Engineering Commons^™

Human Intention Recognition Based Assisted Telerobotic Grasping Of Objects In An Unstructured Environment, Karan Hariharan Khokar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation work, a methodology is proposed to enable a robot to identify an object to be grasped and its intended grasp configuration while a human is teleoperating a robot towards the desired object. Based on the detected object and grasp configuration, the human is assisted in the teleoperation task. The environment is unstructured and consists of a number of objects, each with various possible grasp configurations. The identification of the object and the grasp configuration is carried out in real time, by recognizing the intention of the human motion. Simultaneously, the human user is assisted to preshape over …

Automated Color Calibration Of Display Devices, Andrew Shulman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

If you compare two identical images on two different monitors, they will likely appear different. Every display device is supposed to adhere to a particular set of standards regulating the color and intensity of the image it outputs. However, in practice, very few do. Color calibration is the practice of modifying the signal path such that the colors produced more closely match reference standards. This is essential for graphics professionals who are mastering original content. They must ensure that the source material appears correct when viewed on a reference monitor. When viewed on a consumer panel, however, some error will …

Coupling Numerical Simulation And Pattern Recognition To Model Production And Evaluate Carbon Dioxide Injection In Shale Gas Reservoir, Amirmasoud Kalantari-Dahaghi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Massive multi-cluster, multi-stage hydraulic fractures have significantly increased the complexity of the flow behavior in shale. This has translated into multiple challenges in the modeling of production from shale wells.

Most commonly used numerical techniques for modeling production from shale wells are Explicit Hydraulic Fracture (EHF) and Stimulated Reservoir Volume (SRV). Model setup for the EHF technique is long and laborious and its implementation is computationally expensive, such that it becomes impractical to model beyond a single pad. On the other hand, identifying the extent and conductivity of SRV is a challenging proposition. SRV technique is commonly used to simplify …

Adaptive Event-Triggered Control Of A Uncertain Linear Discrete Time System Using Measured Input And Output Data, Avimanyu Sahoo, Hao Xu, S. Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, an adaptive model-based event-triggered control of an uncertain linear discrete time system is developed. Measured input and output vectors and their history are utilized to express the unknown linear discrete-time system as an autoregressive Markov representation (ARMarkov). A novel adaptive model in the form of AR Markov is proposed and an update law is derived in order to estimate parameters of the ARMarkov model at triggered instants unlike periodic updates in standard adaptive control. Lyapunov method is used to derive the event trigger condition, prove boundedness of the parameter vector and asymptotic convergence of the outputs and …

Neural Network-Based Optimal Control Of Mobile Robot Formations With Reduced Information Exchange, Travis Dierks, Bryan Brenner, S. Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A novel formation control scheme for mobile robots is introduced in the context of leader-follower framework with reduced communication exchange. The dynamical controller inputs for the robots are approximated from nonlinear optimal control techniques in order to track the designed control velocities generated by the kinematic controller. The proposed nonlinear optimal control technique, referred to as adaptive dynamic programming, uses neural networks (NNs) to solve the optimal formation control problem in discrete time in the presence of unknown internal dynamics and a known control coefficient matrix. A modification to the follower's kinematic controller is used to allow the desired formation …

Accelerated Data Delivery Architecture, Michael L. Grecol

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This paper introduces the Accelerated Data Delivery Architecture (ADDA). ADDA establishes a framework to distribute transactional data and control consistency to achieve fast access to data, distributed scalability and non-blocking concurrency control by using a clean declarative interface. It is designed to be used with web-based business applications. This framework uses a combination of traditional Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) combined with a distributed Not Only SQL (NoSQL) database and a browser-based database. It uses a single physical and conceptual database schema designed for a standard RDBMS driven application. The design allows the architect to assign consistency levels to entities …

Automated Parameter Tuning Framework For Heterogeneous And Large Instances: Case Study In Quadratic Assignment Problem, Linda Lindawati, Zhi Yuan, Hoong Chuin Lau, Feida Zhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper is concerned with automated tuning of parameters of algorithms to handle heterogeneous and large instances. We propose an automated parameter tuning framework with the capability to provide instance-specific parameter configurations. We report preliminary results on the Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) and show that our framework provides a significant improvement on solutions qualities with much smaller tuning computational time.

