Engineering Commons^™

Improving Grapheme-To-Phoneme Translation With The Use Of Nalu Attention Mechanisms, Brian Sheldon Smith

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, Natural Language Processing in the field of machine learning has seen some major improvements. Data scientists have shown that neural networks are capable of breaking down semantics of sentences, translating languages, and answering complex questions with fast recall. While impressive, these feats all hinge on having access to a massive amount of clean text, or data sets with almost perfect grammar and spelling. Without this, neural networks will usually fail to converge on a meaningful result. To partially this dependency, Grapheme-to-Phoneme conversion can be employed. This is the conversion of words from their spellings to a form …

A Case Study: The First Coastal Nuclear Decommissioning Project In California, Willie Aaron Quiros

Construction Management

San Onofre Nuclear Generating System (SONGS) is one of two nuclear power plants in California. Since the shut down in 2012, there is only one actively remaining, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which is set to shut down in 2024. This paper will examine the decommissioning of SONGS thus far; the first coastal nuclear decommissioning project in California’s stringent permitting process. This project was awarded as a joint venture to AECOM and Energy Solutions, both having experiencing in the field of nuclear decommissioning. This paper will outline what nuclear decommissioning challenges have been in the past; general steps of decommissioning …

Uncertainty And Error In Combat Modeling, Simulation, And Analysis, Jason A. Blake

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the infrequent and competitive nature of combat, several challenges present themselves when developing a predictive simulation. First, there is limited data with which to validate such analysis tools. Secondly, there are many aspects of combat modeling that are highly uncertain and not knowable. This research develops a comprehensive set of techniques for the treatment of uncertainty and error in combat modeling and simulation analysis. First, Evidence Theory is demonstrated as a framework for representing epistemic uncertainty in combat modeling output. Next, a novel method for sensitivity analysis of uncertainty in Evidence Theory is developed. This sensitivity analysis method …

A Systematic Approach For Automatically Answering General-Purpose Objective And Subjective Questions, Lok Prasad Acharya

Theses and Dissertations

In this era of information explosion, people generally rely on the Internet, and more precisely, the search engines to get answers to their questions. However, what a search engine can do is just retrieve documents. Given some keywords, it only returns the relevant ranked documents that contain the keywords. Although users often want a precise answer to a question, they are left to extract answers from the documents themselves. This is where Automatic Question Answering (AQA) systems come into play. An AQA system takes questions in natural language as input and searches related answers in the set of documents and …

Deep Learning Models For Visibility Forecasting, Luz Carolina Ortega Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the task of visibility forecasting via deep learning models using data from weather stations. Visibility is one of the most critical weather impacts on transportation systems. Low visibility conditions can seriously impact safety and traffic operations, leading to adverse scenarios, causing accidents, and jeopardizing transportation systems. Accurate visibility forecasting plays a key role in decision-making and management of transportation systems. However, due to the complexity and variability of weather variables, visibility forecasting remains a highly challenging task and a matter of significant interest for transportation agencies nationwide. This dissertation explores the use of deep learning models for …

Effects Of Musical Ability On Flight Planning, Situational Awareness, And Flight Path Deviations, Andrew P. Henry

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Numerous studies have been conducted on music education and the benefits that learning an instrument has on the brain. However, there is little research that connects a pilot’s ability to play an instrument to a pilot’s ability to fly an airplane. When learning an instrument, students learn non-musical abilities, such as executive functions, which may correspond with the skills necessary to be a good pilot. The purpose of this study was to find a relationship between learning a musical instrument and pilot performance, specifically related to flight planning, situational awareness, and flight path deviations. This study was a quasi-experimental design …

Optimizing Block-Stacking Operations With Relocation, Hueon Lee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The focus of the dissertation is developing the optimization problem of finding the minimum-cost operational plan of block stacking with relocation as well as devising a solution procedure to solve practical-sized instances of the problem. Assuming changeable row depth instead of permanent row depth, this research is distinguished from conventional block stacking studies.

The first contribution of the dissertation is the development of the optimization problem under the assumption of deterministic demand. The problem is modeled using integer programming as a variation of the unsplittable multi-commodity flow problem. To find a good feasible solution of practical-sized instances in reasonable time, …

Contributions Of Role-Playing Games: Advantages Of Incorporating Social Media In Disaster Response, Erin Mullin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After a disaster, emergency managers need to know who needs help, what type of help they need, and how soon they need it. Traditionally, they have relied on 911 calls and ground assessments to collect this information. Because the needs of a population are not able to be identified in a timely manner by ground assessments and because individuals are often unable to get through to 911, many civilians in distress turn to social media outlets as a last-ditch effort to obtain the services they need. Due to the uncertainty concerning the accuracy of social media posts, responding to disaster …

