Other Computer Engineering Commons^™

Automating Deep-Sea Video Annotation, Hanson Egbert

Master's Theses

As the world explores opportunities to develop offshore renewable energy capacity, there will be a growing need for pre-construction biological surveys and post-construction monitoring in the challenging marine environment. Underwater video is a powerful tool to facilitate such surveys, but the interpretation of the imagery is costly and time-consuming. Emerging technologies have improved automated analysis of underwater video, but these technologies are not yet accurate or accessible enough for widespread adoption in the scientific community or industries that might benefit from these tools.

To address these challenges, prior research developed a website that allows to: (1) Quickly play and annotate …

Using Pitch Tipping For Baseball Pitch Prediction, Brian Ishii

Master's Theses

Data Analytics and technology have changed baseball as we know it. From the increase in defensive shifts to teams using cameras in the outfield to steal signs, teams will try anything to win. One way to gain an edge in baseball is to figure out what pitches a pitcher will pitch. Pitch prediction is a popular task to try to accomplish with all the data that baseball provides. Most methods involve using situational data like the ball and strike count. In this paper, we try a different method of predicting pitch type by only looking at the pitcher's pose in …

Dependencyvis: Helping Developers Visualize Software Dependency Information, Nathan Lui

Master's Theses

The use of dependencies have been increasing in popularity over the past decade, especially as package managers such as JavaScript's npm has made getting these packages a simple command to run. However, while incidents such as the left-pad incident has increased awareness of how vulnerable relying on these packages are, there is still some work to be done when it comes to getting developers to take the extra research step to determine if a package is up to standards. Finding metrics of different packages and comparing them is always a difficult and time consuming task, especially since potential vulnerabilities are …

A Deep Learning-Based Automatic Object Detection Method For Autonomous Driving Ships, Ojonoka Erika Atawodi

Master's Theses

An important feature of an Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) is its capability of automatic object detection to avoid collisions, obstacles and navigate on their own.

Deep learning has made some significant headway in solving fundamental challenges associated with object detection and computer vision. With tremendous demand and advancement in the technologies associated with ASVs, a growing interest in applying deep learning techniques in handling challenges pertaining to autonomous ship driving has substantially increased over the years.

In this thesis, we study, design, and implement an object recognition framework that detects and recognizes objects found in the sea. We first curated …

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, …

Dynamic Procedural Music Generation From Npc Attributes, Megan E. Washburn

Master's Theses

Procedural content generation for video games (PCGG) has seen a steep increase in the past decade, aiming to foster emergent gameplay as well as to address the challenge of producing large amounts of engaging content quickly. Most work in PCGG has been focused on generating art and assets such as levels, textures, and models, or on narrative design to generate storylines and progression paths. Given the difficulty of generating harmonically pleasing and interesting music, procedural music generation for games (PMGG) has not seen as much attention during this time.

Music in video games is essential for establishing developers' intended mood …

Evaluating Creative Choice In K-12 Computer Science Curriculum, Kirsten L. Mork

Master's Theses

Computer Science is an increasingly important topic in K-12 education. Ever since the "computing crisis" of the early 2000s, where enrollment in CS dropped by over half in a five year span, increasing research has gone into improving and broadening enrollment in CS courses. Research shows the importance of introducing CS at a young age and the need for more exposure for younger children and young adults alike in order to work towards equity in the field. While there are many reasons for disinterest in CS courses, studies found one reason young adults do not want to study CS is …

Logging, Visualization, And Analysis Of Network And Power Data Of Iot Devices, Neal Huynh Nguyen

Master's Theses

There are approximately 23.14 billion IoT(Internet of Things) devices currently in use worldwide. This number is projected to grow to over 75 billion by 2025. Despite their ubiquity little is known about the security and privacy implications of IoT devices. Several large-scale attacks against IoT devices have already been recorded.

