Engineering Commons^™

Multiple Robot Boundary Tracking With Phase And Workload Balancing, Michael Jay Boardman

Master's Theses

This thesis discusses the use of a cooperative multiple robot system as applied to distributed tracking and sampling of a boundary edge. Within this system the boundary edge is partitioned into subsegments, each allocated to a particular robot such that workload is balanced across the robots. Also, to minimize the time between sampling local areas of the boundary edge, it is desirable to minimize the difference between each robot’s progression (i.e. phase) along its allocated sub segment of the edge. The paper introduces a new distributed controller that handles both workload and phase balancing. Simulation results are used to illustrate …

The Future Of Digital Rights Management In Digital Video, Matthew Elcock

Technical Reports

The rise in the popularity of internet-based digital video has created a major revolution in the way consumers acquire content. Users no longer need to watch a television show live or obtain a physical disc in order to view a movie. However, this transition comes with a price: Digital Rights Management (DRM). Every digital video file requires a user to be locked into a particular combination of software, hardware, and business plan in order to be authorized for viewing purchased content. DRM was just as prevalent during the introduction of digital audio, but DRM was abolished from the format within …

Use Of Machine Learning Classification Techniques To Detect Atypical Behavior In Medical Applications, Terrence Ziemniak

Technical Reports

Health care informatics is growing at an incredible pace. Originally health care organizations, like all other industries, used pen and paper to track medical information. Ten years ago the more mature health care organizations had simply practice management applications. Today these organizations have full blown electronic health records systems. Tomorrow these organizations will be sharing information across the globe.

Physicians (and the sponsoring organizations) are obligated to protect this data. Health care has followed the trend of many other industries in implementing technologies and processes to address certain risks. Encryption is enabled to ensure confidentiality. Business continuity techniques are applied …

Measuring Atmospheric Scattering From Digital Images Of Urban Scenery Using Temporal Polarization-Based Vision, Tarek El-Gaaly

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Suspended atmospheric particles (particulate matter) are a form of air pollution that visually degrades urban scenery and is hazardous to human health and the environment. Current environmental monitoring devices are limited in their capability of measuring average particulate matter (PM) over large areas. Quantifying the visual effects of haze in digital images of urban scenery and correlating these effects to PM levels is a vital step in more practically monitoring our environment. Current image haze extraction algorithms remove all the haze from the scene and hence produce unnatural scenes for the sole purpose of enhancing vision. We present two algorithms …

An Extended Configurable Uml Activity Diagram And A Transformation Algorithm For Business Process Reference Modeling, Yosra Osama Badr

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions provide generic off-the-shelf reference models usually known as "best practices". The configuration !individualization of the reference model to meet specific requirements of business end users however, is a difficult task. The available modeling languages do not provide a complete configurable language that could be used to model configurable reference models. More specifically, there is no algorithm that monitors the transformation of configurable UML Activity Diagram (AD) models while preserving the syntactic correctness of the model. To fill these gaps we propose an extended UML AD modeling language which we named Configurable UML Activity Diagram (C-UML …

5 Ghz Band Vehicle-To-Vehicle Channels: Models For Multiple Values Of Channel Bandwidth, Qiong Wu, David W. Matolak, Indranil Sen

Faculty Publications

In Sen and Matolak's earlier paper, 5-GHz-band vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) channel models were presented for channel bandwidths of 5 and 10 MHz. In this paper, we provide additional tapped delay line models for bandwidths of 1, 20, 33.33, and 50 MHz based upon the data used in Sen and Matolak's paper. We provide tables of channel parameters for five types of V2V channel classes and also include example tap correlation coefficients. Root-mean-square delay spread values are summarized, as are values of bandwidth for which the channel frequency correlation takes values of 0.7 and 0.5. As with the results from Sen and …

Design And Usability Of Social Networking Web Sites, Robert Pessagno

Graphic Communication

This study began by designing the layout of a new social networking Web site and putting it to practical use. A team of computer science students at Cal Poly developed this social networking site for their senior project, and called it Friend Riot. The new and innovative features that Friend Riot consists of set it apart from other popular social networking Web sites, but its interface was lacking a good design. When the new design was implemented, it was tested against the competition: Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects that Web design …

Http 1.2: Distributed Http For Load Balancing Server Systems, Graham M. O'Daniel

Master's Theses

Content hosted on the Internet must appear robust and reliable to clients relying on such content. As more clients come to rely on content from a source, that source can be subjected to high levels of load. There are a number of solutions, collectively called load balancers, which try to solve the load problem through various means. All of these solutions are workarounds for dealing with problems inherent in the medium by which content is served thereby limiting their effectiveness. HTTP, or Hypertext Transport Protocol, is the dominant mechanism behind hosting content on the Internet through websites. The entirety of …

