Computer Engineering Commons^™

Robot Force Velocity Control Using Expert System For Control Mode Changes, William R. Doggett

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The most important property of an automated mechanical system is reliable execution of a specified task. Automated mechanical systems work best in precisely structured environments where all operations are repeatable. Typically, these systems are difficult to modify and expensive to install. Sensors can be used to detect disturbances, thus reducing hardware cost by offsetting the need for precise rigid construction components. Sensors, however, increase the complexity and cost of the control software. Efficient methods of reacting to sensor information during automated system operation are required to reduce software complexity and expense.

This thesis analyzes a robotic construction task and describes …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 4, April 1993, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

An eight page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

A Systolic Simulation And Transformation System, Ronald I. Greenberg, H.-C. Oh

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper presents a CAD tool, SystSim, to ease the design of systolic systems. Given a high-level, functional description of processors, and a high-level description of their interconnection, SystSim will perform simulations and provide graphical output. SystSim will also perform transformations such as retiming, which eases use of the methodology of Leiserson and Saxe of designing a system with broadcasting and then obtaining a systolic system through retiming.

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 3, March 1993, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

A twelve page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

Design Of A Hardware Discrete Event Simulation Coprocessor, David W. Daniel

Theses and Dissertations

A hardware discrete event simulation (DES) coprocessor was designed to eliminate synchronization overhead as a possible bottleneck. The target architecture is an eight node Intel iPSC/2 Hypercube, but this design has application to future CPU designs that wish to incorporate on-chip architectural features to better support parallel processor synchronization. A structural description of a general-purpose DES hardware coprocessor is given with approximately 90 percent of the components written at the gate level. The remaining components use low-level behavioral descriptions. While the DES coprocessor microcode implements the Chandy-Misra protocol, general-purpose support for a wide-range of protocols was a primary hardware design …

Matching Points To Lines: Sonar-Based Localization For The Psubot, Kevin Blythe Stanton

Dissertations and Theses

The PSUBOT (pronounced pea-es-you-bought) is an autonomous wheelchair robot for persons with certain disabilities. Its use of voice recognition and autonomous navigation enable it to carry out high level commands with little or no user assistance. We first describe the goals, constraints, and capabilities of the overall system including path planning and obstacle avoidance. We then focus on localization-the ability of the robot to locate itself in space. Odometry, a compass, and an algorithm which matches points to lines are each employed to accomplish this task. The matching algorithm (which matches "points" to "lines") is the main contribution to this …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 2, February 1993, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

A fourteen page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

A Sign-To-Speech Translation System, Koka Veera Raghava Rao

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis describes sign-to-speech translation using neural networks. Sign language translation is an interesting but difficult problem for which neural network techniques seem promising because of their ability to adjust to the user's hand movements, which is not possible to do by most other techniques. However, even using neural networks and artificial sign languages, the translation is hard, and the best-known system, that of Fels & Hinton (1993), is capable of translating only 66 root words and 203 words including their conjugations. This research improves their results to 790 root signs and 2718 words including their conjugations while preserving a …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 1, January 1993, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

A ten page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

Visual Process Language: An Environment That Enhances Inventiveness In The System Development Process -- A Theoretical Perspective, Wita Wojtkowski, Waclaw G. Wojtkowski

IT and Supply Chain Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper provides a theoretical perspective on the effect of computer support on creativity. The assertion is made that artifacts of IS do not substantially differ from those of art and science, and that the creative processes leading to the artifacts are similar. It further proposes that the use of newly available computer technology, specifically, the Visual Process Language (VPL) will have much to offer in terms of augmenting creativity when constructing IS artfacts. We postulate that VPL assists the first insight, preparation and illumination steps of the creative process, and that both Association/Images and Progressive Abstraction techniques are embedded …

Graduate Catalog Center For Computer And Information Sciences, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

The Anatomy Of Programming Languages, Alice E. Fischer, Frances S. Grodzinsky

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Book Series

The specific goals of this book are to help students learn: *To reason clearly about programming languages. *To develop principles of communication so that we can evaluate the wisdom and utility of the decisions made in the process of language design. *To break down language into its major components, and each component in to small pieces so that we can focus on competing alternatives. *To define a consistent and general set of terms for the components out of which programming languages are built, and the concepts on which they are based. * To use these terms to describe existing languages, …

