Computer Engineering Commons^™

Active Listening And Reassurance In Text-Based Virtual Health Coaches, Ghulam Hussain

Dissertations

Conversational agents (CAs) have strong potential to support health and physical wellbeing through text-based coaching, but they remain limited in their ability to demonstrate supportive social behaviours that are important in human coaching interactions. In particular, relatively little is known about how Active Listening and Reassurance are perceived, modelled, and evaluated in text-based virtual healthcare coaching, or how such behaviours should be adapted to individual users.

This dissertation investigates how supportive interaction behaviours can enhance text based virtual health coaching, with an initial focus on Active Listening and Reassurance and a later theoretical emphasis on Active Listening. Across five unique …

The Psychology Behind Ai-Generated Phishing And Social Engineering Attacks, A’Shya Reynolds

School of Cybersecurity Master's Level Projects and Papers

Cybercrime has evolved significantly with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), transforming traditional phishing and social engineering attacks into highly sophisticated and personalized threats. While early phishing attempts relied on generic messaging and low success rates, modern AI-driven attacks leverage advanced data analytics, natural language processing, and behavioral prediction to manipulate victims more effectively.

This research examines how cybercriminals utilize AI to enhance psychological manipulation techniques in phishing and social engineering attacks, increasing victim susceptibility. Drawing from interdisciplinary literature in cybersecurity and psychology, this study explores key psychological mechanisms, including cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and decision-making processes that influence victim …

Drones Detection Via Skeletonization And Small-Object-Aware Detr, Gissell Torres, Delio Rincon

Center for Cybersecurity

Detecting drones in video streaming environments remains challenging in computer vision due to scale variation and background complexity. Building up from prior work in real-time detection and skeletonization for streaming environments, this study aims to improve small object detection through Skeletonization and a Small-Object-Aware Detection Transformer framework, which uses DETR technology as a foundational step toward reliable motion prediction in dynamic aerial scenes. A transformer-based detection model was trained on a drone dataset converted to COCO format and evaluated using standard COCO metrics, including AP, AP50, and AP_small. Initial testing revealed low-confidence predictions, suggesting limitations in backbone freezing and training …

Optimizing Auv Perception For Competitive Underwater Robotics: Analyzing Performance And Simplicity Of Machine Vision Hardware, Joseph King

Honors Theses

Underwater robotics is a growing field with many practical applications, such as pipeline and offshore structure monitoring, deep sea mining, mine reconnaissance/removal, and marine environmental monitoring. USM’s Robotics Club will participate in the international RoboSub competition, where student-led teams build autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that perform a variety of tasks within a pool requiring camera-based object detection. This project analyzes affordable hardware and software options for providing machine vision to USM’s future RoboSub AUV. The performance of an ESP32-CAM microcontroller, Raspberry Pi 5, and Jetson Orin Nano single-board computers running FOMO and YOLO object detection models was compared. These models …

How Do Social Network Models Compare To All-To-All Models For Forecasting Tuberculosis Epidemics? A Mathematical Modeling Study, Masabho Peter Milali, Hae-Young Kim, George Corliss, Anna Bershteyn

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Background. Mathematical models guide tuberculosis (TB) target-setting, yet most assume homogeneous “all-to-all” mixing. We compared projected intervention impacts between an all-to-all compartmental model and a Barabási–Albert (BA) scale‑free social network model under otherwise identical disease assumptions.

Methods. We calibrated transmission parameters so both models produced similar baseline trends, then introduced vaccination (coverage 30–70%; efficacy 80–95%) and treatment (20–50% increases in recovery) after a 400‑day burn‑in. Outcomes were assessed 300 days post‑intervention.

