Computer Engineering Commons^™

Pinpoint: Efficient And Effective Resource Isolation For Mobile Security And Privacy, Paul Ratazzi, Ashok Bommisetti, Nian Ji, Wenliang Du

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - All Scholarship

Virtualization is frequently used to isolate untrusted processes and control their access to sensitive resources. However, isolation usually carries a price in terms of less resource sharing and reduced inter-process communication. In an open architecture such as Android, this price and its impact on performance, usability, and transparency must be carefully considered. Although previous efforts in developing general-purpose isolation solutions have shown that some of these negative sideeffects can be mitigated, doing so involves overcoming significant design challenges by incorporating numerous additional platform complexities not directly related to improved security. Thus, the general purpose solutions become inefficient and burdensome if …

Presentation On Evaluating The Creation And Preservation Challenges Of Photogrammetry-Based 3d Models, Michael J. Bennett

UConn Library Presentations

No abstract provided.

Corrigendum: Responses To Catastrophic Agi Risk: A Survey (2015 Phys. Scr. 90 018001), Kaj Sotala, Roman V. Yampolskiy

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Creation And Preservation Challenges Of Photogrammetry-Based 3d Models, Michael J. Bennett

Published Works

Though the roots of photogrammetry can be traced back to photography’s earliest days, only recent advances in both digital technology and software applications have put the possibilities of 3D modeling from 2D source images in the hands of the greater cultural heritage community. The possibilities of such 3D digital rendering are many. With these possibilities come unique digital preservation challenges. This study explores basic close-range photogrammetry as applied to sample archival objects. Additionally, the latest BagIt and ZIP-based bundling formats along with repository-based solutions are also surveyed as potential 3D data management and archiving aggregators for resulting 3D models.

Design And Development Of Personal Geoservices For Universities, James Carswell, Andrea Ballatore, Thoa Pham, Junjun Yin, Linh Truonghong

Books/Book chapters

Personal GeoServices are emerging as an interaction paradigm linking users to information rich environments like a university campus or to Big Data sources like the Internet of Things by delivering spatially intelligent web-services. OpenStreetMap (OSM) constitutes a valuable source of spatial base-data that can be extracted, integrated, and utilised with such heterogeneous data sources for free. In this paper, we present a Personal GeoServices application built on OSM spatial data and university-specific business data for staff, faculty, and students. While generic products such as Google Maps and Google Earth enable basic forms of spatial exploration, the domain of a university …

Image Segmentation Using Fuzzy-Spatial Taxon Cut, Lauren Barghout

MODVIS Workshop

Images convey multiple meanings that depend on the context in which the viewer perceptually organizes the scene. This presents a problem for automated image segmentation, because it adds uncertainty to the process of selecting which objects to include or not include within a segment. I’ll discuss the implementation of a fuzzy-logic-natural-vision-processing engine that solves this problem by assuming the scene architecture prior to processing. The scene architecture, a standardized natural-scene-perception-taxonomy comprised of a hierarchy of nested spatial-taxons. Spatial-taxons are regions (pixel-sets) that are figure-like, in that they are perceived as having a contour, are either `thing-like', or a `group of …

A Balanced Secondary Structure Predictor, Md Nasrul Islam

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Secondary structure (SS) refers to the local spatial organization of the polypeptide backbone atoms of a protein. Accurate prediction of SS is a vital clue to resolve the 3D structure of protein. SS has three different components- helix (H), beta (E) and coil (C). Most SS predictors are imbalanced as their accuracy in predicting helix and coil are high, however significantly low in the beta. The objective of this thesis is to develop a balanced SS predictor which achieves good accuracies in all three SS components. We proposed a novel approach to solve this problem by combining a genetic algorithm …

Two Correspondence Problems Easier Than One, Aaron Michaux, Zygmunt Pizlo

MODVIS Workshop

Computer vision research rarely makes use of symmetry in stereo reconstruction despite its established importance in perceptual psychology. Such stereo reconstructions produce visually satisfying figures with precisely located points and lines, even when input images have low or moderate resolution. However, because few invariants exist, there are no known general approaches to solving symmetry correspondence on real images. The problem is significantly easier when combined with the binocular correspondence problem, because each correspondence problem provides strong non-overlapping constraints on the solution space. We demonstrate a system that leverages these constraints to produce accurate stereo models from pairs of binocular images …

Assessing Impact Of Exposure To Cyberphysical Systems On Student Interest In Information Technology Careers, Mayari I. Serrano Anazco

