continuing trend in precision apiculture is to use computer vision methods to quantify characteristics of bee traffic in managed colonies at the hive's entrance. Since traffic at the hive's entrance is a contributing factor to the hive's productivity and health, we assessed the potential of three open-source convolutional network models, YOLOv3, YOLOv4-tiny, and YOLOv7-tiny, to quantify omnidirectional traffic in videos from on-hive video loggers on regular, unmodified one- and two-super Langstroth hives and compared their accuracies, energy efficacies, and operational energy footprints. We trained and tested the models with a 70/30 split on a dataset of 23,173 flying bees …

Drivers And Barriers Of Social Sustainable Development And Growth Of Online Higher Education: The Roles Of Perceived Ease Of Use And Perceived Usefulness, Hemamali Tennakoon, Jared M. Hansen, George Saridakis, Mahesha Samaratunga, Joseph W. Hansen

Marketing and Strategy Faculty Publications

Online and distance learning classes have been touted for the last several years as an innovation in higher education that should help improve the entrepreneurial growth mindset of students. However, the reported negative online learning experience of many college students worldwide during the COVID-19 epidemic has shown that many opportunities remain to improve the sustainable development and growth of online visual instruction practices. In this study, we outline and investigate a set of hypotheses related to the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (from TAM) of online video instruction in higher education courses during the pandemic. We employ grounded …

Utah State University Commencement, 2023 – Uintah Basin Campus, Utah State University

Commencement Programs

2023 Commencement Ceremony for the Uintah Basin campus of Utah State University.

Ambient Electromagnetic Radiation As A Predictor Of Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera) Traffic In Linear And Non-Linear Regression: Numerical Stability, Physical Time And Energy Efficiency, Vladimir Kulyukin, Daniel Coster, Anastasiia Tkachenko, Daniel Hornberger, Aleksey V. Kulyukin

Computer Science Faculty and Staff Publications

Since bee traffic is a contributing factor to hive health and electromagnetic radiation has a growing presence in the urban milieu, we investigate ambient electromagnetic radiation as a predictor of bee traffic in the hive’s vicinity in an urban environment. To that end, we built two multi-sensor stations and deployed them for four and a half months at a private apiary in Logan, Utah, U.S.A. to record ambient weather and electromagnetic radiation. We placed two non-invasive video loggers on two hives at the apiary to extract omnidirectional bee motion counts from videos. The time-aligned datasets were used to evaluate 200 …

Evaluating Network Performance Of Containerized Test Framework For Distributed Space Systems, Walter Vaughan, Alan George, Brian Kempa, Daniel Cellucci, Nicholas Cramer

Small Satellite Conference

Distributed space systems are a mission architecture consisting of multiple spacecraft as a cohesive system which provide multipoint sampling, increased mission coverage, or improved sample resolution, while reducing mission risk through redundancy. To fully realize the potential of these systems, eventually scaling to hundreds or thousands of spacecraft, distributed space systems need to be operated as a single entity, which will enable a variety of novel scientific space missions. The Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA) project is a software project which aims to mature the technology needed for those systems, namely autonomous decision-making and swarm networking. The DSA project leverages a …

Predicting Order Status Using Xgboost, Kegan J. Penovich

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Invista, a Koch subsidiary, is a multinational producer of fibers, resins, and intermediaries, particularly nylon. To keep the company operating required them to take over 1.5 million orders over the course of - years, less than a third of which arrived on-time. Orders arriving other than when expected can cause many problems for any company. While arriving late is a clear problem, it also troublesome for them to arrive early. In the face of this, it becomes important to be able to tell a-priori if an order will arrive on-time or not.

To address this problem, we made use of …

Ai: Capturing Core Processes In The Us-China Hegemonic Cycle, Connor Murphy

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

World systems analysis is a historically based framework that makes looking at the world easier with trends and patterns. Using this framework and the concepts inside of it, the reader will be able to see the potential that artificial intelligence has in regard to the social, political and economic changes that will come about in the United States and China from the adoption of this technology.

Efficient And Secure Resource Allocation In Mobile Edge Computing Enabled Wireless Networks, Qun Wang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

To support emerging applications such as autonomous vehicles and smart homes and to build an intelligent society, the next-generation internet of things (IoT) is calling for up to 50 billion devices connected world wide. Massive devices connection, explosive data circulation, and colossal data processing demand are driving both the industry and academia to explore new solutions.