Evaluating The Resiliency Of Industrial Internet Of Things Process Control Using Protocol Agnostic Attacks, Hector L. Roldan

Theses and Dissertations

Improving and defending our nation's critical infrastructure has been a challenge for quite some time. A malfunctioning or stoppage of any one of these systems could result in hazardous conditions on its supporting populace leading to widespread damage, injury, and even death. The protection of such systems has been mandated by the Office of the President of the United States of America in Presidential Policy Directive Order 21. Current research now focuses on securing and improving the management and efficiency of Industrial Control Systems (ICS). IIoT promises a solution in enhancement of efficiency in ICS. However, the presence of IIoT …

Hedge Fund Replication Using Strategy Specific Factors, Sujit Subhash, David Lee Enke

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Hedge funds have traditionally served wealthy individuals and institutional investors with the promise of delivering protection of capital and uncorrelated positive returns irrespective of market direction, allowing them to better manage portfolio risk. However, the financial crisis of 2008 has heightened investor sensitivity to the high fees, illiquidity, lack of transparency, and lockup periods typically associated with hedge funds. Hedge fund replication products, or clones, seek to answer these challenges by providing daily liquidity, transparency, and immediate exposure to a desired hedge fund strategy. Nonetheless, although lowering cost and adding simplicity by using a common set of factors, traditional replication …

Predicting The Daily Return Direction Of The Stock Market Using Hybrid Machine Learning Algorithms, X. Zhong, David Lee Enke

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Big data analytic techniques associated with machine learning algorithms are playing an increasingly important role in various application fields, including stock market investment. However, few studies have focused on forecasting daily stock market returns, especially when using powerful machine learning techniques, such as deep neural networks (DNNs), to perform the analyses. DNNs employ various deep learning algorithms based on the combination of network structure, activation function, and model parameters, with their performance depending on the format of the data representation. This paper presents a comprehensive big data analytics process to predict the daily return direction of the SPDR S&P 500 …

Better Beware: Comparing Metacognition For Phishing And Legitimate Emails, Casey I. Canfield, Baruch Fischhoff, Alex Davis

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Every electronic message poses some threat of being a phishing attack. If recipients underestimate that threat, they expose themselves, and those connected to them, to identity theft, ransom, malware, or worse. If recipients overestimate that threat, then they incur needless costs, perhaps reducing their willingness and ability to respond over time. In two experiments, we examined the appropriateness of individuals' confidence in their judgments of whether email messages were legitimate or phishing, using calibration and resolution as metacognition metrics. Both experiments found that participants had reasonable calibration but poor resolution, reflecting a weak correlation between their confidence and knowledge. These …

Assessing The Repeatability Of Clinical Tests In People With And Without Flexion-Induced Neck Pain, Ashton Human

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accessibility of mobile technology has improved productivity but can contribute to musculoskeletal disorders due to the posture associated with using such devices. Neck flexion, a posture assumed by smartphone users, has been shown as a risk factor for the development of clinical neck pain if sustained for prolonged periods. Determining the individuals who are naturally more predisposed to develop flexion-induced neck pain can aid in the prevention and treatment of musculoskeletal disorders. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the repeatability of clinical tests between trials over the course of two days in young adults who do and …

A Mathematical Programming Model For The Green Mixed Fleet Vehicle Routing Problem With Realistic Energy Consumption And Partial Recharges, Vincent F. Yu, Panca Jodiwan, Aldy Gunawan, Audrey Tedja Widjaja

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A green mixed fleet vehicle routing with realistic energy consumption and partial recharges problem (GMFVRP-REC-PR) is addressed in this paper. This problem involves a fixed number of electric vehicles and internal combustion vehicles to serve a set of customers. The realistic energy consumption which depends on several variables is utilized to calculate the electricity consumption of an electric vehicle and fuel consumption of an internal combustion vehicle. Partial recharging policy is included into the problem to represent the real life scenario. The objective of this problem is to minimize the total travelled distance and the total emission produced by internal …

An Agent Based Model Of Passenger Boarding For Examining Commercial Aircraft Boarding Strategies, Frank W. Ciarallo, Raymond R. Hill, Kerry K. Ward

Faculty Publications

We use an agent-based simulation methodology to study airline passenger boarding using measures that reflect both the customer experience and airline efficiency perspective. This approach supports exploration of models of actual aircraft used in practice and detailed modeling of passenger dynamics. This paper discusses the modeling approach and a set of experiments comparing several boarding strategies from practical settings as well as the literature.

