Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Comparison Of Image Processing Techniques For Bird Detection, Elsa Reyes

Master's Theses

Orchard fruits and vegetable crops are vulnerable to wild birds and animals. These wild birds and animals can cause critical damage to the produce. Traditional methods of scaring away birds such as scarecrows are not long-term solutions but short-term solutions. This is a huge problem especially near areas like San Luis Obispo where there are vineyards. Bird damage can be as high as 50% for grapes being grown in vineyards. The total estimated revenue lost annually in the 10 counties in California due to bird and rodent damage to 22 selected crops ranged from $168 million to $504 million (in …

Future Of Payment Platforms, Salim Benjamin Youssefzadeh

Master's Theses

With the vast increase in smartphones, there have been an increasing number of opportunities growing in the app industry. One in particular is the way we deal with money. There are huge overheads in the current payment systems around the world particularly in the United States, many of which include large transaction fees. Many new businesses have grown to solve these inefficiencies and create a new platform that provides a new user experience, security, and convenience among many other things. However, many of these platforms are still centralized, making them more susceptible to attacks. This thesis goes over the various …

Laser Tag - An Application Of Infrared Communication, Michael J. Altschuler, Michael B. Peterson, Elmer Pres Ventura Urbano

Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project is to design, build, and test laser tag system from the ground up. Much of the laser tag equipment that is available on the market right now use infrared technology to track and register “hits” between players. Our goal is to take this system and redesign it to shoot farther, be more energy efficient, and make it cheaper to produce.

The I: A Client-Based Point-And-Click Puzzle Game, Aldo Lewis

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Given mobile devices’ weak computational power, game programmers must learn to create games with simple graphics that are engaging and easy to play. Though seldom created for phones and tablets, puzzle games are a perfect fit. In recent years, the genre has gained a following and even won some acclaim. Games like Myst, The Seventh Guest and Portal all engage gamers with challenging puzzles and then reward them with story components upon task fulfillment. Few such games have been created for mobile devices, in part due to the difficulty of developing for devices with different operating systems. Android, WebIOS and …

Volunteered Geographical Information: An Alternative Solution For Overcoming The Chasm Between Stormwater Management And Community Participation, Yanfu Zhou

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

It is a dramatic challenge to promote public engagement in stormwater management and green infrastructure initiatives. When traditional outreach approaches made important influence on public engagement, their limitations are also obvious. With the development of Web 2.0 technology, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has been emerging as one of the most important user-generated geographic contents. The crowdsourcing data that generated by volunteers through geo-web, smartphones, and other geo-devices provides invaluable mass data for decision-making. VGI can provide a better understanding of planning issues and other challenges. The research aims to develop a mobile information platform to allow citizens to report the …

Tech For Arthritis, Alex Gaiovych, Anna Velikoretskikh, Ephraim Lee, Karl Stephenson, Kevin Wu, Miguel Campos, Veyda Campos

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

In an era where technological advances are made on almost a daily basis, there are still many people who aren’t able or are scared to use modern technology. While computers and phones get smarter and more powerful, they are also getting smaller and more precise. Trying to push a tiny button, either real or virtual, can be a real problem for those who suffer from arthritis.

According to www.arthritis.org, over 50 million people are diagnosed with arthritis, most of which are senior citizens. Many of these seniors don’t use technology to its full potential because they simply can’t. For some, …

Tapjacking Threats And Mitigation Techniques For Android Applications, Vanessa Cooper

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

With the increased dependency on web applications through mobile devices, malicious attack techniques have now shifted from traditional web applications running on desktop or laptop (allowing mouse click- based interactions) to mobile applications running on mobile devices (allowing touch-based interactions). Clickjacking is a type of malicious attack originating in web applications, where victims are lured to click on seemingly benign objects in web pages. However, when clicked, unintended actions are performed without the user’s knowledge. In particular, it is shown that users are lured to touch an object of an application triggering unintended actions not actually intended by victims. This …

Computational-Communicative Actions Of Informational Processing, Florentin Smarandache, Stefan Vladutescu

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This study is circumscribed to the Information Science. The zetetic aim of research is double: a) to define the concept of action of informational processing and b) to design a taxonomy of actions of informational processing. First, the investigation trays to demonstrate that the computational actions of informational processing or the informational actions are computational-investigative configurations for structuring information: clusters of highly-aggregated operations which are carried out in a unitary manner operate convergently and behave like a unique computational device. From a methodological point of view, they are comprised within the category of analytical instruments for the informational processing of …