Digital Signaling Processor Resource Management For Small Office Phone Systems, John T. Gilkeson

Master's Theses

Contemporary small office phone systems are specialized computers that connect a variety of phones within the office and to the local phone company. These systems use digital signaling processors (DSPs) to convert signals from analog to digital and vice-versa. Many different types of applications run on the DSPs and different businesses have varying application needs. Given the systems have limited amounts of DSP resources and growing numbers of applications for a phone system, an administrator needs a way to configure the uses of resources based on their individual business needs.

This thesis provides an overview of a system for configuring …

Monocular Vision And Image Correlation To Accomplish Autonomous Localization, Matthew Paul Schlachtman

Master's Theses

For autonomous navigation, robots and vehicles must have accurate estimates of their current state (i.e. location and orientation) within an inertial coordinate frame. If a map is given a priori, the process of determining this state is known as localization. When operating in the outdoors, localization is often assumed to be a solved problem when GPS measurements are available. However, in urban canyons and other areas where GPS accuracy is decreased, additional techniques with other sensors and filtering are required.

This thesis aims to provide one such technique based on monocular vision. First, the system requires a map be generated, …

Textured Hierarchical Precomputed Radiance Transfer, Harrison Lee Mckenzie Chapter

Master's Theses

Computing complex lighting simulations such as global illumination is a computationally intensive task. Various real time solutions exist to approximate aspects of global illumination such as shadows, however, few of these methods offer single pass rendering solutions for soft shadows (self and other) and inter-reflections. In contrast, Precomputed Radiance Transfer (PRT) is a real-time computer graphics technique which pre-calculates an object's response to potential incident light. At run time, the actual incident light can be used to quickly illuminate the surface, rendering effects such as soft self-shadows and inter-reflections. In this thesis, we show that by calculating PRT lighting coefficients …

Aircraft Data Collection System, Amy Kronsteiner, Danny Marx, Collin Heller, Nathaniel Garcia, Nicholas Riccobono, Scott Parks, Albert Liu

Biomedical Engineering

This report outlines the design and building process for an interchangeable testing device that collects aircraft performance data. Included is the project objectives, system requirements, management plan, design concept development, design details, manufacturing procedures, and project verification test plans. The device is a wing-mounted Pitot-static system integrated with an Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS).

Suitable Knowledge Management In Project Environment, Taya Polyaninova

Dissertations

Knowledge is becoming one of the main assets for organizations that want to improve their competitiveness in currently changing market. Knowledge comes from different sources within organizations, such as internal processes, projects, customers and stakeholder information. As markets and the way of doing things changes, many companies implement different projects to deal with those changes, which leads to accumulation of knowledge and information. Companies use Knowledge Management to create, identify and distribute knowledge and experiences arising from projects within organisation. However, as projects are done to create unique deliverables and they are never the same, there is a difficulty in …

Knowledge Discovery And Analysis In Manufacturing, Mark Polczynski, Andzrej Kochanski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The quality and reliability requirements for next-generation manufacturing are reviewed, and current approaches are cited. The potential for augmenting current quality/reliability technology is described, and characteristics of potential future directions are postulated. Methods based on knowledge discovery and analysis in manufacturing (KDAM) are reviewed, and related successful applications in business and social fields are discussed. Typical KDAM applications are noted, along with general functions and specific KDAM-related technologies. A systematic knowledge discovery process model is reviewed, and examples of current work are given, including description of successful applications of KDAM to creation of rules for optimizing gas porosity in sand …

Hardware Support For Real-Time Network Security And Packet Classification Using Field Programmable Gate Arrays, Nitesh Bhicu Guinde

Dissertations

Deep packet inspection and packet classification are the most computationally expensive operations in a Network Intrusion Detection (NID) system. Deep packet inspection involves content matching where the payload of the incoming packets is matched against a set of signatures in the database. Packet classification involves inspection of the packet header fields and is basically a multi-dimensional matching problem. Any matching in software is very slow in comparison to current network speeds. Also, both of these problems need a solution which is scalable and can work at high speeds. Due to the high complexity of these matching problems, only Field-Programmable Gate …

Application Of Structured Light Imaging For High Resolution Mapping Of Underwater Archaeological Sites, Chris Roman, Gabrielle Inglis, James Rutter

