Computational Engineering Commons^™

Id-More Vision: Real-Data Machine-Learning Assessment For A Digital-Twin-Inspired, Xr-Ready Rehabilitation Prototype, Rickey L. Clark

Master's Theses

Rehabilitation assessment often relies on periodic observation, while many XR prototypes show scripted rather than recorded-motion evidence. iD-MORE Vision is an offline pipeline trained on KIMORE and IRDS and linked through JSON packets to a two-mode Unity desktop prototype. Both datasets include controls and rehabilitation participants with neurologic, musculoskeletal, or mobility impairments. This improves relevance but does not clinically validate the system.

Under fixed subject-wise splits, the primary five-seed Random Forest predicted KIMORE clinician scores with MAE 6.087 ± 0.044 cTS and R² 0.568 ± 0.006; the subject-level R² interval crossed zero. The primary IRDS five-run CUDA GRU averaged 0.877 …

Large Scale Kmer-Based Proteomic Analysis: An Application Towards Evolutionary Constraint Discovery, Matthew Chak

Master's Theses

Large protein databases now make it possible to study short peptides across natural protein sequence space at unprecedented scale, but exhaustively counting k-mers across billions of protein sequences remains computationally difficult. This thesis develops an exact amino-acid k-mer counting method based on direct addressing, in which fixed-length amino-acid strings are encoded as base-20 integers and updated with a sliding-window recurrence. By avoiding key storage and collision resolution, this approach removes overhead inherent to hash-map-based methods when the k-mer space is sufficiently dense. A memory analysis shows when direct addressing is preferable to open-addressing hash tables, and expected-saturation calculations motivate its …

Reproducing And Evaluating Charger Surfing: Robustness Of Smartphone Charging-Line Side-Channels, Colby M. Watts

Master's Theses

Smartphones are frequently connected to external, untrusted charging hardware, creating opportunities for side-channel attacks that do not require malware or direct access to device data. Charger Surfing, a recently proposed charging-line power analysis side-channel attack, reported high accuracy in inferring touchscreen input from voltage measurements collected from a smartphone’s charging cable; however, the reproducibility and robustness of these results under different conditions remain unclear. This thesis presents an independent replication and evaluation of Charger Surfing, including the development of an end-to-end data collection pipeline consisting of a modified charging cable, oscilloscope-based recordings, custom Android app, automated trace processing, and convolutional …

Praxsmith: An Actor-Centric Domain Specific Language For Emergent Narratives In Video Games, Jacob C. Kelleran

Master's Theses

The video game industry is rapidly growing, and interest in game development is growing alongside it. Among this growing interest is a desire to include branching and emergent narratives in games. This subject is understood to be difficult, as every possible trajectory within the story creates exponential complexity. Large studios are sometimes able to create convincing implementations, but that is often with hundreds of developers and writers. Over the years, various solutions have been proposed to create frameworks and languages that aim to tackle this problem, with varying degrees of success. Some frameworks attempt this by placing the focus on …

Analyzing Patterns In Hofstede’S Cultural Dimensions Towards Individual Ai Receptiveness For Affective Experiences, Maggie Yang

Master's Theses

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly advanced efficient decision-making, with trust in algorithmic decisions shown to vary by cultural upbringing [1]. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in everyday life, it is essential to examine how cultural values affect trust in AI in subjective contexts that extend beyond purely quantitative analysis, like the personal interpretation of art. This work utilizes Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to investigate potential patterns in receptiveness towards AI predictions during art interpretation, providing insight into individual susceptibility to bias in AI-assisted affective analysis.

The study leveraged a cultural dimension survey and a custom Java program connected …

Data-Driven Product Recommendations: A Decision Support Framework Utilizing Customer Reviews, Tyler A. Lopez

Master's Theses

With the considerable presence of e-commerce in society, vast number of purchasable goods, and increasing brand variety, consumers are faced with the challenge of buying products that they perceive to be of greatest value to them. To assist consumers with making better informed decisions, e-commerce websites allow individuals to post their own experiences and score the products that they purchase. Despite this information, the variety of experiences and feedback that consumers share do not always lead to clarity on whether a product is best suited for the purchaser. To help guide customers through a simplified purchasing process from the perspective …

Peer Collaborative Networks In Undergraduate Computing Classrooms, Noah T. Ravetch

Master's Theses

Peers are an invaluable resource for students at undergraduate universities. Many factors can impact how students form connections, some of which are tied to the students’ identities. While social networks have been studied in the context of universities, little research has been done specifically about peer collaboration and even less in the context of computer science classes. Our research aims to gain an understanding of how peer networks form in computing classes and the effect of being involved in one on students’ academic performances. We collected survey data (n = 139) about students’ peer collaborative behaviors in computer science classes. …