Wii-B-Fit Adaptive Wii Remote, Chris Lombardo

Computer Engineering

The goal of this project was to fix and supplement the original Wii-B-Fit system in order to get it running again and improve on the original design. Wii-B-Fit’s original mission is to give people with paralysis the ability to participate in activities that they would not otherwise get to do, while creating a more fun, social, and independent lifestyle.Physical activity can help stimulate brain activity and is an integral part to a healthy lifestyle. Quadriplegia however makes it extremely hard to perform most forms of physical activity and severely limits the choices available to victims of the disease. The original …

A Study Of Forensic Imaging In The Absence Of Write-Blockers, Gary C. Kessler, Gregory H. Carlton

Security Studies & International Affairs - Daytona Beach

"Best practices in digital forensics demand the use of write-blockers when creating forensic images of digital media, and this has been a core tenet of computer forensics training for decades. The practice is so ingrained that the integrity of images created without a write-blocker are immediately suspect. This paper describes a research framework that compares forensic images acquired with and without utilizing write-blockers in order to understand the extent of the differences, if any, in the resultant forensic copies. We specifically address whether differences are superficial or evidentiary, and we discuss the impact of admitting evidence acquired without write blocking. …

A Proof-Theoretic Semantic Analysis Of Dynamic Epistemic Logic, Sabine Frittella, Giuseppe Greco, Alexander Kurz, Alessandra Palmigiano, Vlasta Sikimić

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

The present paper provides an analysis of the existing proof systems for dynamic epistemic logic from the viewpoint of proof-theoretic semantics. Dynamic epistemic logic is one of the best known members of a family of logical systems which have been successfully applied to diverse scientific disciplines, but the proof theoretic treatment of which presents many difficulties. After an illustration of the proof-theoretic semantic principles most relevant to the treatment of logical connectives, we turn to illustrating the main features of display calculi, a proof-theoretic paradigm which has been successfully employed to give a proof-theoretic semantic account of modal and substructural …

Analysis Of Bfsa Based Anti-Collision Protocol In Lf, Hf, And Uhf Rfid Environments, Varun Bhogal

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the years, RFID (radio frequency identification) technology has gained popularity in a number of applications. The decreased cost of hardware components along with the recognition and implementation of international RFID standards have led to the rise of this technology.

One of the major factors associated with the implementation of RFID infrastructure is the cost of tags. Low frequency (LF) RFID tags are widely used because they are the least expensive. The drawbacks of LF RFID tags include low data rate and low range. Most studies that have been carried out focus on one frequency band only. This thesis presents …

New Operations On Intuitionistic Fuzzy Soft Sets Based On First Zadeh's Logical Operators, Florentin Smarandache, Said Broumi, Pinaki Majumdar

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper , we have defined First Zadeh’s implication , First Zadeh’s intuitionistic fuzzy conjunction and intuitionistic fuzzy disjunction of two intuitionistic fuzzy soft sets and some their basic properties are studied with proofs and examples.

Distance In Matrices And Their Applications To Fuzzy Models And Neutrosophic Models, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, K. Ilanthenral

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this book authors for the first time introduce the notion of distance between any two m  n matrices. If the distance is 0 or m  n there is nothing interesting. When the distance happens to be a value t; 0 < t < m  n the study is both innovating and interesting. The three cases of study which is carried out in this book are 1. If the difference between two square matrices is large, will it imply the eigen values and eigen vectors of those matrices are distinct? Several open conjectures in this direction are given. 2. The difference between parity check matrix and the generator matrix for the same C(n, k) code is studied. This will help in detecting errors in storage systems as well as in cryptography.

Detection And Control Of Small Civilian Uavs, Matthew Peacock

Theses : Honours

With the increasing proliferation of small civilian Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), the threat to critical infrastructure (CI) security and privacy is now widely recognised and must be addressed. These devices are easily available at a low cost, with their usage largely unrestricted allowing users to have no accountability. Further, current implementations of UAVs have little to no security measures applied to their control interfaces. To combat the threat raised by small UAVs, being aware of their presence is required, a task that can be challenging and often requires customised hardware.

