Computer Engineering Commons^™

Robust Drone Landing, Alvin Xuan Quan Chui

Computer Engineering

The growth of drone technology goes with the demands of computer vision. Computer vision provides opportunities for developers to design and create, giving rise to a new innovation. It is also a basis for a full autonomous system when implemented with an intelligent agent. Surveillance drones are installed with cameras, and cameras are the most common approach to computer vision. However, a high-resolution camera with great performance could be expensive, while other low-cost cameras might lack reading accuracy. To improve the performances and maximize a camera’s capability, many different object trackers come into play. This paper will investigate and study …

Otter Debugger, Keefe Johnson

Computer Engineering

This project is a debugger and programmer for the OTTER CPU, the implementation of the RISC-V ISA used by Cal Poly to teach computer architecture and assembly language in CPE 233/333 and usually implemented on the Basys3 FPGA development board. With this tool, students can quickly program their OTTER with a new/revised RISC-V program binary without resynthesizing the entire FPGA design. They can then use the debugger from a PC to pause/continue/single-step execution and set breakpoints, while inspecting and modifying register and memory contents. This enables real-time debugging of OTTER projects involving custom hardware such as a keyboard and VGA …

Bootstrapping Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, Mitchell Miller

Master's Theses

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are a prominent genre in today's video game industry with the most popular MMORPGs generating billions of dollars in revenue and attracting millions of players. As they have grown, they have become a major target for both technological research and sociological research. In such research, it is nearly impossible to reach the same player scale from any self-made technology or sociological experiments. This greatly limits the amount of control and topics that can be explored. In an effort to make up a lacking or non-existent player-base for custom-made MMORPG research scenarios A.I. agents, …

Zenneck Waves In Decision Agriculture: An Empirical Verification And Application In Em-Based Underground Wireless Power Transfer, Usman Raza, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

In this article, the results of experiments for the observation of Zenneck surface waves in sub GHz frequency range using dipole antennas are presented. Experiments are conducted over three different soils for communications distances of up to 1 m. This empirical analysis confirms the existence of Zenneck waves over the soil surface. Through the power delay profile (PDP) analysis, it has been shown that other subsurface components exhibit rapid decay as compared to the Zenneck waves. A potential application of the Zenneck waves for energy transmission in the area of decision agriculture is explored. Accordingly, a novel wireless through-the-soil power …

Stay-At-Home Motor Rehabilitation: Optimizing Spatiotemporal Learning On Low-Cost Capacitive Sensor Arrays, Reid Sutherland

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Repeated, consistent, and precise gesture performance is a key part of recovery for stroke and other motor-impaired patients. Close professional supervision to these exercises is also essential to ensure proper neuromotor repair, which consumes a large amount of medical resources. Gesture recognition systems are emerging as stay-at-home solutions to this problem, but the best solutions are expensive, and the inexpensive solutions are not universal enough to tackle patient-to-patient variability. While many methods have been studied and implemented, the gesture recognition system designer does not have a strategy to effectively predict the right method to fit the needs of a patient. …

Investigation Of The Effects Of A Situated Learning Digital Game On Mathematics Education At The Primary School Level, Mariana Rocha

Doctoral

Previous research suggests games can improve learning outcomesand students’ motivation. However, there still exists insufficient clarity on the design principles and pedagogical approach that should underpinmathematics educational games. This thesis is aimed at evaluating the effects of an educationalgame on the learningperformance and levels of anxiety promoted by mathematics activities of primary school students. The game was designed based on theprinciples of situated learning, following acombination of an in-depth literature review, a collection of teachers’ perceptions about educational games, and features ofclassroom games. Empirical evaluation of the game was performed through a 5-weeks experiment carried out in three Irish schools, …