A Method For Identifying Personalized Representations In Web Archives, Mat Kelly, Justin F. Brunelle, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Web resources are becoming increasingly personalized — two different users clicking on the same link at the same time can see content customized for each individual user. These changes result in multiple representations of a resource that cannot be canonicalized in Web archives. We identify characteristics of this problem by presenting a potential solution to generalize personalized representations in archives. We also present our proof-of-concept prototype that analyzes WARC (Web ARChive) format files, inserts metadata establishing relationships, and provides archive users the ability to navigate on the additional dimension of environment variables in a modified Wayback Machine.

A Case Study Towards Verification Of The Utility Of Analytical Models In Selecting Checkpoint Intervals, Michael Joseph Harney

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As high performance computing (HPC) systems grow larger, with increasing numbers of components, failures become more common. Codes that utilize large numbers of nodes and run for long periods of time must take such failures into account and adopt fault tolerance mechanisms to avoid loss of computation and, thus, system utilization. One of those mechanisms is checkpoint/restart. Although analytical models exist to guide users in the selection of an appropriate checkpoint interval, these models are based on assumptions that may not always be true. This thesis examines some of these assumptions, in particular, the consistency of parameters like Mean Time …

Efficient, Scalable, Parallel, Matrix-Matrix Multiplication, Enrique Portillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

For the past decade, power/energy consumption has become a limiting factor for large-scale and embedded High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. This is especially true for systems that include accelerators, e.g., high-end computing devices, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), with terascale computing capabilities and high power draws that greatly surpass that of multi-core CPUs. Accordingly, improving the node-level power/energy efficiency of an application can have a direct and positive impact on both classes of HPC systems.

The research reported in this thesis explores the use of software techniques to enhance the execution-time and power-consumption performance of applications executed on a …

Model Fusion: A New Approach To Processing Heterogeneous Data, Omar Ochoa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In many practical situations, it is necessary to extract

information from data of different types. For example, in geosciences, several sources of data can be used to determine the interior structure of the earth: the first arriving waves from earthquakes and from man-made sources, measurements of the earth's gravity field, measurements of the dispersion of surface waves generated by earthquakes, etc. At present, most existing data processing techniques deal only with data of one type.

A joint use of all the information derived from multiple types of data sources is an important theoretical and practical challenge. Such a joint use …

A Matlab Primer In Four Hours With Practical Examples, Jerome Casey

Instructional Guides

No abstract provided.

Electronic Device, Display And Touch-Sensitive User Interface (Dec 2012), Michael E. Miller, Jerald J. Muszak, Michael J. Telek

AFIT Patents

Display devices and methods for operating the same are provided. In one embodiment, the display device has an electronic display having an active area for presenting visual content; a housing holding the electronic display and having an opening allowing a person to view a first portion of the active area; and a bezel about the opening, the bezel covering a second portion of the active area and providing a window through which at least a part of the second portion can be viewed. A sensor system senses when a person is close to touching the bezel or when a person …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2012, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Senior Design Experience

Part of every UNLV engineering student's academic experience, the Senior Design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. Working in teams, the senior design project encourages students to use everything learned in the engineering and computer design programs to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

Beyond the classroom ...

Because of the requirement to work in teams, students also build good communication skills, presentation skills and even business writing skills. They also have to …

Online Optimal Control Of Affine Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems With Unknown Internal Dynamics By Using Time-Based Policy Update, Travis Dierks, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation is solved forward-in-time for the optimal control of a class of general affine nonlinear discrete-time systems without using value and policy iterations. the proposed approach, referred to as adaptive dynamic programming, uses two neural networks (NNs), to solve the infinite horizon optimal regulation control of affine nonlinear discrete-time systems in the presence of unknown internal dynamics and a known control coefficient matrix. One NN approximates the cost function and is referred to as the critic NN, while the second NN generates the control input and is referred to as the action NN. the cost …

Video Compressive Sensing With 3-D Wavelet And 3-D Noiselet, Dao Lam, Donald C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new compressive video sampling method is investigated. as opposed to other video sampling methods for which processing is conducted on a single-frame basis, this method is applied on multiple frames of the video stream. by exploiting the extension of Wavelet to 3-D with the support of Noiselet 3-D and combining it with fast reconstruction algorithms, this framework produces successful results quickly while maintaining the quality of the video stream. Despite its simplicity, this new approach outperforms other sophisticated methods. © 2012 IEEE.