Doctor Of Education Specialization In Computing And Information Technology, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Graduate Catalog Center For Computer And Information Sciences 1993-1994 Catalog, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

A Characterization Of The Computational Power Of Rule-Based Visualization, Kenneth C. Cox, Gruia-Catalin Roman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Declarative visualization is a paradigm in which the process of visualization is treated as a mapping from some domain (typically a program) to an image. One means of declaring such mappings is through the use of rules which specify the relationship between the domain and the image. This paper examines the computational power of such rule-based mappings. Computational power is measure using three separate criteria. The first of these uses the Chomsky hierarchy, in which computational power is treated as string-acceptance; with this criterion we are able to show that certain rule-based models are equivalent in power to Turing machines. …

A Fault Tolerant Connectionist Architecture For Construction Of Logic Proofs, Gadi Pinkas

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This chapter considers the problems of expressing logic and constructing proofs in fault tolerant connectionist networks that are based on energy minimalism. Given a first-order-logic knowledge base and a bound k, a symmetric network is constructed (like a Boltzman machine or a Hopfield network) that searches for a proof for a given query. If a resolution-based proof of length no longer than k exists, then the global minima of the energy function that is associated with the network represent such proofs. If no proof exist then the global minima indicate the lack of a proof. The network that is generated …

The Study Of Computer Science Concepts Through Game Play, Benjamin M. Weber

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

No abstract provided.

Reasoning About Synchrony Illustrated On Three Models Of Concurrency, Gruia-Catalin Roman, Jerome Plun

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper presents a model of concurrency (Dynamic Synchrony) whose distinctive feature is a novel formal treatment of synchronization. Synchrony is defined as the coordinated execution of two or more actions. The dynamic aspect comes from the fact that the definition of which actions must be executed synchronously can change freely during the execution of the program. This unique modeling capability comes with a UNITY-stype assertional logic that can be applied to program verification and derivation. This paper shows that the proposed proof logic can be used to verify programs expressed using other models of foncurrency without having to translate …

Improving The Speed Of A Distributed Checkpointing Algorithm, Sachin Garg, Kenneth F. Wong

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper shows how Koo and Toueg's distributed checkpointing algorithm can be modified so as to substantially reduce the average message volume. It attempts to avoid O(n{squared}) messages by using dependency knowledge to reduce the number of checkpoint request messages. Lemmas on consistency and termination are also included.

Objective Evaluation Of Radiation Treatment Plans, Nilesh L. Jain, Michael G. Kahn

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The evaluation of radiation treatment plans involves making trade-offs among doses delivered to the tumor volumes and nearby normal tissues. Evaluating state-of-the-art three-dimensional (3D) plans is a difficult task because of the huge amount of planning data that needs to be deciphered. Multiattribute utility theory provides a methodology for specifying trade-offs and selecting the optimal plan from many competing lans. Using multiattribute utility theory, we are developing a clinically meaningful objective plan-evaluation model for 3D radiation treatment plans. Our model incorporates three of the factors involved in radiation treatment evaluation - treatment preferences of the radiation oncologist, clinical condition of …

The Pessimism Behind Optimistic Simulation, George Varghese, Roger D. Chamberlain, William E. Weihl

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

In this paper we make an analogy between the time that storage must be maintained in an optimistic simulation and the blocking time in a conservative simulation. By exploring this analogy, we design two new Global Virtual Time (GVT) protocols for Time Warp systems. The first simple protocol is based on the null message scheme proposed for clock advancement in some conservative approaches; this yields what we call Local Guaranteed Time. Our main contribution is a second new protocol that is inspired by Misra's circulating marker scheme for deadlock recovery in conservative simulations, and appears to have advantages over previous …

A Unified Model For Shared-Memory And Message-Passing Systems, Kenneth Goldman, Katherine Yelick

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A unified model of distributed systems that accomodates both shared-memory and message-passing communication is proposed. An extension of the I/O automaton model of Lynch and Tuttle, the model provides a full range of types of atomic accesses to shared memory, from basic reads and writes to read-modify-write. In addition to supporting the specification and verification of shared memory algorithms, the unified model is particularly helpful for proving correspondences between atomic shared objects and invocation-response systems and for proving the correctness of systems that contain both message passing and shared memory (such as a network of shared-memory multiprocessors or a distributed …