Uploading this vast amount of data to the cloud center for processing will significantly increase the load on backbone networks and cause relatively long latency to time-sensitive applications. A practical solution is to deploy the computing resource closer to end-users to process the distributed …

Ten Simple Rules For Researchers Who Want To Develop Web Apps, Sheila M. Saia, Natalie G. Nelson, Sierra N. Young, Stanton Parham, Micah Vandegrift

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Web applications, also known as web apps, are increasingly common in the research communication portfolios of those working in the life sciences (e.g., [1]) and physical sciences (e.g., [2–4]). Web apps help disseminate research findings and present research outputs in ways that are accessible and meaningful to the general public—from individuals, to governments, to companies. Specifically, web apps enable exploration of scenario testing and policy analysis (i.e., to answer “what if?”) as well as coevolution of scientific and public knowledge [5,6]. However, the majority of researchers developing web apps receive little formal training or technical guidance on how to develop …

English-To-Ipa Transcription, Riley Roberts

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The purpose of this project was to create a tool that could automate English-to-IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription. Research was done to determine what would be required to perform such a transcription. After researching and experimenting with existing tools, it was determined that developing the signal processing and Artificial Intelligence model portion of the application would be too intensive to successfully complete within the timeframe of this project.

The choice was made to develop an iOS application, with the Python library Allosaurus used to do the speech processing and as the Artificial Intelligence model. This model was then deployed in …

Software-Enabled Smallsat Autonomy: Discussion With Examples, Timothy Woodbury, Austin Probe, Robert Effinger, John Mcgreevy, David Herceg, Matthew Ruschmann, Brett Carver, Timothy Esposito, Graham Bryan

Small Satellite Conference

Smallsat missions using cooperating constellations offer significant benefits compared to traditional space missions. These benefits include lower unit costs, better robustness to failures, and the ability to collect data in a distributed fashion. Significant commercial smallsat missions are active in low Earth orbit, and spacecraft operators have expressed interest in smallsat constellations operating both at higher altitudes and in proximity operations missions. Autonomy plays a significant role in extending smallsat missions to these more challenging domains. Autonomy in a broad sense refers to a spacecraft's or constellation's ability to operate independently of ground systems, and affects every part of a …

Constellation Modelling, Performance Prediction And Operations Management For The Spire Constellation, Jeroen Cappaert, Frantisek Foston, Pablo Sierra Heras, Barry King, Nick Pascucci, Jordan Reilly, Conor Brown, Joey Pitzo, Marcus Tallhamm

Small Satellite Conference

The operational complexity of managing the Spire constellation continually increases with the routine introduction of additional satellites and new capabilities. The heterogeneous nature of the satellites, payloads, and ground station configurations compounds the difficulty of strategic planning and operational scheduling. In order to efficiently operate this diverse network of assets, Spire developed a suite of bespoke constellation modeling and management tools that are designed to support existing demand and to scale for future needs. The modeling tools enable Spire to accurately simulate and optimize the performance of various constellation configurations prior to deployment. The operational tools required to harness the …

How Skywatch Uses Serverless Cloud Computing To Aggregate Eo Data For The Masses, Roland Sing

Small Satellite Conference

Problem

• Petabytes of data to process and distribute
• Pent up demand, bottlenecked by immature industry distribution vehicles and antiquated pricing structures

Goals

• no humans in the loop
• easy consumption of data by beginners and experts alike
• machine to machine focus
• low cost to purchase data
• low cost to operate
• timely processing and delivery (minutes not days)

Mata-Cloud: A Cloud Detection And Dynamic Attitude Correction Evaluation Software, Vanessa Tan, Julie Ann Banatao, John Leur Labrador, Lia Cristina Mabaquiao, Floyd Ferrant Fortes, Marc Caesar Talampas

Small Satellite Conference

With the increasing demand for high-resolution images from earth observation satellites, there is a need to optimize the usability of the images being downloaded in the ground stations. Most captured satellite images are not usable for certain applications due to high cloud cover percentage. To address this problem, this research demonstrates a cloud detection and dynamic attitude correction evaluation software. This software explores two key experiments. First is evaluating different image processing and machine learning-based approaches to detect cloud cover. The cloud detection algorithms were evaluated based on their accuracy, latency, and memory consumption. The second is exploring dynamic attitude …

A New Gigabit Software Modem And Its Cloud Deployment: Concept And Capabilities, Tomislav Nakić-Alfirević

Small Satellite Conference

Software Modem Architecture

Receivers typically have 3 components: a digitizer to digitize the signal, a digital signal processor to demodulate and decode it and a front-end processor to handle frame and packet level processing.

The digitizer receives analogue input, so it has to be a hardware device. Blink implements everything else as high-performance software, making it extremely quick to extend and customise for new missions, as well as cost-competitive. In addition, all 3 components are completely independent an can work together with third party digitizers or modems.