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

The main purpose of this project is to determine if the use of Information Technology (IT) tools, specifically cyberphysical devices, in outreach sessions will promote interest of young individuals in pursuing IT careers. The Diversity office of Purdue’s College of Technology offers a number of outreach sessions to a variety of target populations throughout the year. Each department in the college has an opportunity to present a session related to a field of study offered by the department. The research was carried out thru the Spring 2015 semester during the DOiT and Vision outreach programs offered through the college’s Diversity …

Eliciting Knowledge Bases With Defeasible Reasoning: A Comparative Analysis With Machine Learning, Peter Keogh

Dissertations

This thesis compares the ability of an implementation of Defeasible Reasoning (via Argumentation Theory) to model a construct (mental workload) with Machine Learning. In order to perform this comparison a defeasible reasoning system was designed and implemented in software. This software was used to elicit a knowledge base from an expert in an experiment which was then compared with machine learning. The central findings of this thesis were that the knowledge based approach was better at predicting an objective performance measure, time, than machine learning. However, machine learning was better equiped to identify another object measure task membership. The knowledge …

Maturity Of Cloud Application Interoperability Frameworks For Small To Medium Enterprises, John Warde

Dissertations

Cloud computing has many benefits and organisations have bought into the cost effective and elastic solutions provided by major players in the market. However, cloud computing and Cloud Service Providers (CSP) are still evolving, hence there are differences in how customers connect with each provider to the orchestrate application lifecycle management. A lack of standards can create vendor lock-in. This work investigates current research and possible solutions to the vendor lock-in problem through the use of Cloud Interoperability or multi-cloud frameworks. Software developers and organisations can use these frameworks which abstract the differences between CSPs and mitigate vendor lock-in. A …

An Evaluation Of The Use Of Diversity To Improve The Accuracy Of Predicted Ratings In Recommender Systems, Gillian Browne

Dissertations

The diversity; versus accuracy trade off, has become an important area of research within recommender systems as online retailers attempt to better serve their customers and gain a competitive advantage through an improved customer experience. This dissertation attempted to evaluate the use of diversity measures in predictive models as a means of improving predicted ratings. Research literature outlines a number of influencing factors such as personality, taste, mood and social networks in addition to approaches to the diversity challenge post recommendation. A number of models were applied included DecisionStump, Linear Regression, J48 Decision Tree and Naive Bayes. Various evaluation metrics …

Investigating The Relationship Between Organizational Innovation Capability And Firm Performance With Irish Smes, Maryam Bukhamsin

Dissertations

The topic of innovation capability and its relationship with performance has been examined by several previous studies. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between innovation capability aspects proposed by the Innovation Value Institute (IVI) and firms’ overall performance. IVI is specialised in developing organizational and innovation capability in order to improve firms’ performance. In addition, this study presents the most important aspects of innovation capability that are directly and positively associated with firms’ overall financial and operational performance. This empirical study was conducted on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ireland; the data was collected from …

Non-Invasive Detection Of Moving And Stationary Human With Wifi, Chenshu Wu, Zheng Yang, Zimu Zhou, Xuefeng Liu, Yunhao Liu, Jiannong Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Non-invasive human sensing based on radio signals has attracted a great deal of research interest and fostered a broad range of innovative applications of localization, gesture recognition, smart health-care, etc., for which a primary primitive is to detect human presence. Previous works have studied the detection of moving humans via signal variations caused by human movements. For stationary people, however, existing approaches often employ a prerequisite scenario-tailored calibration of channel profile in human-free environments. Based on in-depth understanding of human motion induced signal attenuation reflected by PHY layer channel state information (CSI), we propose DeMan, a unified scheme for non-invasive …

Motion In The Field: A Study Of Movement In Computer Science, Catherine Martin

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In this project, I use a system that combines the use of a motion controller to obtain information about physical motion of a user with the transmission of outputs to a quadcopter that interacts with the physical environment. In the manual mode, the user sends commands to the quadcopter using hand controls. I utilized an existing system but increased usability to prevent accidental flight and created commands that are more intuitive for the user. In the automatic mode, the user gives a single command to the motion controller and it runs the A* path planning algorithm over a representation of …

Naturalized Communication And Testing, Marly Roncken, Swetha Mettala Gilla, Hoon Park, Navaneeth Prasannakumar Jamadagni, Christopher Cowan, Ivan Sutherland