Minet Magnetic Indoor Localization, Michael Drake

Honors Theses

Indoor localization is a modern problem of computer science that has no unified solution, as there are significant trade-offs involved with every technique. Magnetic localization, though less popular than WiFi signal based localization, is a sub-field that is rooted in infrastructure-free design, which can allow universal setup. Magnetic localization is also often paired with probabilistic programming, which provides a powerful method of estimation, given a limited understanding of the environment. This thesis presents Minet, which is a particle filter based localization system using the Earth's geomagnetic field. It explores the novel idea of state space limitation as a method of …

Nonlinear Least Squares 3-D Geolocation Solutions Using Time Differences Of Arrival, Michael V. Bredemann

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

This thesis uses a geometric approach to derive and solve nonlinear least squares minimization problems to geolocate a signal source in three dimensions using time differences of arrival at multiple sensor locations. There is no restriction on the maximum number of sensors used. Residual errors reach the numerical limits of machine precision. Symmetric sensor orientations are found that prevent closed form solutions of source locations lying within the null space. Maximum uncertainties in relative sensor positions and time difference of arrivals, required to locate a source within a maximum specified error, are found from these results. Examples illustrate potential requirements …

A Framework To Detect Presentation Attacks, Laeticia Etienne

Master of Science in Information Technology Theses

Biometric-based authentication systems are becoming the preferred choice to replace password-based authentication systems. Among several variations of biometrics (e.g., face, eye, fingerprint), iris-based authentication is commonly used in every day applications. In iris-based authentication systems, iris images from legitimate users are captured and certain features are extracted to be used for matching during the authentication process. Literature works suggest that iris-based authentication systems can be subject to presentation attacks where an attacker obtains printed copy of the victim’s eye image and displays it in front of an authentication system to gain unauthorized access. Such attacks can be performed by displaying …

Load Balancing Of Financial Data Using Machine Learning And Cloud Analytics, Dimple Jaiswal

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The rising use of technology for web applications, android applications, digital marketing, and e-application systems for financial investments benefits a large sector of stakeholders and common people. It allows investors to make an appropriate choice for investment and to increase their capital growth. This requires proper research of investment companies, their trends in price and analysis of historical and current information. In addition, prediction of prices makes the process of investment more comfortable and reliable for investors as shares are the most volatile type of investment. To offer this service to multiple users spread across the globe, there are certain …

Two Can Play That Game: An Adversarial Evaluation Of A Cyber-Alert Inspection System, Ankit Shah, Arunesh Sinha, Rajesh Ganesan, Sushil Jajodia, Hasan Cam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cyber-security is an important societal concern. Cyber-attacks have increased in numbers as well as in the extent of damage caused in every attack. Large organizations operate a Cyber Security Operation Center (CSOC), which forms the first line of cyber-defense. The inspection of cyber-alerts is a critical part of CSOC operations (defender or blue team). Recent work proposed a reinforcement learning (RL) based approach for the defender’s decision-making to prevent the cyber-alert queue length from growing large and overwhelming the defender. In this article, we perform a red team (adversarial) evaluation of this approach. With the recent attacks on learning-based decision-making …

Efficient Hardware/Software Partitioning Techniques For A Cloud-Scale Cpu-Fpga Platform, Samah Ziyad Rahamneh

Dissertations

The diversity of workload characteristics has stimulated the deployment of heterogeneous architectures to accommodate workloads’ requirements disparity in cloud data centers. In heterogeneous computing, co-processors are utilized to support Central Processing Units (CPUs) in fulfilling workload demands. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have advantages over other accelerators because of their power, performance and re-configurability benefits. In order to achieve the most benefit of a heterogeneous platform, efficient partitioning of workload between the CPU and the FPGA is a crucial demand.