Deep Brain Stimulation: Prediction Model For Volume Of Tissue Stimulated, Melissa Jones, Tarun Goswami

Biomedical, Industrial & Human Factors Engineering Faculty Publications

An attempt has been made to understand deep brain stimulation in humans via marketable devices that are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The electrode characteristics were presented to influence the volume of tissue stimulated. Experimental data were digitized and VTS data were presented a function of electrode diameter, aspect ratio, applied current, pulse duration, voltage and frequency. Amongst other trends voltage and VTS were found to exhibit a three-stage relation, where Stage II characteristics were represented by a linear equation. It is in this stage, the VTS was found to be stable and where the most effective …

Robust And Self-Synchronous Steganography For Voice-Over-Ip Based On Ldpc Codes, Zhanzhan Gao, Guangming Tang, Haitao Song

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: VoIP (Voice over IP) is a kind of voice communication technology based on UDP/IP protocols, so packet loss will inevitably happen when the channel environment deteriorates. Besides that, stego VoIP data flows are real-time and have no head or tail, which pose more challenges to accurately extract the secret messages. This paper proposes a robust and self-synchronous VoIP steganography method, which solves the above two problems under the premise of maintaining good imperceptibility. In this method, low density parity check (LDPC) codes are introduced to preprocess the secret data, and the encoded data are embedded into voice …

No-Collision Curling Trajectory Simulation System, Tian Yu, Xu Ming

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In just a few decades, China’s curling accomplished splendid work. But it’s scientific research falling behind a lot. Applying computer simulation technology in sports training can effectively help the athletes to understand the problems that exist in the training. When curling stone slides on the ice, it can be regarded as two-dimensional motion of rigid body, which can be decomposed into two parts: translation of the center of mass and rotation of a fixed axis around the center of mass. Using computer simulation technology to simulate the curling trajectory, and with the help of this system, the athletes can …

Ground Coverage Stitching Simulation Algorithm For Remote Sensing Satellite, Shuhao Liu, Wang Tong, Zhang Yue

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Ground coverage stitching is the base of remote sensing satellite mission simulation. A coverage stitching simulation algorithm is proposed, considering big time step and attitude maneuver simulation. Transient coverage region is computed by light of view intersection and tangent searching methods. Transient coverage boundaries of different simulation times are stitched by two-dimension convex hull algorithm. Between points of the stitched region polygon edges, new vertexes are interpolated. With the method proposed, limb coverage problem and coverage fusion when time step is large can be solved. Computer simulation results show that the algorithm achieves a fine accuracy and …

Locally Weighted Learning Control For Dynamic Restricted Manipulators, Wang Gang, Tairen Sun, Shengpei Ding

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: This paper proposes a locally weighted learning control law for a manipulator with state and input constraints and modeling uncertainties. By visualizing the control input as an extended state, the control problem is converted into control design for a state-constraint uncertain nonlinear system. Barrier Lyapunov functions are introduced into a backstepping procedure and a locally weighted learning control is designed, which ensures the exponential convergence of the barrier functions to a small neighborhood of zero and then guarantees satisfaction of system constraints and the tracking error convergence. The control feasibility and effectiveness is validated by theoretical analysis and …

Simulation Analysis Of Vehicle Electromagnetic Environment Under Excitation Of Vhf Antenna, Xiaoying Sun, Hanqing Wang, Jinpeng Yang, Zhao Yu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Aiming at the issue of distribution regularity of field strength in vehicle cab under excitation of vehicle-borne high-power VHF antenna, a method of numerical simulation combining with extreme value theory to predict maximum field strength is proposed, which minimizes sample collecting difficulty and fitting deviation. CST simulation software is applied to get field strength sample in vehicle cab, and generalized extreme value (GEV) is used to fitting entire field strength distribution. peak over threshold (POT) model based on Generalized Pareto distribution is used to research high field strength value sample statistical characteristics. Resultsshow that under antenna excitation of 92.5 …

Ti-A* Based Multi-Robot Dynamic Planning And Coordination Method, Zhao Ping, Xinyu Lei, Bozhi Chen, Jiaoyun Yang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Multiple robots path planning problem in dynamic environment is one of the significant and basic problems of cluster robot perception and coordination. The planning problem is decomposed into two modules: the path planning and the conflict coordination. By introducing time-cost function, the Time Integrated A* algorithm (TI-A*) is introduced. Variable speed is employed simultaneously to coordinate the motion and hereby to avoid the deadlock and conflict. By adjusting the timing when the coordination phase is involved, two different coordination TI-A* algorithms are presented, including the speed-changing algorithm and path-changing algorithm. The two algorithms are compared and the respective …

Travel Time Reliability Of Inside Area Of Roundabouts, Yuzhou Duan, Tingting Chai, Jian Jie