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We ”naturalize” the handshake communication links of a self-timed system by assigning the capabilities of filling and draining a link and of storing its full or empty status to the link itself. This contrasts with assigning these capabilities to the joints, the modules connected by the links, as was previously done. Under naturalized communication, the differences between Micropipeline, GasP, Mousetrap, and Click circuits are seen only in the links — the joints become identical; past, present, and future link and joint designs become interchangeable. We also “naturalize” the actions of a self-timed system, giving actions status equal to states — …

Segmentation Of Pulmonary Nodules In Computed Tomography Using A Regression Neural Network Approach And Its Application To The Lung Image Database Consortium And Image Database Resource Initiative Dataset, Temesguen Messay, Russell C. Hardie, Timothy R. Tuinstra

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present new pulmonary nodule segmentation algorithms for computed tomography (CT). These include a fully-automated (FA) system, a semi-automated (SA) system, and a hybrid system. Like most traditional systems, the new FA system requires only a single user-supplied cue point. On the other hand, the SA system represents a new algorithm class requiring 8 user-supplied control points. This does increase the burden on the user, but we show that the resulting system is highly robust and can handle a variety of challenging cases. The proposed hybrid system starts with the FA system.

If improved segmentation results are needed, the SA …

Object Tracking Through The Use Of Color Hue Image Processing, Zachary R. Sabey

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many industrial and commercial applications today are beginning to use autonomous systems to increase productivity and cut costs in production and manpower. Most of these applications are only semi autonomous; they still need assistance from a human to either start up or receive continual instructions. With the improvement of image processing techniques, camera processing capabilities and more efficient vehicles, a new wave of fully autonomous vehicles can be implemented. A simple system that uses a dedicated image processor connected to an RC vehicle can be developed to provide an example for the new techniques currently available. The Pixycam, a dedicated …

Tweetement: Pseudo-Relevance Feedback For Twitter Search, Kanatbay Bektemirov

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Microblogging platforms such as Twitter let users communicate with short messages. Due to the messages’ short content and the users’ tendency to type short queries while searching, it is particularly challenging to locate useful tweets that match user queries. The fundamental problems of word mismatch due to ambiguity are especially acute. To solve this problem, this thesis explores and compares multiple automatic query expansion methods that involve the most frequent hashtags and keywords. We built a Web service that provides real-time Twitter Search results incorporating automatic query expansion. Six pseudo-relevance feedback methods were studied and the numbers indicate that results …

Experimental Boss Design And Testing, Joseph P. Mistretta

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the years, gaming has developed rapidly from simple pixel-based experiences to fully blown three-dimensional worlds. As developing technologies improve, so does the complexity and flexibility of what can be created. Encounters, along with all aspects of any gaming experience, have evolved along with the technologies that create them. These intense combat instances, often times referred to as “bosses”, represent a chance for the developer to challenge player skill, cooperation, and coordination. In addition to being major challenges, encounters also allow players to feel a sense of progression as they learn and adapt to mechanics incorporated within an encounter’s design. …

Vcare: A Personal Emergency Response System To Promote Safe And Independent Living Among Elders Staying By Themselves In Community Or Residential Settings, Priyankar Bhattacharjee

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

‘Population aging’ is a growing concern for most of us living in the twenty first century, primarily because many of us in the next few years will have a senior person to care for - spending money towards their healthcare expenditures AND/OR having to balance a full-time job with the responsibility of care-giving, travelling from another city to be with this elderly citizen who might be our parent, grand-parent or even community elders. As informal care-givers, if somehow we were able to monitor the day-to-day activities of our elderly dependents, and be alerted when wrong happens to them that would …

Micro-Policies: Formally Verified, Tag-Based Security Monitors, Arthur Azevedo De Amorim, Maxime Denes, Nick Giannarakis, Cătălin Hriţcu, Benjamin C. Pierce, Antal Spector-Zabusky, Andrew Tolmach

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent advances in hardware design have demonstrated mechanisms allowing a wide range of low-level security policies (or micro-policies) to be expressed using rules on metadata tags. We propose a methodology for defining and reasoning about such tag-based reference monitors in terms of a high-level “symbolic machine,” and we use this methodology to define and formally verify micro-policies for dynamic sealing, compartmentalization, control-flow integrity, and memory safety; in addition, we show how to use the tagging mechanism to protect its own integrity. For each micro-policy, we prove by refinement that the symbolic machine instantiated with the policy’s rules embodies a high-level …