Real-Time Admission Control Algorithms With Delay And Loss Guarantees In Atm Networks, Apostolos Dailianas, Andreas D. Bovopoulos

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A multimedia ATM network is shared by media streams with different performance requirements. For media streams such as file transfers, the preservation of bursts and the provision of guarantees for loss probability at the burst level is of primary importance, while, for media streams such as voice, loss guarantees at the cell level are sufficient. Continuous media have stringent delay jitter requirements. Finally, some applications require loss-free transmission. In this paper, the first complete traffic management scheme for multimedia ATM networks is introduced. The traffic management scheme supports four different classes of traffic, each of which has different performance requirements …

Clothespins On Timelines: Utilities And The Interval Representation Of Time, R. P. Loui, Jersey Chen

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We discuss the problem of representing utility in planning systems that are based on Allen's [83] popular ontology for planning, which represents actions and events as time intervals. We identify a small number of primitive functions on time intervals which may be helpful in representing preference and also in eliminating dominated actions. Assuming that utility can be decomposed to take advantage of these primitives, these functions provide one solution to the problem of specifying utility in such expressive planning languages. We identify a restricted class of utility expressions that generate linear programming problems. The contribution is not deep, but is …

Fril - A Fractal Intermediate Language, Ron Cytron, David Shields

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This document describes the motivation, language description, and experience using FrIL, an intermediate language for a compiler's "middle-end." FrIL has subbessfully supported a two-semester compiler construction sequence, where the first semester included code generation from a C-like language and the second semester included advanced data flow analysis and program transformation.

Dynamic Reconfiguration With I/O Abstraction, Bala Swaminathan, Kenneth J. Goldman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Dynamic reconfiguration is explored in the context of I/O abstraction, a new programming model that defines the communication structure of a system in terms of connections among well-defined data interfaces for the modules in the system. The properties of I/O abstraction, particularly the clear separation of computation from communication and the availability of a module's state information, help simplify the reconfiguration strategy. Both logical and physical reconfiguration are discussed, with an emphasis on a new module migration mechanism that (1) takes advantage of the underlying I/O abstraction model, (2) avoids the expense and complication of state extraction techniques, (3) minimizes …

Logical Interference In Symmetric Connectionist Networks, Gadi Pinkas

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This work delineates the relation between logic and symmetric neural networks. The motivation is two-fold: 1) to study the capabilities and limitations of connectionist networks with respect to knowledge representatoin; and 2) to develop a new kind of inference negine that is expressive, massively parallel, capable of coping with nonmonotonic or noisy knowledge and capable of learning. The thesis shows that propositional logic can be implemented efficiently in networks where hidden units allow the representation of arbitrary constraints. An inference engine is constructed which can obtain its knowledge either by compiling symbolic rules or by learning them inductively from examples. …

Doctoral Program Computing Technology In Education 1993-1994, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

The Washington University Multimedia System, William D. Richard, Jerome R. Cox Jr., Brian Gottlieb, Ken Krieger

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The Washington University Multimedia System (MMS) is a complete multimedia system capable of transmitting and receiving video, audio, and radiological images, in addition to normal network traffic, over the Washingon University broadband ATM network. The MMS consists of an ATMizer and three multimedia subsystems. The ATMizer implements the host interface, the interface to the ATM network, and the interface to the three multimedia subsystems. The video sybsystem encodes and decodes JPEG compressed video using two hardware compression engines. The audio subsystem encodes and decodes CD-quality stereo audio. The high-speed radiological image subsystem reformats radiological image data transmitted by a dedicated …

Research Proposal: Preference Acquisition Through Reconciliation Of Inconsistencies, Nilesh L. Jain

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The quality of performance of a decision-support system (or an expert system) is determined to a large extent by its underlying preference model (or knowledge base). The difficulties in preference and knowledge acquisition make them a major focus of current research in decision-support and expert systems. Researchers have used various concepts to develop promising acquisition techniques. One of the concepts used is knowledge maintenence where the knowledge base is changed in response to incorrect or inadequate performance by the expert system. This dissertation investigates a preference acquisition technique based on the reconciliation of inconsistencies between the preference model and the …