Results. Under 60% coverage, increasing vaccine efficacy from 80% to 95% yielded smaller projected reductions in active TB with the network model than with all‑to‑all mixing. Treatment improvements showed …

An Integrated Bayesian Network-Based Zero Trust Model To Quantify Cyber Risk In Small-Medium Businesses, Ahmed Abdelmagid

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Small-medium businesses (SMBs) play a pivotal role in the worldwide economy as they constitute the most considerable portion of businesses in developed countries like the UK and the US. As such, SMBs are likely targets of cybercrimes by malicious agents because of their vulnerable IT systems. The digital infrastructure of SMBs is more likely to be hit by cyberattacks than large businesses due to many factors that facilitate hackers’ missions. These factors include a limited financial budget devoted to cybersecurity, a lack of knowledge, an underrating of how dangerous cyber threats are, and a shortage of IT expertise. The enormous …

2026 (Spring) Ensi Informer Magazine, Morehead State University. Engineering Sciences Department

ENSI Informer Magazine Archive

The ENSI Informer Magazine published in the spring of 2026.

On The Extreme Complexity Of Certain Nearly Regular Graphs, Gregory P. Constantine, Gregory C. Magda

Theory & Applications of Graphs

The complexity of a graph is the number of its labeled spanning trees. It is demonstrated that the seven known triangle-free strongly regular graphs are graphs of maximal complexity among all graphs of the same order and degree; their complements are shown to be of minimal complexity. A generalization to nearly regular graphs with two distinct eigenvalues of the Laplacian is presented. Conjectures and applications of these results to biological problems on neuronal activity are described.

Development Of Deep Fused Neural Architecture For Ancient Tamil Palm-Leaf Manuscript Recognition, Hariharan P Mr

Theses and Dissertations

Digitizing Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts is important for education, communication, and the preservation of cultural heritage. The complex structure of the Tamil script, the wide range of handwriting styles, and the degradation seen in ancient Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts make these texts very difficult to read and understand. Digital Image Processing (DIP), document analysis techniques, and traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) are unable to handle noise, background interference, faded ink, and limited labelled data, motivating the need for robust, effective Deep Learning (DL)- based solutions.

As a prerequisite to understanding and designing effective recognition systems for ancient manuscripts, this thesis first examines …

A Pretraining-Based Framework For On-Device Training Of Imu-Based Locomotion Mode Detection For Wearable Active Exoskeletons, Muhammad Tahir Khan

LSU Master's Theses

Active exoskeletons are being developed to support human movement in physically demanding industries such as construction. For these systems to work effectively, they must be able to correctly identify the user’s current activity. This process is known as locomotion mode detection and plays an important role in selecting the appropriate control parameters for exoskeletons. Many existing approaches use inertial measurement units (IMUs) to recognize these activities and have shown strong performance. However, most of these methods depend on large amounts of labeled data collected under specific conditions. As a result, they often do not perform well when applied to new …

Reconstruction Of Information System Acceptance Model In The Era Of Integrated Artificial Intelligence: A Systematic Literature Review, Ilham, Merlin Apriliyanti

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study aims to explain the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which has driven significant transformations in the development and use of information systems. However, most classical information system acceptance models, such as the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and  (UTAUT), have not been able to fully explain the unique characteristics of AI-based systems that are autonomous, adaptive, and complex. This study aims to reconstruct the information system acceptance model in the era of integrated AI through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach. This study was conducted using the PRISMA protocol on 130 leading scientific articles indexed by Scopus and …

Virtual Humans In Virtual Reality: A Scoping Review On Sociability, Fidelity, And Expression, J K Sangeeth Chandran, Marisa Llorens Salvador, Cathy Ennis

Articles

Introduction:

Virtual reality (VR) systems have evolved significantly over the past decade, enabling immersive experiences with enhanced realism and interactivity. This has motivated an interest in socially oriented applications. As user proxies, Virtual Humans (VHs) play essential roles in such applications. However, despite technological advancements, achieving realistic, expressive, and socially responsive VHs continues to present design and implementation challenges. In this scoping review, we present the state-of-the-art of VR VHs, examining the impact of VHs on the user experience.