The Effect Of Watts-Strogatz And Barabási-Albert Graphs On Memory Formation, Ethan Irick Wolfe

Master's Theses

Understanding higher level cognitive processes is a central problem in neuroscience. The Neuroidal model provides a useful framework for posing these problems in a computer science context. There has been significant recent work trying to understand memory capacity in the Neuroidal model but this work was done assuming that the network of neurons was an Erdos-Renyi random graph. However the network of neurons in the brain has been shown to exhibit small-world properties, which are not present in Erdos-Renyi graphs. In this research we explore replacing Erdos-Renyi graphs with Watts-Strogatz and Barabasi-Albert graphs in order to more accurately model the …

Reinforcement Learning Framework For The Unreal Engine, Justin B. Wheeler

Master's Theses

This dissertation addresses the need for using machine learning-based methods rather than traditional rule-based methods for controlling non-playable characters (NPCs). The goal of the Reinforcement Learning Framework for the Unreal Engine is to enable game development studios to create, train, and more easily implement smarter, more compelling AI characters in major video game releases. The framework contains three distinct software libraries: an Unreal Engine reinforcement learning library whose purpose is to enable Unreal Engine levels to act as reinforcement learning environments, a python library which provides convenient abstractions and implementations to the reinforcement learning process, and a flexible connection system …

Shelfaware: Accelerating Collaborative Awareness With Shelf Crdt, John C. Waidhofer

Master's Theses

Collaboration has become a key feature of modern software, allowing teams to work together effectively in real-time while in different locations. In order for a user to communicate their intention to several distributed peers, computing devices must exchange high-frequency updates with transient metadata like mouse position, text range highlights, and temporary comments. Current peer-to-peer awareness solutions have high time and space complexity due to the ever-expanding logs that each client must maintain in order to ensure robust collaboration in eventually consistent environments. This paper proposes an awareness Conflict-Free Replicated Data Type (CRDT) library that provides the tooling to support an …

Wildfire Spread Prediction Using Attention Mechanisms In U-Net, Kamen Haresh Shah, Kamen Haresh Shah

Master's Theses

An investigation into using attention mechanisms for better feature extraction in wildfire spread prediction models. This research examines the U-net architecture to achieve image segmentation, a process that partitions images by classifying pixels into one of two classes. The deep learning models explored in this research integrate modern deep learning architectures, and techniques used to optimize them. The models are trained on 12 distinct observational variables derived from the Google Earth Engine catalog. Evaluation is conducted with accuracy, Dice coefficient score, ROC-AUC, and F1-score. This research concludes that when augmenting U-net with attention mechanisms, the attention component improves feature suppression …

Panodepth – Panoramic Monocular Depth Perception Model And Framework, Adley K. Wong

Master's Theses

Depth perception has become a heavily researched area as companies and researchers are striving towards the development of self-driving cars. Self-driving cars rely on perceiving the surrounding area, which heavily depends on technology capable of providing the system with depth perception capabilities. In this paper, we explore developing a single camera (monocular) depth prediction model that is trained on panoramic depth images. Our model makes novel use of transfer learning efficient encoder models, pre-training on a larger dataset of flat depth images, and optimizing the model for use with a Jetson Nano. Additionally, we present a training and optimization framework …

Evaluating And Improving Domain-Specific Programming Education: A Case Study With Cal Poly Chemistry Courses, Will Fuchs

Master's Theses

Programming is a key skill in many domains outside computer science. When used judiciously, programming can empower people to accomplish what might be impossible or difficult with traditional methods. Unfortunately, students, especially non-CS majors, frequently have trouble while learning to program. This work reports on the challenges and opportunities faced by Physical Chemistry (PChem) students at Cal Poly, SLO as they learn to program in MATLAB. We assessed the PChem students through a multiple-choice concept inventory, as well as through “think-aloud” interviews. Additionally, we examined the students’ perceptions of and attitudes towards programming. We found that PChem students are adept …

Strainer: State Transcript Rating For Informed News Entity Retrieval, Thomas M. Gerrity

Master's Theses

Over the past two decades there has been a rapid decline in public oversight of state and local governments. From 2003 to 2014, the number of journalists assigned to cover the proceedings in state houses has declined by more than 30\%. During the same time period, non-profit projects such as Digital Democracy sought to collect and store legislative bill and hearing information on behalf of the public. More recently, AI4Reporters, an offshoot of Digital Democracy, seeks to actively summarize interesting legislative data.