This thesis aimed to address the threats posed by the …

Tascked: The Sanity Promoting Task Manager, Jake Tobin

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Personal task managers or various forms of to-do lists are abundant in our modern computing age. With the explosion of mobile computing technology, it is easier than ever to take notes digitally and make the data seemingly instantly available anywhere on the Internet. There is a fairly well defined core set of features in personal task managers available for public consumption, but it seems nothing that is publicly available provides feedback to the user or suggestions based on user history. Tascked is a task management solution, which records user history and solicits user feedback on progress. This allows the system …

Measuring The Counter/Assumption Model's Effect On Argumentation Quality, Evan D G Ovadia

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a new platform called See the Reason, built upon a tree- structured argumentation model called the Counter/Assumption model. In the Counter/Assumption model, a topic is posted first, then under that topic, reasons for and against, and for each reason, counterarguments, and for any counterargu- ment, more counterarguments. The model enables us to systematically determine whether a claim is “tentatively true” or “tentatively false,” in an effort to motivate people to make their side’s claims tentatively true and the opposing side’s claims tentatively false, thus encouraging conflict. Research suggests that debates with more conflict are better, so this …

A Software Development Kit For Camera-Based Gesture Interaction, Devlin Cronin

Master's Theses

Human-Computer Interaction is a rapidly expanding field, in which new implementations of ideas are consistently being released. In recent years, much of the concentration in this field has been on gesture-based control, either touch-based or camera-based. Even though camera-based gesture recognition was previously seen more in science fiction than in reality, this method of interaction is rising in popularity. There are a number of devices readily available to the average consumer that are designed to support this type of input, including the popular Microsoft Kinect and Leap Motion devices.

Despite this rise in availability and popularity, development for these devices …

Parsing Of Natural Language Requirements, Jamie L. Patterson

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to automate verification of the software requirements for an implantable cardioverter defibrillator with minimal manual rework. The requirements were written in plain English with only loose stylistic constraints. While full automation proved infeasible, many significant advances were made towards solving the problem, including a framework for storing requirements, a program which translates most of the natural language requirements into the framework, and a novel approach to parts of speech analysis.

Artist-Driven Fracturing Of Polyhedral Surface Meshes, Tyler Casella

Master's Theses

This paper presents a robust and artist driven method for fracturing a surface polyhedral mesh via fracture maps. A fracture map is an undirected simple graph with nodes representing positions in UV-space and fracture lines along the surface of a mesh. Fracture maps allow artists to concisely and rapidly define, edit, and apply fracture patterns onto the surface of their mesh.

The method projects a fracture map onto a polyhedral surface and splits its triangles accordingly. The polyhedral mesh is then segmented based on fracture lines to produce a set of independent surfaces called fracture components, containing the visible surface …

Vehicular Motion Sensor: Developing A Wide-Range Motion Sensing Alarm System, Joshua Isaacson

Senior Honors Theses

Vehicular safety has become a serious concern in recent years. Many drivers have difficulty backing out of parking spaces, especially when large trucks and sport utility vehicles block the peripheral view from smaller vehicles. This can lead to accidents and pedestrian injuries when drivers are unable to see or do not pay careful attention to their surroundings.

Vehicular motion sensor systems can alert drivers of approaching obstacles when attempting to back out of parking spaces with limited visibility. This thesis aims to explain the limitations of current systems and the research conducted by the author to develop a prototype for …

Improving Deaf Accessibility To Web-Based Multimedia, Brent N. Shiver

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Internet technologies have expanded rapidly over the past two decades, making information of all sorts more readily available. Not only are they more cost-effective than traditional media, these new media have contributed to quality and convenience. However, proliferation of video and audio media on the internet creates an inadvertent disadvantage for deaf Internet users. Despite technological and legislative milestones in recent decades in making television and movies more accessible, there has been little progress with online access. A major obstacle to providing captions for internet media is the high cost of captioning and transcribing services.