Methodology:

We reviewed 59 papers retrieved from five databases across three core themes: the implementation and impact of VH facial expressions, …

Ai-Scm Cmm: A Capability Maturity Model For Artificial Intelligence Integration In Supply Chain Management, Lordt Becklines, Omar F. El-Gayar, Patti Brooks, Insu Park

Annual Research Symposium

Artificial intelligence is increasingly deployed in supply chain management, yet many organizations struggle to align adoption efforts with process readiness, data quality, governance, and workforce capabilities, and they still lack validated supply chain specific roadmap for assessing readiness, sequencing investments, and reducing implementation risk. This study develops and evaluates a Capability Maturity Model for Artificial Intelligence Integration in Supply Chain Management to address that gap. Using a design science research approach, the study synthesizes prior literature and practitioner knowledge to define maturity dimensions, capability indicators, and staged progression levels for AI integration in supply chain contexts. The artifact and assessment …

Influence Of Gender-Specific Data Imbalance On Scgpt Fine-Tuning For Single-Cell Genomics, Mohammad Aman Ullah Al Amin, Daniil Filienko, Hong Qin

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

The transformer-based foundation model scGPT has demonstrated strong capabilities in analyzing high-dimensional single-cell RNA sequencing data. However, the impact of demographic factors, particularly gender, on model performance remains insufficiently understood. Gender is known to influence cell-type compositions in the immune system. Here, using the gender-sensitive cell-type composition in immune system, we comprehensively evaluated how the gender-sensitive imbalance of training data influences the performance of scGPT in cell-type predictions. We fine-tuned scGPT on male-only, female-only, and mixed-gender subsets from two large-scale datasets containing immune cells. We used a logit difference to measure the confidence gap between the true label and the …

The Writing On The Wall: The Rise Of Applied Ai And The Life-Or-Death Choice Every Ceo Must Make Now, Gary Sheng, Ron Roberts

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

Applied AI is putting AI to its highest and best use: running your organization as autonomously as possible so you can deliver value for humanity while maximizing the scale of the value. The economy is splitting. Organizations that adopt applied AI are expanding their capacity, accelerating their impact, and pulling ahead. Those that don't are quietly becoming irrelevant, not because they're doing bad work, but because the gap between what they can do and what the moment requires is widening every day. This is not a technology question. It is a leadership question. This paper is written for organizational leaders, …

Large-Scale File Fragment Classification Via Multi-View Learning, Samuel Hildebrand

LSU Master's Theses

File reassembly is one of the most fundamental tasks in digital forensics, enabling recovery of data from potentially damaged storage media even when file system metadata is unavailable. This thesis reviews more than two decades of work in the realm of file carving, with a particular focus on fragmented file carving, which remains a focus of research, and file fragment classification, a principal component of fragmented file carving. This thesis serves a literature review of both file carving and fragmented file carving, surveys the massive amounts of data needed for the task of fragment classification and the datasets that serve …

Identification Of Thruster Faults In Underwater Vehicles By Using Custom Encodings In Spiking Neural Networks, Donovan Gegg

LSU Master's Theses

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are untethered robotic platforms used for tasks such as seafloor mapping, infrastructure inspection, and environmental monitoring. Recent technological advances have produced smaller, more affordable platforms, broadening access to research teams and small companies alike. This miniaturization comes at the cost of them handling drawbacks associated with a more compact machine such as reduced battery capacity as well as limited processing and sensing capabilities. These constraints make small-sized marine vehicle’s reliability critical as they can cause malfunctions, making the loss of a vehicle more likely. Actuator faults are particularly consequential as unintended and unstable control in an …

Research On Inter-Satellite Topology Design And Simulation Of Giant Leo Constellation Network With Consistent Pattern, Zhicheng Li, Shuaijun Liu, Lixiang Liu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The giant low earth orbit (LEO) constellation network uses inter-satellite links to form an intersatellite topology, realizing the transmission of data between satellites. In order to adapt to the nature of uniform and symmetrical distribution of satellites in the constellation, this paper used a consistent connection pattern between satellites to construct an inter-satellite topology, and by analyzing the arrangement of non-mirror links in the constellation, it was found that the connection method of each link of the satellite itself could be independent of each other, which reduced the simulation complexity and the solution space of the inter-satellite topology. …