This is only possible because Blink is the fastest software receiver in the …

Low-Power Boards Enabling Ml-Based Approaches To Fdir In Space-Based Applications, James Murphy, John E. Ward, Brian Mac Namee

Small Satellite Conference

Modern satellite complexity is increasing, thus requiring bespoke and expensive on-board solutions to provide a Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR) function. Although FDIR is vital in ensuring the safety, autonomy, and availability of satellite systems in flight, there is a clear need in the space industry for a more adaptable, scalable, and cost-effective solution. This paper explores the current state of the art for Machine Learning error detection and prognostic algorithms utilized by both the space sector and the commercial sector. Although work has previously been done in the commercial sector on error detection and prognostics, most commercial applications …

Deep Learning Data And Indexes In A Database, Vishal Sharma

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A database is used to store and retrieve data, which is a critical component for any software application. Databases requires configuration for efficiency, however, there are tens of configuration parameters. It is a challenging task to manually configure a database. Furthermore, a database must be reconfigured on a regular basis to keep up with newer data and workload. The goal of this thesis is to use the query workload history to autonomously configure the database and improve its performance. We achieve proposed work in four stages: (i) we develop an index recommender using deep reinforcement learning for a standalone database. …

Collaborative Research: Ecological Legacy Effects Of Megacarcasses In African Savanna Ecosystems, Johan Du Toit

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Contentious Industry Relationships, Complex Acquisitions, Poor Talent Retention Choke Dod Technology Pipeline, Lucas Evans

Student Research Symposium

The DoD's acquisition-implementation pipeline is a critical piece of defense infrastructure whose struggle to adapt to the shift of technological innovation from the defense sector to the private sector continues to erode the Pentagon's technological edge. Without efforts to build resiliency into the three primary areas of this system: industry relationships, defense acquisition, and talent retention, the DoD risks being outpaced by its near-peer competition in emergent technologies, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, robotics, and cloud computing. Building resilience throughout the defense technology pipeline will pay dividends, but focused efforts to build a robust talent acquisition and retention system within the …

76-Year Decline And Recovery Of Aspen Mediated By Contrasting Fire Regimes: Long-Unburned, Infrequent And Frequent Mixed-Severity Wildfire, Cerena J. Brewen, John-Pascal Berrill, Martin W. Ritchie, Kevin Boston, Christa M. Dagley, Bobette Jones, Michelle Coppoletta, Coye L. Burnett

Aspen Bibliography

Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is a valued, minor component on northeastern California landscapes. It provides a wide range of ecosystem services and has been in decline throughout the region for the last century. This decline may be explained partially by the lack of fire on the landscape due to heavier fire suppression, as aspen benefit from fire that eliminates conifer competition and stimulates reproduction through root suckering. However, there is little known about how aspen stand area changes in response to overlapping fire. Our study area in northeastern California on the Lassen, Modoc and Plumas National Forests has …

Toward Open And Reproducible Environmental Modeling By Integrating Online Data Repositories, Computational Environments, And Model Application Programming Interfaces, Young-Don Choi, Jonathan L. Goodall, Jeffrey M. Sadler, Anthony M. Castronova, Andrew Bennett, Zhiyu Li, Bart Nijssen, Shaowen Wang, Martyn P. Clark, Daniel P. Ames, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Hong Yi, Christina Bandaragoda, Martin Seul, Richard Hooper, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Cyberinfrastructure needs to be advanced to enable open and reproducible environmental modeling research. Recent efforts toward this goal have focused on advancing online repositories for data and model sharing, online computational environments along with containerization technology and notebooks for capturing reproducible computational studies, and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for simulation models to foster intuitive programmatic control. The objective of this research is to show how these efforts can be integrated to support reproducible environmental modeling. We present first the high-level concept and general approach for integrating these three components. We then present one possible implementation that integrates HydroShare (an online …

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, November 5, 2020, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Approval of 1 October 2020 Minutes

Program Proposals

• Correct the acronym from Police Officers Standards and Training to Peace Officer Standards and Training.
• Offer an Associate of Arts in Art at the USU Eastern campus.
• Create a new Consulting Minor.
• Change the name of the Center for Persons with Disabilities to the Institute for Disability Research, Policy and Practice.
• Create a certificate of proficiency in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.
• Discontinue the Bachelor of Arts and Science in Biology Ecology/Biodiversity as well as the Biology: Environmental Bachelor of Arts and Science emphasis.
• Discontinue the Biology: Environmental program.
• Change …

Educational Policies Committee Agenda, November 5, 2020, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Subcommittee Reports

• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Other Business

• Revised EPC/Curriculum Handbook
• Course Objectives
• Curriculog Justification Language
• Graduate School Updated
• IDEA Evaluations for 7-Week Courses

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, October 1, 2020, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Approval of 30 July 2020 and 3 September 2020 Minutes

Program Proposals

College of Engineering

• Offer a Master of Science in Engineering Education

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

• Change center name to Center for Intersectional Gender Studies and Research
• Create a Certificate
• Create a Minor in Intersectional Gender Studies
• Create a Minor in Sexuality Studies

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Other Business

• T-Grade Option
• Revised EPC/Curriculum Handbook
• Course Objectives (email-minutes)

Educational Policies Committee Minutes, October 1, 2020, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Approval of 30 July 2020 and 3 September 2020 Minutes

Subcommittee Reports

• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Other Business