Engineering Commons^™

Design And Design Centers In Engineering Education, Clive L. Dym

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

This paper is intended to be the opening salvo of the workshop, Computing Futures in Engineering Design (Dym, 1997). Thus, I want to take this privileged moment to ask you to think with me about the role of design in engineering. In particular, I want to reflect upon how design is articulated and how design is taught; about the role of design in engineering education and in the practice of engineering; and about the role that could be played locally and, perhaps, nationally by a center devoted to design education. Because I teach here at Harvey Mudd College (HMC), …

Simulation Study Of Learning Automata Games In Automated Highway Systems, Cem Unsal, Pushkin Kachroo, John S. Bay

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

One of the most important issues in Automated Highway System (AHS) deployment is intelligent vehicle control. While the technology to safely maneuver vehicles exists, the problem of making intelligent decisions to improve a single vehicle’s travel time and safety while optimizing the overall traffic flow is still a stumbling block. We propose an artificial intelligence technique called stochastic learning automata to design an intelligent vehicle path controller. Using the information obtained by on-board sensors and local communication modules, two automata are capable of learning the best possible (lateral and longitudinal) actions to avoid collisions. This learning method is capable of …

Hardware Implementation Of The Complex Hopfield Neural Network, Chih Kang Cheng

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Automated Manpower Rostering: Techniques And Experience, C. M. Khoong, Hoong Chuin Lau, L. W. Chew

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present ROMAN, a comprehensive, generic manpower rostering toolkit that successfully handles a wide spectrum of work policies found in service organizations. We review the use of various techniques and methodologies in the toolkit that contribute to its robustness and efficiency, and relate experience gained in addressing manpower rostering problems in industry.

Detection And Location Of Pipe Damage By Artificial-Neural-Netprocessed Moire Error Maps, Barry G. Grossman, Frank S. Gonzalez, Joel H. Blatt, Scott Christian Cahall

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

A novel automated inspection technique to recognize, locate, and quantify damage is developed. This technique is based on two already existing technologies: video moire metrology and artificial neural networks. Contour maps generated by video moire techniques provide an accurate description of surface structure that can then be automated by means of neutral networks. Artificial neural networks offer an attractive solution to the automated interpretation problem because they can generalize from the learned samples and provide an intelligent response for similar patterns having missing or noisy data. Two dimensional video moire images of pipes with dents of different depths, at several …

An Intelligent Real-Time System Architecture Implemented In Ada, Michael A. Whelan

Theses and Dissertations

Conventional real-time systems are fully deterministic allowing for off-line, optimal, task scheduling under all circumstances. Real-time intelligent systems add non-deterministic task execution times and non- deterministic task sets for scheduling purposes. Non-deterministic task sets force intelligent real-time systems to trade-off execution time with solution quality during run-time and perform dynamic task scheduling. Four basic design considerations addressing those tradeoffs have been identified: control reasoning, focus of attention, parallelism, and algorithm efficacy. Non-real- time intelligent systems contain an environment sensor, a model of the environment, a reasoning process, and a large collection of procedural processes. Real-time intelligent systems add to these …

Uses And Applications Of Artificial Intelligence In Manufacturing, Manojkumar H. Desai

Theses

The purpose of the THESIS is to provide engineers and personnels with a overview of the concepts that underline Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. Artificial Intelligence is concerned with the developments of theories and techniques required to provide a computational engine with the abilities to perceive, think and act, in an intelligent manner in a complex environment.

Expert system is branch of Artificial Intelligence where the methods of reasoning emulate those of human experts. Artificial Intelligence derives it's power from its ability to represent complex forms of knowledge, some of it common sense, heuristic and symbolic, and the ability to …

Design Of An Artificial Neural Network Based Tactile Sensor For The Utah/Mit Dexterous Hand, Jeffery D. Nering

Theses and Dissertations

The Neural Tactile Sensor (NTS) is a high resolution, easily manufactured tactile sensor consisting of electrodes, a thin resistive 'skin', and pattern recognition circuitry that is capable of resolving dynamic and static contact location, force, and slip throughout the continuum of the sensor's active region. The sensor operates by means of a resistive 'skin' harboring the electric field generated when a current is injected into it, and a plurality of electrodes for taking measurements of said electric field. When current flows through the resistive medium from the location of tactile contact, an electric field within the resistive medium is established, …

Hardware-Verification Through Logic Extraction, Michael A. Dukes

Theses and Dissertations

A Prolog-based system is described which employs logic-extraction to perform hardware-verification. The extraction rules are built automatically from hierarchical structural VHDL models, enabling the equivalence of a structural VHDL description and a layout specification to be verified. Pin-to-pin critical- path analysis is performed within the logic-extraction process; many noncritical paths are pruned early, making pin-to-pin critical path analysis of large circuits feasible. It is demonstrated that a design methodology based on logic extraction, VHDL, and a layout tool can provide a fabricated functionally- correct IC design without circuit-level or switch-level simulation. This methodology is shown to be practical for VLSI …

Boolean Reasoning And Informed Search In The Minimization Of Logic Circuits, James J. Kainec

Theses and Dissertations

The minimization of logic circuits has been an important area of research for more than a half century. The approaches taken in this field, however, have for the most part been ad hoc. Boolean techniques have been employed to manipulate formulas, but not to perform symbolic reasoning. Boolean equations are employed principally as icons; they are never solved. The first objective of this dissertation is to apply Boolean reasoning systematically and uniformly to the minimization problem. Boolean reasoning entails the reduction of systems of Boolean equations to a single equation; the single equation is an abstraction, independent of the form …