Design And Verification Of Manned-Unmanned Collaborative Combat Capability System Based On Mbse, Fangbo Wang, Jian Guo, Chenglie Du, Yifan Liu, Pengpeng Zhang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: The traditional model-based systems engineering (MBSE) method has problems of failing to fully exhibit complex combat logics in manned-unmanned collaborative combat system modeling, neglecting the scenario constraints in interface modeling, and requiring long-term and costly algorithm verification. In order to solve the problems, a methodology and design tool based on MBSE was proposed. An integrated verification method of a system's operational logic, interface design, and algorithmic design was constructed, thus providing a digital and rapidly iterative verification approach for system simulation. A verification environment for multiple key algorithm simulations was established, effectively reducing the economic cost of building verification …

Construction Approach Of Llm-Empowered Tactical Wargame Decision-Making Agents, Dayong Liu, Zhiming Dong, Qisheng Guo, Ang Gao, Xuehuan Qiu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Decision-making agents are critical enablers for implementing human-machine, machinemachine, and hybrid human-machine adversarial interaction in tactical wargaming, where the intelligence level of the agent is crucial. To address the limitations of traditional decision agents such as insufficient adaptability, simplistic strategies, and high construction costs, a fusion decision framework driven by the large and small models was proposed. It specifically investigated the fusion approach of large language models with conventional decision-making agent construction approaches, including behavior trees, finite state machines, heuristic search, and deep reinforcement learning. New ideas and technical pathways are provided for the construction of tactical wargame …

Integrating Geometric Priors And Importance Sampling For High-Fidelity Indoor Scene Reconstruction, Tao Yang, Min Shi, Xigang Zhao, Suqin Wang, Qi Wang, Dengming Zhu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Gaussian splatting suffers from geometric distortion during scene reconstruction, particularly in weakly textured indoor scenes. To address this issue, this paper proposes a high-precision indoor scene reconstruction method that integrates geometric priors and importance sampling. The proposed method fully considers the effect of the initialization process on reconstruction quality. An advanced feed-forward model is employed to generate high-quality geometric initialization, thus improving overall reconstruction stability and accuracy. An importance sampling strategy is introduced to mitigate the adverse effects of blurry images. Furthermore, a supervision mechanism based on a geometric prior model is designed to constrain the scene structure, further …

Key Problems Of Intent Recognition Research: A Survey On Activity, Plan And Goal Recognition, Yi Zhang, Kai Xu, Shuilin Li, Dejun Chen, Yunxiu Zeng, Yong Peng

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: With the development of artificial intelligence technology, realizing intent recognition in human-computer interaction has become one of the key challenges. In this paper, the current research status of three fields was systematically sorted out, namely activity recognition, plan recognition, and goal recognition, and the progress from the problem proposal to the current development was analyzed. The main research approaches in each field were reviewed, and a survey of research on activity recognition, a development overview of plan recognition, and a retrospective analysis of hotspots in goal recognition were conducted. This general view of the problem helped to clarify …

A Precise Damage Assessment Method For Lethal Blast Warheads Against Quadruped Robots, Xueqian Wang, Jianbing Men, Xin Zhou, Shuyou Wang, Mei Li

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To accurately evaluate the damage efficiency of a lethal blast warhead on quadruped robots, a typical quadruped robot replication model and vulnerability damage tree were constructed through Autodesk Inventor. The power field calculation model of a lethal blast warhead was introduced. Based on the high-precision collision detection and graphic rendering technology of UE, this paper carried out the intersection detection of destructive elements and targets and realistic scene visualization. A visualization system for damage assessment of quadruped robots by a lethal blast warhead was developed, featuring capabilities such as parametric modeling of the lethal blast warhead, power field evolution …

Virtual Train Operation Platform Based On Digital Twin, Ziying Wang, Congjun Sun, Guihu Li, Tianhao Zhang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In response to the limitations of traditional train operation simulation modeling, such as simplification, lack of adaptive adjustment capability for parameters, and proneness to error accumulation, a virtual train operation platform based on digital twin technology was proposed. A train model under specific railway lines was constructed. By combining with the intelligent operation and maintenance platform of the railway line, real-time train operation data was obtained and preprocessed. The adaptive chaos optimization algorithm was used to optimize the key parameters of train operation simulation online and establish a digital twin model of the railway line. This model adopted a …

Task Planning Method For Cross-Domain Cooperative Combat Operations Of Unmanned Systems Under Complex Constraints, Haojie Fang, Ziyang Zhen, Huajun Gong, Xu Xie, Wei Luo