Graduate School of Oceanography Faculty Publications

This paper presents results from recent work using structured light laser profile imaging to create high resolution bathymetric maps of underwater archaeological sites. Documenting the texture and structure of submerged sites is a difficult task and many applicable acoustic and photographic mapping techniques have recently emerged. This effort was completed to evaluate laser profile imaging in comparison to stereo imaging and high frequency multibeam mapping. A ROV mounted camera and inclined 532 nm sheet laser were used to create profiles of the bottom that were then merged into maps using platform navigation data. These initial results show very promising resolution …

Synthetic Corpora: A Synergy Of Linguistics And Computer Animation, Jerry C. Schnepp, Rosalee Wolfe, John Mcdonald

Visual Communications and Technology Education Faculty Publications

Synthetic corpora enable the creation of computer-generated animations depicting sign language and are the complement of corpora containing videotaped exemplars. Any design for a synthetic corpus needs to accommodate linguistic processes as well as support the generation of believable, acceptable synthesized utterances. This paper explores one possibility for representing linguistic and extralinguistic processes that involve the face and reports on the outcomes of a user test evaluating the clarity of utterances synthesized by this approach.

The Defiance College Undergraduate Major In Digital Forensic Science: Setting The Bar Higher, Gregg H. Gunsch

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper provides background information to accompany the panel discussion on Curriculum Design and Implementation in Computer Forensics Education. It is specifically focused on the content and delivery of Defiance College’s undergraduate (B.S.) program majoring in Digital Forensic Science (DFS). The genesis and evolution of the Defiance College DFS program are described, along with its successes, challenges and known opportunities for improvement. The desired outcomes of the panel discussion include articulating the necessary components of an undergraduate program, refining expectations of knowledge and skills required of students upon graduation, and suggesting strategies for achieving those expectations despite inevitable resource limitations …

Computer Forensics For Graduate Accountants: A Motivational Curriculum Design Approach, Grover S. Kearns

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Computer forensics involves the investigation of digital sources to acquire evidence that can be used in a court of law. It can also be used to identify and respond to threats to hosts and systems. Accountants use computer forensics to investigate computer crime or misuse, theft of trade secrets, theft of or destruction of intellectual property, and fraud. Education of accountants to use forensic tools is a goal of the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). Accounting students, however, may not view information technology as vital to their career paths and need motivation to acquire forensic knowledge and skills. …

Digital Records Forensics: A New Science And Academic Program For Forensic Readiness, Luciana Duranti, Barbara Endicott-Popovsky

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper introduces the Digital Records Forensics project, a research endeavour located at the University of British Columbia in Canada and aimed at the development of a new science resulting from the integration of digital forensics with diplomatics, archival science, information science and the law of evidence, and of an interdisciplinary graduate degree program, called Digital Records Forensics Studies, directed to professionals working for law enforcement agencies, legal firms, courts, and all kind of institutions and business that require their services. The program anticipates the need for organizations to become “forensically ready,” defined by John Tan as “maximizing the ability …

A Layered Framework Approach To Mitigate Crimeware, Mathew Nyamagwa

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Crimeware attacks are growing at such an alarming rate and are becoming so prevalent that the FBI now rank cybercrime among its top priorities after terrorism and espionage. New studies estimate cyber crimes cost firms an astounding $1 trillion annually. But the good news? Over 80% of them are preventable. Crimeware is not a purely technical threat but more or a socio-technical affair. This clearly brings out the fact that computers do not commit a crime, but we (humans) do! In this paper I propose a layered approach that involves all stakeholders from end-users to service-providers and law enforcement to …

Canvass - A Steganalysis Forensic Tool For Jpeg Images, Jennifer L. Davidson, Jaikishan Jalan

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Steganography is a way to communicate a message such that no one except the sender and recipient suspects the existence of the message. This type of covert communication lends itself to a variety of different purposes such as spy-to-spy communication, exchange of pornographic material hidden in innocuous image files, and other illicit acts. Computer forensic personnel have an interest in testing for possible steganographic files, but often do not have access to the technical and financial resources required to perform steganalysis in an effective manner. This paper describes the results of a funded effort by a grant from the National …

Measuring Whitespace Patterns As An Indication Of Plagiarism, Ilana Shay, Nikolaus Baer, Robert Zeidman

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

There are several different methods of comparing source code from different programs to find copying1 . Perhaps the most common method is comparing source code statements, comments, strings, identifiers, and instruction sequences. However, there are anecdotes about the use of whitespace patterns in code. These virtually invisible patterns of spaces and tabs have been used in litigation to imply copying, but no formal study has been performed that shows that these patterns can actually identify copied code. This paper presents a detailed study of whitespace patterns and the uniqueness of these patterns in different programs.