A Cross Layer Approach To The Novel Distributed Scheduling Protocol And Event-Triggered Controller Design For Cyber Physical Systems, Hao Xu, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), multiple real-time dynamic systems are connected to their corresponding controllers through a shared communication network in contrast with a dedicated line. for such CPS, the existing scheduling schemes for instance Centralized or Distributed Scheduling schemes are unsuitable since the behavior of real-time dynamic systems is ignored during the network protocol design. Therefore, in this paper, a novel distributed scheduling protocol design via cross-layer approach is proposed to optimize the performance of CPS by maximizing the utility function which is generated by using the information collected from both the application and network layers. Subsequently, a novel …

Hardware-Software Co-Design, Acceleration And Prototyping Of Control Algorithms On Reconfigurable Platforms, Desta Kumsa Edosa

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Differential equations play a significant role in many disciplines of science and engineering. Solving and implementing Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) and partial Differential Equations (PDEs) effectively are very essential as most complex dynamic systems are modeled based on these equations. High Performance Computing (HPC) methodologies are required to compute and implement complex and data intensive applications modeled by differential equations at higher speed. There are, however, some challenges and limitations in implementing dynamic system, modeled by non-linear ordinary differential equations, on digital hardware. Modeling an integrator involves data approximation which results in accuracy error if data values are not considered …

Post Processing Of Optically Recognized Text Using First Order Hidden Markov Model, Spandana Malreddy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we report on our design and implementation of a post processing system for Optically Recognized text. The system is based on first order Hidden Markov Model (HMM). The Maximum Likelihood algorithm is used to train the system with over 150 thousand characters. The system is also tested on a file containing 5688 characters. The percentage of errors detected and corrected is 11.76% with a recall of 10.16% and precision of 100%

Lagrangian Relaxation For Large-Scale Multi-Agent Planning, Geoffrey J. Gordon, Pradeep Varakantham, William Yeoh, Hoong Chuin Lau, Ajay S. Aravamudhan, Shih-Fen Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multi-agent planning is a well-studied problem with various applications including disaster rescue, urban transportation and logistics, both for autonomous agents and for decision support to humans. Due to computational constraints, existing research typically focuses on one of two scenarios: unstructured domains with many agents where we are content with heuristic solutions, or domains with small numbers of agents or special structure where we can provide provably near-optimal solutions. By contrast, in this paper, we focus on providing provably near-optimal solutions for domains with large numbers of agents, by exploiting a common domain-general property: if individual agents each have limited influence …

Knowledge-Driven Autonomous Commodity Trading Advisor, Yee Pin Lim, Shih-Fen Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The myth that financial trading is an art has been mostly destroyed in the recent decade due to the proliferation of algorithmic trading. In equity markets, algorithmic trading has already bypass human traders in terms of traded volume. This trend seems to be irreversible, and other asset classes are also quickly becoming dominated by the machine traders. However, for asset that requires deeper understanding of physicality, like the trading of commodities, human traders still have significant edge over machines. The primary advantage of human traders in such market is the qualitative expert knowledge that requires traders to consider not just …

Lagrangian Relaxation For Large-Scale Multi-Agent Planning, Geoff Gordon, Pradeep Varakantham, William Yeoh, Hoong Chuin Lau, Shih-Fen Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multi-agent planning is a well-studied problem with various applications including disaster rescue, urban transportation and logistics, both for autonomous agents and for decision support to humans. Due to computational constraints, existing research typically focuses on one of two scenarios: unstructured domains with many agents where we are content with heuristic solutions, or domains with small numbers of agents or special structure where we can provide provably near-optimal solutions. By contrast, in this paper, we focus on providing provably near-optimal solutions for domains with large numbers of agents, by exploiting a common domain-general property: if individual agents each have limited influence …

A Mechanism For Organizing Last-Mile Service Using Non-Dedicated Fleet, Shih-Fen Cheng, Duc Thien Nguyen, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Unprecedented pace of urbanization and rising income levels have fueled the growth of car ownership in almost all newly formed megacities. Such growth has congested the limited road space and significantly affected the quality of life in these megacities. Convincing residents to give up their cars and use public transport is the most effective way in reducing congestion; however, even with sufficient public transport capacity, the lack of last-mile (from the transport hub to the destination) travel services is the major deterrent for the adoption of public transport. Due to the dynamic nature of such travel demands, fixed-size fleets will …

Communications And Energy-Harvesting In Nanosensor Networks, Michele C. Weigle

Computer Science Presentations

PDF of a powerpoint presentation from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Workshop on Biological Computations and Communications in Boston, Massachusetts, November 9, 2012. Also available on Slideshare.