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In pre-combat task planning for cross-domain cooperative combat operations, to solve the problems of diverse and complex constraints and difficulties in solving planning models caused by performance differences of unmanned systems and increased requirements for cooperative combat operations, a multi-strategy enhanced grey wolf optimization (MSEGWO) algorithm was proposed. By considering various complex constraints such as performance of each type of unmanned systems, munition usage, task timing, task time window, and flight path, a task planning mathematical model with minimizing the comprehensive cost as the objective was established. Improvement strategies such as nonlinear adjustment of convergence factor, alternative solution space …

Review Of 3d Human Reconstruction Methods Empowering Vr/Ar, Lisha Zhang, Yuchi Huo, Qi Ye, Anjun Chen, Shihui Guo, Jiming Chen

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: 3D human reconstruction is critical for VR/AR. Early methods relied on multi-view cameras and depth sensors but were costly. Mid-term approaches using parametric human models enabled efficient single-image reconstruction, while implicit neural representations improved fidelity yet suffered from low efficiency. Currently, 3D Gaussian Splatting achieves high accuracy and real-time rendering as a new paradigm. Challenges include detail distortion and limited generalization, and future development will focus on VR/AR integration.

Neural Radiance Fields Based On Explicit Feature Matching And Scaled Dot-Product Attention, Mingwei Cao, Fengna Wang, Zilong Wang, Haifeng Zhao

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the problems that neural radiance fields(NeRF) are prone to artifacts and texture blurring in novel view synthesis under sparse view input and complex scenes, this paper proposed neural radiance fields based on explicit feature matching and scaled dot-product attention(EMD-NeRF). A multiscale feature extraction network was used to extract multi-scale feature information from the input sparse views. A fusion dot-product module was utilized to calculate view interaction information as a shared branch. Cosine similarity was adopted as a matching clue for similarity embedding volume rendering. A regularization loss function was used to enhance the quality of the scene …

Research On Gaussian Splatting Modeling Of Power Equipment In 3d Scenes, Haiying Li, Haonan Xu, Junfang Hao

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the issues of missing camera poses in captured images and poor reconstruction quality in 3D modeling of power equipment, a 3D Gaussian splatting 3D modeling method for power equipment based on video sequences was proposed. Theffmpeg was adopted to extract video frames at a reduced rate, and the Scharr operator was employed to quantify the sharpness of video frames to screen high-quality images for forming an input dataset, ensuring the completeness of equipment poses and the quality of modeling data. Through multi-view feature point extraction and matching, combined with an incremental structure-from-motion algorithm to optimize and …

Analytical Reentry Guidance Method Based On Lift-To-Drag Ratio-Velocity Profile, Weibo Sun, Ping Ma, Yuxuan Wang, Songyan Wang, Tao Chao

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: An analytical reentry guidance method based on the lift-to-drag ratio and velocity profile was proposed to address the challenges of precise flight time control and prohibited area avoidance for the hypersonic glide flight vehicle during the reentry phase. A reduced-order reentry motion model was established; the Chebyshev series was used to approximate its nonlinear integral terms and differential equations; analytical expressions for the glide trajectory were yielded. The analytical relationships among flight time, remaining range, and the lift-to-drag ratio and velocity profile were derived. The optimization problem of lift-to-drag ratio and velocity profile was converted into a segmented parameter …

Research And Analysis Of Algorithm For Detecting Surface Defects On Automotive Wheel Hubs Based On Ccl-Yolov8, Yanjun Chen, Min Zhou, Meng Zha, Meizhou Zhang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the challenges such as low detection efficiency, difficulties in identifying small defects, and poor accuracy in detecting surface defects on automotive wheel hubs, a lightweight neural network called CCL-YOLOv8 was proposed based on an improved YOLOv8n architecture. A synergistic improvement in both detection accuracy and efficiency was achieved through a three-stage model optimization strategy. A convolutional attention fusion module was introduced, which integrated convolution operations with self-attention mechanisms, thereby enhancing the model's ability to capture local features of small defects while perceiving global context under low signal-to-noise ratio conditions.A C2f-Star module was constructed to reduce computational overhead …