This dissertation first presents a design and implementation of cooperative CPU-FPGA execution techniques, which include code and data partitioning, of …

Optimization Study Of An Image Classification Deep Neural Network, Rose Ault

Honors Projects

Machine Learning is an important and growing field within Artificial Intelligence. It is particularly useful in situations where developing an algorithm to perform the task in a conventional way would be extremely difficult. Instead of being programmed specifically to complete a task, a program embodies a trained model that can recognize patterns present in given example data, and is able use that model to make predictions on future data. Neural networks are a prominent example of machine learning models used for this purpose. Neural networks are models that are based on how brains work, with massive numbers of connected processing …

A Study Of Execution Performance For Rust-Based Object Vs Data Oriented Architectures, Joseph A. Vagedes

Theses and Dissertations

To investigate the Data-Oriented Design (DOD) paradigm, in particular, an architecture built off its principles: the Entity-Component-System (ECS). ECS is commonly used by video game engines due to its ability to store data in a way that is optimal for the cache to access. Additionally, the structure of this paradigm produces a code-base that is simple to parallelize as the workload can be distributed across a thread-pool based on the data used with little to no need for data safety measures such as mutexes and locks. A final benefit, although not easily measured, is that the DOD paradigm produces a …

Learning In The Machine: To Share Or Not To Share?, Jordan Ott, Erik Linstead, Nicholas Lahaye, Pierre Baldi

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Weight-sharing is one of the pillars behind Convolutional Neural Networks and their successes. However, in physical neural systems such as the brain, weight-sharing is implausible. This discrepancy raises the fundamental question of whether weight-sharing is necessary. If so, to which degree of precision? If not, what are the alternatives? The goal of this study is to investigate these questions, primarily through simulations where the weight-sharing assumption is relaxed. Taking inspiration from neural circuitry, we explore the use of Free Convolutional Networks and neurons with variable connection patterns. Using Free Convolutional Networks, we show that while weight-sharing is a pragmatic optimization …

Bim For Bridges And Structures Pooled Fund Initiative, Julie Rivera, Connor Christian

Purdue Road School

The BIM for Bridges and Structures initiative, also known as TPF-5(372), is a transportation pooled fund project that is a collaborative effort of 20 states, FHWA, and the AASHTO Committee on Bridges and Structures. The pooled fund objective is to develop an open, national standard for exchanging information necessary for the design, fabrication, and construction of bridges and structures in the United States. The presentation will provide an overview of the project and explain ways in which stakeholders can get involved.

Understanding And Optimizing Flash-Based Key-Value Systems In Data Centers, Yichen Jia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Flash-based key-value systems are widely deployed in today’s data centers for providing high-speed data processing services. These systems deploy flash-friendly data structures, such as slab and Log Structured Merge(LSM) tree, on flash-based Solid State Drives(SSDs) and provide efficient solutions in caching and storage scenarios. With the rapid evolution of data centers, there appear plenty of challenges and opportunities for future optimizations.

In this dissertation, we focus on understanding and optimizing flash-based key-value systems from the perspective of workloads, software, and hardware as data centers evolve. We first propose an on-line compression scheme, called SlimCache, considering the unique characteristics of key-value …

Innovation In Pedagogy And Technology Symposium, 2019: Selected Conference Proceedings, University Of Nebraska Online, University Of Nebraska Information Technology Services

Zea E-Books Collection

Advancing Technology in Education at the University of Nebraska, May 7, 2019

Welcome Address • Susan Fritz, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Provost, University of Nebraska 6

Opening Remarks • Mary Niemiec, Associate Vice President for Digital Education, Director of University of Nebraska Online 6

Keynote Presentation: Shaping the Next Generation of Higher Education • Bryan Alexander, Ph.D. 6

Featured Extended Presentation: Redesigning Courses & Determining Effectiveness Through Research • Tanya Joosten, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), Erin Blankenship, Ph.D. (UNL), Ella Burnham (UNL), Nate Eidem, Ph.D. (UNK), Marnie Imhoff (UNMC), Linsey Donner (UNMC), Ellie Miller (UNMC) 7

5 Ways to …

Validation Framework For Autonomous Aerial Vehicles, Mustafa Akbas Ph.D.