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Based on the travel time reliability, this paper analyzes the traffic states in the inside area of the roundabout. The travel time reliability model is established from three aspects: route path, entrance and system, and the practicability of the model is verified by the VISSIM simulation. On this basis, the correlation analysis is made on between the adjacent paths of the same entrance and adjacent paths of the adjacent entrances, and the fitting equations are obtained. Taking the number of lanes, traffic volumes, proportion of left-turns and the rate of heavy vehicles as variables, a sensitivity analysis …

Integrated Simulation Optimization Of Hard Shoulder Running Combined With Speed Harmonization, Ruimin Li, Ye Zhen, Bin Li

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: We have a study on hard shoulder running (HSR) combined with speed harmonization. The breakdown events were screened out during the study period from massive detector data. The impact of hard shoulder volume on breakdown probabilities was analyzed. The nonparametric breakdown probabilities distribution model and logistic regression model were put forward based on highway mainline traffic volume, hard shoulder volume and ramp volume from the study case which was divided into three factors-basic segment, on-ramp merging segment and off-ramp diverging segment. The speed harmonization and HSR were optimized through reducing the traffic breakdown probabilities of a congested traffic network. …

Dynamic Interference Detection Algorithm For Bearing With Scar, Jinyuan Jia, Naihao Zheng

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To solve the dynamic interference detection problem of scar bearing in visual assembly, an efficient dynamic interference inspection algorithm for scar bearing is proposed. The first step is to perform vertex management on the 3D reconstructed scar bearing model through the quad-tree; the second step is to select the appropriate algorithm for the calculation of the maximum interference distance by considering bearing shape and its motion characteristics. The research shows that the algorithm can quickly and efficiently test the dynamic interference and calculate the interference distance for the bearing with scar, which can effectively improve the efficiency of bearing …

Optimal Compensation Control Strategy For Four-Axle Vehicle With All-Wheel Steering System, Baohua Wang, Yu Chao

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Aiming at the problem of poor stability of traditional multi-axle commercial vehicles, an optimal control strategy for multi-axle steering wheel is proposed. Through the establishment of the four-axis vehicle model, the wheel angle proportional feed-forward control algorithm and the yaw rate feedback control algorithm are studied. The optimal compensating control algorithm of the wheel angle proportional feed-forward and yaw rate feedback is proposed, and the control strategy is also verified through joint simulation. The results show that the full-wheel steering optimal compensation control strategy can keep the center-of-mass skew angle close to zero at all vehicle speeds, …

Simulation Estimation On Directional Green-Wave Traffic Control In Nanning City, Yiman Du, Hongfan Su, Chen Yu, Longfei Liu, Jianping Wu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Due to the noticeable development of Nanning city, traffic congestion has become a serious problem, especially during the peak hours along the Binhu road. The development of Nanning city is restricted by the imbalance distribution of traffic flow. In order to ease the overload burden of traffic along the Binhu road during the peak hours, the current problems are analyzed and some solutions with directional green-wave traffic control are proposed. Traffic microscopic simulation software is used to estimate the improvement between before and after implementations of the solutions.

Novel Star Map Identification Algorithm Using Improved Radial Features, Junyang Zhao, Zhili Zhang, Dianjian Liu, Zhaofa Zhou, Zhenjun Chang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In order to improve the star map identification efficiency and insure the identification veracity, the radial feature is ameliorated by cyclic feature, and a new star map identification method based on the ameliorative radial feature matching is proposed. The star map data are processed according to quadrant order to establish the database of new radial feature. The radial feature matching between the observation stars in the matching star map and the reference star in the feature database is carried out in the order of circumferential quadrant. The star with the largest count in the star database is the final …

Study On The Matching Mediation Method Between Virtual Maintenance Personnel And Work Steps, Yunrong Zhang, Zhili Zhang, Xiangyang Li, Weichang Xu, Kuixia Han, Li Liang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Aiming at the problem that each maintenance worker cannot play a full role in dealing with the concurrent conflict of maintenance steps, this paper puts forward a matching mechanism between maintenance steps and maintenance workers according to the level of authority, expounds the status information of maintenance workers, divides the difficulty level of maintenance steps, and gives the matching process between maintenance workers and maintenance steps. The matching process is modeled and simulated by using colored Petri nets and CPN tools. The simulation results show that the matching mechanism can solve the problem that the role of …

Two-Machine Co-Simulation Based On Mobile Augmented Reality, Zhili Zhang, Wang Chao, Long Yong, Shaodi Wang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Aiming at the problems that virtual training system was not convenient and was only performed in a single operation at present, a dual-machine collaborative system based on mobile augmented reality was designed. A portable augmented reality system was developed on the Unity3D platform with Tango technology. The photon server and LAN architecture were built on the basis. The client was built on the mobile platform of Lenovo PHAB2 Pro, and the co-simulation on dual-machine was implemented. Resultof the simulation proved the feasibility of combining augmented reality with photon server, and provided a set of practical development solutions for …