Action Disambiguation Analysis Using Normalized Google-Like Distance Correlogram, Qianru Sun, Hong Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Classifying realistic human actions in video remains challenging for existing intro-variability and inter-ambiguity in action classes. Recently, Spatial-Temporal Interest Point (STIP) based local features have shown great promise in complex action analysis. However, these methods have the limitation that they typically focus on Bag-of-Words (BoW) algorithm, which can hardly discriminate actions’ ambiguity due to ignoring of spatial-temporal occurrence relations of visual words. In this paper, we propose a new model to capture this contextual relationship in terms of pairwise features’ co-occurrence. Normalized Google-Like Distance (NGLD) is proposed to numerically measuring this co-occurrence, due to its effectiveness in semantic correlation analysis. …

Model Based Diagnostics And Prognostics Of Three-Phase Induction Motor For Vapor Compressor Applications, Raja Sekhar Kraleti, Maciej Jan Zawodniok, Sarangapani Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this work, a novel scheme for detection and prediction of multiple simultaneous faults in a three-phase induction motor in the context of vapor compression applications is presented. Induction motors used in vapor compression systems operate under variable speed conditions with variable frequencies. Such dynamic operating conditions may cause an occurrence of multiple, simultaneous faults including insulation degradation and a rotor bar breakage. These faults, when left undetected, lead to the failure of the motor and the entire vapor compression system. Hence, a condition monitoring of induction motors is essential. Conventional fault detection methods have various drawbacks including high implementation …

Mechatronics And Mechatronics Management, Peter Kopacek

UBT International Conference

Mechatronics bringing together a number of technologies mechanical engineering, control engineering, electrical engineering, electronic engineering,computer technology. Mechatronics as an umbrella integrates areas of technology like measurement systems and sensors, actuation systems and drives, systems behavior, control, and microprocessor systems. Education in Mechatronics is highly interdisplinary. Graduates with a BSc or MSc degree in Mechatronics get usually higher or medium management positions in Industry requiring some knowledge in management. Therefore an education program ―Mechatronics Management‖ was developed by an international consortium and implemented at UBT in Prishtina

Dynamic Modeling And Analysis Of Propulsion Effect Of 3 Dof Robot, Ahmet Shala, Xhevahir Bajrami

UBT International Conference

Dynamical Modeling of robots is commonly first important step of Modeling, Analysis and Control of robotic systems. This paper is focused on using Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) convention for kinematics and Newton-Euler Formulations for dynamic modeling of 3 DoF - Degree of Freedom of 3D robot. The process of deriving of dynamical model is done using Software Maple. Simulations are done using Matlab/Simulink for analysis of propulsion effect under Earth gravity when First Link rotates with 1000 rpm, second Link can move free in vertical direction and Third Link can rotates free around their rotations axle. Simulations results shows very good propulsion …

Material Balance Adjustement In Raw Material Processing, Migena Hoxha, Piro Zoga, Aida Bode

UBT International Conference

Circuit of one processing plant was studied in order to adjust the mass balance. The granulometric composition of the streams that belong to grinding and classifying processes was analysed, while the chemical content was determined only at the streams related to separation process. Three connection matrixes are considered in this paper, one corresponding to the size fraction equations, the second corresponding to the chemical content measurements and the third, the solid flow rate balance. The technique used consisted of filtering all the data by a weighted least-squares procedure. Then running the output data in a custom designed feature of the …

Nanotechnology And His Effects In Medicine, Hatixhe Bilibashi

UBT International Conference

Nanotechnology is a great revolution in the field of information technology that has effects on almost every aspect of the human society nowadays. It is one of the technologies with huge potentials in many directions. Nanotechnology can be defined as the manipulation, precision-placement, modeling and manufacture of material at the nanometer scale (One meter consists of 1 billion nanometers) ( 10〗^(-9) of a meter). ).Therefore nanotechnology can help save the lives of many people. Main fields in medicine where nanotechnology can be found are the control and prevention of cancer, diagnostication of the drug dependance, diagnostication of the diabet es, …