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

Autonomous aerial vehicles (AAV) have the potential to have market disruptions for various industries such as ground delivery and aerial transportation. Hence, the USAF has called for increased level of autonomy and rapid progress is being made in artificial intelligence (AI) engines, complex and non-deterministic system components, which are at the core of the autonomous aerial platforms. Traditional testing and validation methods fall short of satisfying the requirement of testing such complex systems. Therefore, to achieve highly or fully autonomous capabilities, a major leap forward in the validation is required. Otherwise, the full capabilities of autonomy will not be realized. …

Does The Age Of An It Executive Impact Adoption Levels Of Cloud Computing Services?, Marcus L. Smith

Faculty Publications

This author researched previously the personal decision factors considered by information technology (IT) executives when making the cloud computing services adoptionchoice. The conclusions in that work (Smith, Jr., 2016) supported four hypotheses, namely, (a) advancement, recognition and satisfaction from accomplishments, (b) top management support, (c) diminishment of personal image, and (d) a pattern of technology readiness have a positive influence on business intentions to adopt cloud computing services. Interestingly, a fifth hypothesis, diminishment of personal image, was found to have a negative influence on business intentions. The relationship between age of the survey respondents and adoption levels was highlighted in …

Developing A Computer Vision-Based Decision Support System For Intersection Safety Monitoring And Assessment Of Vulnerable Road Users, Arash Jahangiri, Anagha Katthe, Aryan Sohrabi, Xiaobai Liu, Shashank Pulagam, Vahid Balali, Sahar Ghanipoor Machiani

Mineta Transportation Institute

Vision-based trajectory analysis of road users enables identification of near-crash situations and proactive safety monitoring. The two most widely used sur-rogate safety measures (SSMs), time-to-collision (TTC) and post-encroachment time (PET)—and a recent variant form of TTC, relative time-to-collision (RTTC)—were investigated using real-world video data collected at ten signalized intersections in the city of San Diego, California. The performance of these SSMs was compared for the purpose of evaluating pedestrian and bicyclist safety. Prediction of potential trajectory intersection points was performed to calculate TTC for every interacting object, and the average of TTC for every two objects in critical situations was …

Web Application For Movie Performance Prediction, Devalkumar Patel

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This is an amazing and unique idea for the web application. The purpose of this application is to address those movie lover people who is always in a hurry to visit the theatre to watch upcoming movies irrespective of which star cast is in it. This system is a mixture of desktop applications, python libraries, and simple math arithmetic. The application can be used by anyone which is ultimately helping them to decide, either they should watch the movie or not. The user just submits the name of the movie. This application is developed in Visual Studio 2019 for functioning …

A Mock Software Company: For Teaching Software Engineering (Cse 455) Course, Arturo Concepcion

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

This is a novel way of teaching software engineering as an upper-division course for senior computer science students. Teach the class as a mock software company where students play a role in the “software company” such as project managers, assistant project managers, team leads, software engineers, software designers, UI designers, QA engineers, etc. Then to make a realistic work environment, solicit software projects from real clients, not toy software projects that the instructors think of. It has been proven, pedagogically, that project-based learning is one of the most effective way of teaching. There are no quizzes, no mid-terms, and no …

Tiny Disco: A Cost-Effective, High-Fidelity Wireless Audio System, Luke Martin Liberatore

Computer Engineering

The Tiny Disco is a WiFi based concert system, featuring improvements on popular “Silent Disco” concerts. Rather than being tied to compression and bandwidth restrictions present in traditional silent disco systems, the Tiny Disco system can deliver 320kbps+ audio quality, and allows listeners to bring their own headphones, further lending to the high quality audio experience.