This thesis presents STRAINER, a parallel project with AI4Reporters, as an active data retrieval and filtering system for …

Leveraging Intermediate Artifacts To Improve Automated Trace Link Retrieval, Alberto D. Rodriguez

Master's Theses

Software traceability establishes a network of connections between diverse artifacts such as requirements, design, and code. However, given the cost and effort of creating and maintaining trace links manually, researchers have proposed automated approaches using information retrieval techniques. Current approaches focus almost entirely upon generating links between pairs of artifacts and have not leveraged the broader network of interconnected artifacts. In this paper we investigate the use of intermediate artifacts to enhance the accuracy of the generated trace links – focus- ing on paths consisting of source, target, and intermediate artifacts. We propose and evaluate combinations of techniques for computing …

Dependencyvis: Helping Developers Visualize Software Dependency Information, Nathan Lui

Master's Theses

The use of dependencies have been increasing in popularity over the past decade, especially as package managers such as JavaScript's npm has made getting these packages a simple command to run. However, while incidents such as the left-pad incident has increased awareness of how vulnerable relying on these packages are, there is still some work to be done when it comes to getting developers to take the extra research step to determine if a package is up to standards. Finding metrics of different packages and comparing them is always a difficult and time consuming task, especially since potential vulnerabilities are …

Reducing Vale's Memory Management Overhead Through Static Analysis, Theodore C. Watkins

Master's Theses

Vale is a multi-purpose programming language that focuses on guaranteeing memory safety with minimal effect on performance. To accomplish this, Vale utilizes a memory management system called Hybrid Generational Memory (HGM). HGM uses generational references to track the state of objects in memory, and static analysis to reduce memory management overhead at runtime. This thesis describes the program that performs static analysis on Vale source code during compilation, and analyzes its effect on the performance of Vale programs.

A Deep Learning-Based Automatic Object Detection Method For Autonomous Driving Ships, Ojonoka Erika Atawodi

Master's Theses

An important feature of an Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) is its capability of automatic object detection to avoid collisions, obstacles and navigate on their own.

Deep learning has made some significant headway in solving fundamental challenges associated with object detection and computer vision. With tremendous demand and advancement in the technologies associated with ASVs, a growing interest in applying deep learning techniques in handling challenges pertaining to autonomous ship driving has substantially increased over the years.

In this thesis, we study, design, and implement an object recognition framework that detects and recognizes objects found in the sea. We first curated …

Machine Learning Approaches To Historic Music Restoration, Quinn Coleman

Master's Theses

In 1889, a representative of Thomas Edison recorded Johannes Brahms playing a piano arrangement of his piece titled “Hungarian Dance No. 1”. This recording acts as a window into how musical masters played in the 19th century. Yet, due to years of damage on the original recording medium of a wax cylinder, it was un-listenable by the time it was digitized into WAV format. This thesis presents machine learning approaches to an audio restoration system for historic music, which aims to convert this poor-quality Brahms piano recording into a higher quality one. Digital signal processing is paired with two machine …

A Single-Stage Passive Vibration Isolation System For Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, Toan T. Le

Master's Theses

Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) uses quantum tunneling effect to study the surfaces of materials on an atomic scale. Since the probe of the microscope is on the order of nanometers away from the surface, the device is prone to noises due to vibrations from the surroundings. To minimize the random noises and floor vibrations, passive vibration isolation is a commonly used technique due to its low cost and simpler design compared to active vibration isolation, especially when the entire vibration isolation system (VIS) stays inside an Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) environment. This research aims to analyze and build a single-stage …

Personality And Mood For Non-Player Characters: A Method For Behavior Simulation In A Maze Environment, Noah L. Paige

Master's Theses

When it comes to video games, immersion is key. All types of games aim to keep the player immersed in some form or another. A common aspect of the immersive world in most role-playing games -- but not exclusive to the genre -- is the non-playable character (NPC). At their best, NPCs play an integral role to the sense of immersion the player feels by behaving in a way that feels believable and fits within the world of the game. However, due to lack of innovation in this area of video games, at their worst NPCs can jar the player …

Real-Time Body Tracking And Projection Mapping In The Interactive Arts, Sydney Baroya

Master's Theses

Projection mapping, a subtopic of augmented reality, displays computer-generated light visualizations from projectors onto the real environment. A challenge for projection mapping in performing interactive arts is dynamic body movements. Accuracy and speed are key components for an immersive application of body projection mapping and dependent on scanning and processing time.