Keywords: Copyright Infringement, Intellectual Property, …

Electronic Discovery: A Fool’S Errand Where Angels Fear To Tread?, Milton Luoma, Vicki Luoma

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Electronic discovery has transformed the discovery phase of civil litigation in recent years. The expectations of lawyers and parties were initially established in the Rowe and Zubulake cases that led to a complete revision of the electronic discovery rules contained in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Subsequent cases have underscored the importance of document search methodologies and implications for attorneys, IT professionals, and digital forensics professionals. The authors review how electronic discovery has evolved thus far and offer recommendations regarding the electronic discovery process.

Keywords: Electronic discovery, e-discovery, keyword search, concept search,

Social Networking: A Boon To Criminals, Tejashree D. Datar, Richard Mislan

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

With the world getting more and more digitized, social networking has also found a place in the cyber world. These social networking sites (SNSs) which enable people to socialize, and build and maintain relationships are attracting attention of all kinds of people such as teens, adults, sports persons, and even businesses. But these SNSs are also getting unwanted attention from people like sexual predators, spammers, and people involved in criminal and illegal activities. This paper talks about SNSs and how these sites are exploited for criminal or illegal activity. The SNSs are discussed in detail with respect to user profiles, …

Hard Disk Storage: Firmware Manipulation And Forensic Impact And Current Best Practice, Gareth Davies, Iain Sutherland

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The most common form of storage media utilized in both commercial and domestic systems is the hard disk drive, consequently these devices feature heavily in digital investigations. Hard disk drives are a collection of complex components. These components include hardware and firmware elements that are essential for the effective operation of the drive. There are now a number of devices available, intended for data recovery, which can be used to manipulate the firmware components contained within the drive. It has been previously shown that it is possible to alter firmware for malicious purposes, either to conceal information or to prevent …

Organizational Handling Of Digital Evidence, Sheona A. Hoolachan, William B. Glisson

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

There are a number of factors that impact a digital forensics investigation. These factors include: the digital media in question, implemented processes and methodologies, the legal aspects, and the individuals involved in the investigation. This paper presents the initial idea that Digital Forensic Practice (DFP) recommendations can potentially improve how organizations handle digital evidence. The recommendations are derived from an in-depth survey conducted with practitioners in both commercial organizations and law enforcement along with supporting literature. The recommendations presented in this paper can be used to assess an organization’s existing digital forensics practices and a guide to Digital Forensics Improvement …

A Framework To Integrate The Data Of Interview Investigation And Digital Evidence, Fahad Alshathry

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The physical interview process in crime investigation produces an extremely large amount of data, particularly in big cases. In comparison, examiners of digital evidence have enormous amounts of data to search through whilst looking for data relating to the investigation. However, the links between their results are limited. Whilst investigators need to refute or support their hypothesis throughout, digital evidence examiners often use search based keywords. These keywords are usually created from evidence taken from the physical investigation reports and this basic method has been found to have many shortcomings and limitations. This paper proposes a highly automatic framework to …

Developing Voip Honeypots: A Preliminary Investigation Into Malfeasant Activity, Craig Valli

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

30 years ago PABX systems were compromised by hackers wanting to make long distance calls at some other entities expense. This activity faded as telephony became cheaper and PABX systems had countermeasures installed to overcome attacks. Now the world has moved onto the provision of telephony via broadband enabled Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with this service now being provided as a replacement for conventional fixed wire telephony by major telecommunication providers worldwide. Due to increasing bandwidth it is possible for systems to support multiple voice connections simultaneously. The networked nature of the Internet allows for attackers of these VoIP …

Higate (High Grade Anti‐Tamper Equipment) Prototype And Application To E‐Discovery, Yui Sakurai, Yuki Ashino, Tetsutaro Uehara, Hiroshi Yoshiura, Ryoichi Sasaki

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

These days, most data is digitized and processed in various ways by computers. In the past, computer owners were free to process data as desired and to observe the inputted data as well as the interim results. However, the unrestricted processing of data and accessing of interim results even by computer users is associated with an increasing number of adverse events. These adverse events often occur when sensitive data such as personal or confidential business information must be handled by two or more parties, such as in the case of e-Discovery, used in legal proceedings, or epidemiologic studies. To solve …