Tiny Disco uses a Raspberry Pi as the audio server, and Espressif ESP32 microcontrollers as audio receivers/clients. The Tiny Disco is primarily geared toward smaller concerts and niche events where audio quality is valued, though due to its WiFi-based architecture, it can be expanded …

A Hybrid Agent-Based And Equation Based Epidemiological Model For The Spread Of Infectious Diseases, Elizabeth Hunter

Doctoral

Infectious disease models are essential in understanding how an outbreak might occur and how best to mitigate an outbreak. One of the most important factors in modelling a disease is choosing an appropriate model and determining the assump tions needed to create the model. The main research questions this thesis addresses are how do we create a model for the spread of infectious diseases that captures heterogeneous agents without using an inordinate amount of computing power and how can we use that model to plan for future infectious disease outbreaks. We start our work by analysing and comparing equation based …

Implementing Asynchronous Linear Solvers Using Non-Uniform Distributions, Erik Jensen, Evan C. Coleman, Masha Sosonkina

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

Asynchronous iterative methods present a mechanism to improve the performance of algorithms for highly parallel computational platforms by removing the overhead associated with synchronization among computing elements. This paper considers a class of asynchronous iterative linear system solvers that employ randomization to determine the component update orders, specifically focusing on the effects of drawing the order from non-uniform distributions. Results from shared-memory experiments with a two-dimensional finite-difference discrete Laplacian problem show that using distributions favoring the selection of components with a larger contribution to the residual may lead to faster convergence than selecting uniformly. Multiple implementations of the randomized asynchronous …

Annual Report 2019-2020, Depaul University College Of Computing And Digital Media

CDM Annual Reports

LETTER FROM THE DEAN

As I write this letter wrapping up the 2019-20 academic year, we remain in a global pandemic that has profoundly altered our lives. While many things have changed, some stayed the same: our CDM community worked hard, showed up for one another, and continued to advance their respective fields. A year that began like many others changed swiftly on March 11th when the University announced that spring classes would run remotely. By March 28th, the first day of spring quarter, we had moved 500 CDM courses online thanks to the diligent work of our faculty, staff, …

Promoting A Growth Mindset In Cs1: Does One Size Fit All? A Pilot Study, Keith Quille, Susan Bergin

Conference Papers

This paper describes a pilot intervention conducted in CS1, in the
academic year of 2016-2017. The intervention was based on the
work of Dweck, promoting a growth Mindset in an effort to in-
crease performance in introductory programming. The study also
examined data from a previous year (as a control group) to compare
and contrast the results. Multiple factors related to programming
performance were recorded with the control and treatment group,
which were measured at multiple intervals throughout the course,
to monitor changes as the pilot intervention was implemented.
This study found a significant increase in programming perfor-
mance when …

Determinants Of Startup Funding: The Interaction Between Web Attention And Culture, Jie Ren, Viju Raghupathi, Wullianallur Raghupathi

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Technology empowers entrepreneurs to pursue alternative funding through platforms like crowdfunding. This research explores significant startup funding factors using Crunchbase. Controlling for common factors (acquisition/funding-rounds/IPO), the research uniquely focuses on web attention - the visibility on social media - and its impact on funding. It also examines the moderating influence of startup’s home country culture (individualism/collectivism). Findings show stronger positive impact of web attention on startup funding for collectivist countries. While individualistic investors value personal goals, collectivists value collaborative goals - inclinations that align with crowdfunding behavior. Therefore while increasing web attention, crowdfunding efforts can be targeted towards collectivist countries.

Food Printing: Evolving Technologies, Challenges, Opportunities, And Best Adoption Strategies, Sharmin Attarin, Mohsen Attaran

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

3D printing is a process of making three-dimensional objects using additive processes where layers are laid down in succession to create a complete object. Companies across the globe are actively piloting and leveraging the inherent benefits of 3D printing technology. Today, 3D printing can revolutionize food innovation and production through better creativity, customizability, and sustainability. This article highlights 3D printing evolving technologies and trends and identifies its applications and implementation challenges. In this paper, we conducted a literature review to explore 3D printing's current technologies and applications in the food industry, including its advantages, its potential implications, and its obstacles …