This thesis presents a novel technique to achieve real-time body projection mapping utilizing a state of the art body tracking device, Microsoft’s Azure Kinect DK, by using an array of trackers for error minimization and movement prediction. The device's Sensor and Bodytracking SDKs allow multiple device synchronization. We combine …

Towards On-Device Detection Of Sharks With Drones, Daniel Moore

Master's Theses

Recent years have seen several projects across the globe using drones to detect sharks, including several high profile projects around alerting beach authorities to keep people safe. However, so far many of these attempts have used cloud-based machine learning solutions for the detection component, which complicates setup and limits their use geographically to areas with internet connection. An on-device (or on-controller) shark detector would offer greater freedom for researchers searching for and tracking sharks in the field, but such a detector would need to operate under reduced resource constraints. To this end we look at SSD MobileNet, a popular object …

Dynamic Procedural Music Generation From Npc Attributes, Megan E. Washburn

Master's Theses

Procedural content generation for video games (PCGG) has seen a steep increase in the past decade, aiming to foster emergent gameplay as well as to address the challenge of producing large amounts of engaging content quickly. Most work in PCGG has been focused on generating art and assets such as levels, textures, and models, or on narrative design to generate storylines and progression paths. Given the difficulty of generating harmonically pleasing and interesting music, procedural music generation for games (PMGG) has not seen as much attention during this time.

Music in video games is essential for establishing developers' intended mood …

Cloneless: Code Clone Detection Via Program Dependence Graphs With Relaxed Constraints, Thomas J. Simko

Master's Theses

Code clones are pieces of code that have the same functionality. While some clones may structurally match one another, others may look drastically different. The inclusion of code clones clutters a code base, leading to increased costs through maintenance. Duplicate code is introduced through a variety of means, such as copy-pasting, code generated by tools, or developers unintentionally writing similar pieces of code. While manual clone identification may be more accurate than automated detection, it is infeasible due to the extensive size of many code bases. Software code clone detection methods have differing degree of success based on the analysis …

Fifth Aeon – A.I Competition And Balancer, William M. Ritson

Master's Theses

Collectible Card Games (CCG) are one of the most popular types of games in both digital and physical space. Despite their popularity, there is a great deal of room for exploration into the application of artificial intelligence in order to enhance CCG gameplay and development. This paper presents Fifth Aeon a novel and open source CCG built to run in browsers and two A.I applications built upon Fifth Aeon. The first application is an artificial intelligence competition run on the Fifth Aeon game. The second is an automatic balancing system capable of helping a designer create new cards that do …

A Machine Learning Approach To Network Intrusion Detection System Using K Nearest Neighbor And Random Forest, Ilemona S. Atawodi

Master's Theses

The evolving area of cybersecurity presents a dynamic battlefield for cyber criminals and security experts. Intrusions have now become a major concern in the cyberspace. Different methods are employed in tackling these threats, but there has been a need now more than ever to updating the traditional methods from rudimentary approaches such as manually updated blacklists and whitelists. Another method involves manually creating rules, this is usually one of the most common methods to date.

A lot of similar research that involves incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence into both host and network-based intrusion systems recently. Doing this originally presented …

A Computational Analysis Of The Gradient Concentration Profile Of Deet And The Mosquito Behavioral Response, Brandon Carver

Master's Theses

DEET is a common active ingredient in most spatial repellents. DEET is also a volatile organic compound. DEET prevents mosquitoes from detecting and coming into contact with an human individual. Gas sensing technologies such as metal oxide semiconductor sensors can detect VOCs. The World Health Organization provides the majority of efficacy testing methods. This research adapts methods from the WHO and use of MOS sensors to further understand how and why DEET affects mosquitos. A custom developed system is used to measure DEET dissipation and observe mosquito behavioral response to the DEET. DEET dissipations and mosquito behavior is measured within …

Fluid Agitation Studies For Drug Product Containers Using Computational Fluid Dynamics, Matthew Hiroki Ichinose

Master's Theses

At Amgen, the Automated Vision Inspection (AVI) systems capture the movement of unwanted particles in Amgen's drug product containers. For quality inspection, the AVI system must detect these undesired particles using a high speed spin-stop agitation process. To better understand the fluid movements to swirl the particles away from the walls, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to analyze the nature of the two phase flow of air and a liquid solution.

Several 2-D and 3-D models were developed using Fluent to create simulations of Amgen's drug product containers for a 1 mL syringe, 2.25 mL syringe, and a 5 …

Population Curation In Swarms: Predicting Top Performers, Ryan W. Heller

Master's Theses

In recent years, new Artificial Intelligence technologies have mimicked examples of collective intelligence occurring in the natural world including flocks of birds, schools of fish, and swarms of bees. One company in particular, Unanimous AI, built a platform (UNU Swarm) that enables a group of humans to make decisions as a single mind by forming a real-time closed-loop feedback system for individuals. This platform has proven the ability to amplify the predictive ability of groups of humans in realms including sports, medicine, politics, finance, and entertainment. Previous research has demonstrated it is possible to further enhance knowledge accumulation within a …