Knowledge-Based Support For Management Of Concurrent, Multidisciplinary Design, Raymond E. Levitt, Yan Jin, Clive L. Dym

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications to design have tended to focus on modeling and automating aspects of single discipline design tasks. Relatively little attention has thus far been devoted to representing the kinds of design 'metaknowledge' needed to manage the important interface issues that arise in concurrent design, that is, multidisciplinary design decision-making. This paper provides a view of the process and management of concurrent design and evaluates the potential of two AI approaches—blackboard architectures and co-operative distributed problem-solving (CDPS)—to model and support the concurrent design of complex artifacts. A discussion of the process of multidisciplinary design highlights elements of both …

Characterization Of Multilayer Perceptrons And Their Application To Multisensor Automatic Target Detection, Dennis W. Ruck

Theses and Dissertations

The multilayer perceptron was extensively analyzed. A technique for analyzing the multilayer perceptron, the saliency measure, was developed which provides a measure of the importance of inputs. The method was compared to the conventional statistical technique of best features and shown to provide similar rankings of the input. Using the saliency measure, it is shown that the multilayer perceptron effectively ignores useless inputs and that whether it is trained using backpropagation or extended Kalman filtering, the weighting of the inputs is the same. The backpropagation training algorithm is shown to be a degenerate version of the extended Kalman filter. The …

Artificial Intelligence And Mechanical Engineering, Efthimios Papayianis

Theses

Many artificial intelligence programs have been developed to assist engineers in their search for solutions. Most of them are designed to assist with a specific type of problem and they usually take the form of an expert system. However one may also use the concepts of artificial intelligence to solve a problem for which an expert system is not yet available.

Three expert systems were developed with Prolog to demonstrate how artificial intelligence can help solve problems in mechanical engineering. The first expert assists in the design of simply supported beams. The second expert assists in the design of thick …

Development Of A Knowledge-Based System For Human Error Analysis, Bang-Chiang Sung

Theses

Human Factors is one of several essential issues in a discussion of system productivity. Its consideration must be included in the design, development, operation, and maintenance of any human-machine system. In order to maximize the system productivity, humans must perform with their maximum possible efficiency. To achieve this, all human-related activities must be evaluated to determine their possible causes of errors and the consequences. Then, if unable to completely remove, the causes of human errors must be minimized.

This thesis integrates a knowledge of expert system into an analysis of human errors. Its objective is to develop a knowledge-based system …

Building Knowledge Systems For The Manufacturing Support Environment: A User's Approach, Vernon Joseph Tracy Jr.

Theses

Knowledge systems provide a largely untapped resource for accomplishing productivity gains in the manufacturing support disciplines. Major corporations, usually under the guidance of newly formed Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) departments, are rushing to develop large knowledge systems. These large systems offer the promise of a considerable payback and therefore deserve their current attention. There also exists a wealth of smaller projects that if identified and developed, could contribute to improved corporate performance. The shortage of knowledge engineers has been the major reason why small knowledge system applications in the manufacturing support areas are not being vigorously pursued. This paper presents an …

Issues In The Design And Implementation Of Expert Systems, Clive L. Dym

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

This article discusses the issues that arise in the design and implementation of expert systems. These issues include: task selection; the stages of development of expert system projects; knowledge acquisition; languages and tools; development and run-time environments; and organizational and institutional issues. The article closes with some speculation about the future development of expert systems.

Applications Of Artificial Intelligence In Military Training Simulation, Igor V. Golovcsenko

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

This report is a survey of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology contributions to military training. It provides an overview of military training simulation and a review of instructional problems and challenges which can be addressed by AI. The survey includes current as well as potential applications of AI, with particular emphasis on design and system integration issues. Applications include knowledge and skills training in strategic planning and decision making, tactical warfare operations, electronics maintenance and repair, as well as computer-aided design of training systems. The report describes research contributions in the application of AI technology to the training world, and it …

The Application Of Expert Systems To Automated Storage And Retrieval, Robert E. Mcdonald

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

This report discusses the major functions, decisions, and strategies of automated storage and retrieval systems (AR/RS). The report surveys the essential features of expert systems and discusses how they can be applied in automated warehousing environments. A blackboard expert system architecture was examined and found to be a flexible and responsive control system for automated warehousing applications. A simple AR/RS expert system was constructed using an expert system software package. A warehousing simulation was performed which compared the expert system’s performance to a typical AR/RS control system. The expert system produced increased efficiency of operation because of the intelligent rules …

Intelligent Computer Decision Systems, Robert J. Heath

Theses

This paper demonstrates that the concepts developed through Artificial Intelligence research are applicable to computerized information systems; and that a system of expert problem solvers and natural language interfaces exhibiting characteristics of "intelligent behavior" offer several advantages over present-day, conventional database management designs. Development of the conclusion was accomplished after an analysis and assimilation of the current literature in the field of Artificial Intelligence and participation in university symposia concerning its application to the business environment. It is concluded that incorporating the notions of learning and creativity, common sense(heuristics), and self-awareness, intelligent computer decision systems will provide managers with : …

The Combination Of Artificial Intelligence And Robotics For A Mobile Robot Application, Leslie D. Interrante

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

The combination of artificial intelligence and robotics led to more flexibility and powerful mobile robot applications. The robot and its environment were simulated with a microcomputer to gather statistical information. An application was demonstrated in the laboratory with a mobile robot. The robot recognized an obstacle in its path and generated the necessary changes in its environment so that it could successfully complete a required task.

A Learning Machine For Job Sequencing In A General-Purpose Computer System, Richard Jon Taylor

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.