Self-Organizing Neural Networks Integrating Domain Knowledge And Reinforcement Learning, Teck-Hou Teng, Ah-Hwee Tan, Jacek M. Zurada

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The use of domain knowledge in learning systems is expected to improve learning efficiency and reduce model complexity. However, due to the incompatibility with knowledge structure of the learning systems and real-time exploratory nature of reinforcement learning (RL), domain knowledge cannot be inserted directly. In this paper, we show how self-organizing neural networks designed for online and incremental adaptation can integrate domain knowledge and RL. Specifically, symbol-based domain knowledge is translated into numeric patterns before inserting into the self-organizing neural networks. To ensure effective use of domain knowledge, we present an analysis of how the inserted knowledge is used by …

Formal Specification And Refinement Of The Navigation Tasks Of Autonomous Robots, Eman Rabiah

Theses

Autonomous robots are hybrid systems whose role in our daily life is becoming increasingly critical. They are tasked with various activities requiring reliability, safety, and correctness of their software-controlled behavior. Formal methods have been proved effective in addressing development issues associated with these software qualities. However, even though autonomous robot navigation is a primordial function, there is no research dealing with enhancing reliability of the navigation algorithms. Thus, our focus is to investigate this type of algorithms, and specifically path planning, a fundamental and critical functionality supporting autonomy. We formally address the issue of enhancing reliability of the widely-used A* …

Reality Mining Techniques Applied To Telecommunication Data, Sunil Maharjan

Theses

In this thesis, the application of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) techniques are examined in order to further develop and improve the field of Reality Mining. Reality Mining refers to the collection of machine sensed environmental data, from which, it is hoped future human social behaviour can be predicted. Large datasets for Reality Mining study have been generated by recording the patterns of human activity and social interactions over an extended period of time. Reality Mining techniques can provide information on important social clues for the better understanding of how humans live their lives. This information can then be used to help …

Synthetic Aperture Radar: Rapid Detection Of Target Motion In Matlab, Daniel S. Kassen

Master's Theses

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has come into widespread use in several civilian and military applications. The focus of this paper is the military application of imaging point targets captured by an airborne SAR platform. Using the traditional SAR method of determining target motion by analyzing the difference between subsequent images takes a relatively large amount of processing resources. Using methods in this thesis, target motion can be estimated before even a single image is obtained, reducing the amount of time and power used by a significantly large amount. This thesis builds on work done by Brain Zaharri and David So. …

Using Unrestricted Mobile Sensors To Infer Tapped And Traced User Inputs, Trang Duyen Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

As of January 2014, 58% of Americans over the age of 18 own a smart phone. Of these smart phones, Android devices provide some security by requiring that third-party application developers declare to users which components and features their applications will access. However, many of the real-time environmental sensors on devices are exempt from this requirement. We evaluate the possibility of exploiting this freedom to discretely use these sensors and expand on previous work by developing an application that can use the gyroscope and accelerometer to interpret what the user has written, even of trace input is used. Trace input …

Enabling Runtime Self-Coordination Of Reconfigurable Embedded Smart Cameras In Distributed Networks, Franck Ulrich Yonga Yonga

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Smart camera networks are real-time distributed embedded systems able to perform computer vision using multiple cameras. This new approach is a confluence of four major disciplines (computer vision, image sensors, embedded computing and sensor networks) and has been subject of intensive work in the past decades. The recent advances in computer vision and network communication, and the rapid growing in the field of high-performance computing, especially using reconfigurable devices, have enabled the design of more robust smart camera systems. Despite these advancements, the effectiveness of current networked vision systems (compared to their operating costs) is still disappointing; the main reason …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Segmentation Of Pulmonary Nodules In Computed Tomography Using A Regression Neural Network Approach And Its Application To The Lung Image Database Consortium And Image Database Resource Initiative Dataset, Temesguen Messay, Russell C. Hardie, Timothy R. Tuinstra

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present new pulmonary nodule segmentation algorithms for computed tomography (CT). These include a fully-automated (FA) system, a semi-automated (SA) system, and a hybrid system. Like most traditional systems, the new FA system requires only a single user-supplied cue point. On the other hand, the SA system represents a new algorithm class requiring 8 user-supplied control points. This does increase the burden on the user, but we show that the resulting system is highly robust and can handle a variety of challenging cases. The proposed hybrid system starts with the FA system. If improved segmentation results are needed, the SA …