To respond to this problem, …

Cis Map Drawer Visualization System, Hanye Xu, David Ebert

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is the government agency that manages immigration to the United States. They are not only working on filing documents, but also analyzing those data they have. They require help from a visualization system to know the trend of immigration among offices across the country over time. We developed a project called CIS Map Drawer that is used to help build a visualization system for USCIS in order to analyze immigration data easily. This system makes use of a map view, a calendar visual representation, line charts, pixel drawing and other analysis tools to improve …

Is Real-Time Mobile Content-Based Image Retrieval Feasible?, Colin G. Graber, Anup Mohan, Yung-Hsiang Lu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is a method of searching through a database of images by using another image as a query instead of text. Recent advances in the processing power of smart phones and tablets, collectively known as mobile devices, have prompted researchers to attempt to construct mobile CBIR systems. Most of the research that has been conducted on mobile CBIR has focused on improving either its accuracy or its run-time, but not both simultaneously. We set out to answer the question: is real-time CBIR with manageable accuracy possible on current mobile devices? To find the answer to this question, …

Absorption Simulation ( Absim ) Software Development, Vipul Vishnu Bhat, Ming Qu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Researchers working on air conditioning systems currently use a software called ABSIM ( Absorption Simulation ) to evaluate current absorption systems or simulate new system designs. ABSIM was developed at Oak Ridge National Labs in the 1980s and the latest platform it is compatible with is Windows XP. ABSIM is not compatible on newer platforms and is not very user friendly. A lot of the actions involved in using ABSIM aren’t very intuitive. The goal is to develop a more user friendly simulation program that is based off of ABSIM and see to it that the program can be deployed …

Dust To Digital: Electronic Document & Record Management For The Broome County Department Of Public Works- Engineering Divison, Scott R. Mastin

MPA Capstone Projects 2006 - 2015

The Broome County Department of Public Works- Engineering Division is currently preparing to implement an Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS) to store their increasing number of digital records and to manage existing paper records as they are digitized. This study examines Division integrate electronic document and record management into their organization.

Judging Emotion From Low-Pass Filtered Naturalistic Emotional Speech, John Snel, Charlie Cullen

Conference papers

In speech, low frequency regions play a significant role in paralinguistic communication such as the conveyance of emotion or mood. The extent to which lower frequencies signify or contribute to affective speech is still an area for investigation. To investigate paralinguistic cues, and remove interference from linguistic cues, researchers can low-pass filter the speech signal on the assumption that certain acoustic cues characterizing affect are still discernible. Low-pass filtering is a practical technique to investigate paralinguistic phenomena, and is used here to investigate the inference of naturalistic emotional speech. This paper investigates how listeners perceive the level of Activation, and …

The Mayaarch3d Project: A 3d Webgis For Analyzing Ancient Architecture And Landscapes, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Fabio Remondino, Giorgio Agugario, Gabrio Girardi

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

There is a need in the humanities for a 3D WebGIS with analytical tools that allow researchers to analyze 3D models linked to spatially referenced data. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow for complex spatial analysis of 2.5D data. For example, they offer bird’s eye views of landscapes with extruded building footprints, but one cannot ‘get on the ground’ and interact with true 3D models from a pedestrian perspective. Meanwhile, 3D models and virtual environments visualize data in 3D space, but analytical tools are simple rotation or lighting effects. The MayaArch3D Project is developing a 3D WebGIS—called QueryArch3D—to allow these two …

Enhancing Electromagnetic Side-Channel Analysis In An Operational Environment, David P. Montminy

Theses and Dissertations

Side-channel attacks exploit the unintentional emissions from cryptographic devices to determine the secret encryption key. This research identifies methods to make attacks demonstrated in an academic environment more operationally relevant. Algebraic cryptanalysis is used to reconcile redundant information extracted from side-channel attacks on the AES key schedule. A novel thresholding technique is used to select key byte guesses for a satisfiability solver resulting in a 97.5% success rate despite failing for 100% of attacks using standard methods. Two techniques are developed to compensate for differences in emissions from training and test devices dramatically improving the effectiveness of cross device template …

Radio Frequency Based Programmable Logic Controller Anomaly Detection, Samuel J. Stone

Theses and Dissertations

The research goal involved developing improved methods for securing Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) devices against unauthorized entry and mitigating the risk of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) attack by detecting malicious software and/or trojan hardware. A Correlation Based Anomaly Detection (CBAD) process was developed to enable 1) software anomaly detection discriminating between various operating conditions to detect malfunctioning or malicious software, firmware, etc., and 2) hardware component discrimination discriminating between various hardware components to detect malfunctioning or counterfeit, trojan, etc., components.