To help address this knowledge gap, we have collected a year’s worth of network traffic and power data from 16 common IoT devices. From this data, we show that we can identify different smart speakers, like the Echo Dot, from analyzing one minute of power data on a shared power …

Funqual: User-Defined, Statically-Checked Call Graph Constraints In C++, Andrew P. Nelson

Master's Theses

Static analysis tools can aid programmers by reporting potential programming mistakes prior to the execution of a program. Funqual is a static analysis tool that reads C++17 code ``in the wild'' and checks that the function call graph follows a set of rules which can be defined by the user. This sort of analysis can help the programmer to avoid errors such as accidentally calling blocking functions in time-sensitive contexts or accidentally allocating memory in heap-sensitive environments. To accomplish this, we create a type system whereby functions can be given user-defined type qualifiers and where users can define their own …

Towards Autonomous Localization Of An Underwater Drone, Nathan Sfard

Master's Theses

Autonomous vehicle navigation is a complex and challenging task. Land and aerial vehicles often use highly accurate GPS sensors to localize themselves in their environments. These sensors are ineffective in underwater environments due to signal attenuation. Autonomous underwater vehicles utilize one or more of the following approaches for successful localization and navigation: inertial/dead-reckoning, acoustic signals, and geophysical data. This thesis examines autonomous localization in a simulated environment for an OpenROV Underwater Drone using a Kalman Filter. This filter performs state estimation for a dead reckoning system exhibiting an additive error in location measurements. We evaluate the accuracy of this Kalman …

Developing, Evaluating, And Demonstrating An Open Source Gateway And Mobile Application For The Smartfarm Decision Support System, Caleb D. Fink

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research is to design, develop, evaluate, and demonstrate an open source gateway and mobile application for the SmartFarm open source decision support system to improve agricultural stewardship, environmental conservation, and provide farmers with a system that they own. There are very limited options for an open source gateway for collecting data on the farm. The options available are: expensive, require professional maintenance, are not portable between systems, improvements are made only by the manufacturer, limited in customization options, difficult to operate, and data is owned by the company rather than the farmer. The gateway is designed …

Leave The Features: Take The Cannoli, Jonathan Joseph Catanio

Master's Theses

Programming languages like Python, JavaScript, and Ruby are becoming increasingly popular due to their dynamic capabilities. These languages are often much easier to learn than other, statically type checked, languages such as C++ or Rust. Unfortunately, these dynamic languages come at the cost of losing compile-time optimizations. Python is arguably the most popular language for data scientists and researchers in the artificial intelligence and machine learning communities. As this research becomes increasingly popular, and the problems these researchers face become increasingly computationally expensive, questions are being raised about the performance of languages like Python. Language features found in Python, more …

Vehicle Pseudonym Association Attack Model, Pierson Yieh

Master's Theses

With recent advances in technology, Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have grown in application. One of these areas of application is Vehicle Safety Communication (VSC) technology. VSC technology allows for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications that enhance vehicle safety and driving experience. However, these newly developing technologies bring with them a concern for the vehicular privacy of drivers. Vehicles already employ the use of pseudonyms, unique identifiers used with signal messages for a limited period of time, to prevent long term tracking. But can attackers still attack vehicular privacy even when vehicles employ a pseudonym change strategy? The major contribution …

Mastering The Game Of Gomoku Without Human Knowledge, Yuan Wang

Master's Theses

Gomoku, also called Five in a row, is one of the earliest checkerboard games invented by humans. For a long time, it has brought countless pleasures to us. We humans, as players, also created a lot of skills in playing it. Scientists normalize and enter these skills into the computer so that the computer knows how to play Gomoku. However, the computer just plays following the pre-entered skills, it doesn’t know how to develop these skills by itself. Inspired by Google’s AlphaGo Zero, in this thesis, by combining the technologies of Monte Carlo Tree Search, Deep Neural Networks, and Reinforcement …

Polycommit: Building Better Habits Through Gamification, Elliot Fiske

Master's Theses

Computer-assisted learning is older than Turing machines, and constantly evolves as technology improves. While some teachers are resistant to using technology in the classroom, “e-learning” techniques are becoming more common in almost every school, from K-12 to universities. As technology becomes more widespread, it becomes crucial to examine the various methodologies of computer-assisted learning and find the techniques that are most effective.

This paper explores the effectiveness of one such methodology, spaced repetition. This technique applies to homework assignments available to students online. We include an exploration of several existing apps that use this technique, and introduce our own novel …

Predicting The Vote Using Legislative Speech, Aditya Budhwar

Master's Theses

As most dedicated observers of voting bodies like the U.S. Supreme Court can attest, it is possible to guess vote outcomes based on statements made during deliberations or questioning by the voting members. In most forms of representative democracy, citizens can actively petition or lobby their representatives, and that often means understanding their intentions to vote for or against an issue of interest. In some U.S. state legislators, professional lobby groups and dedicated press members are highly informed and engaged, but the process is basically closed to ordinary citizens because they do not have enough background and familiarity with the …

Corgi: Compute Oriented Recumbent Generation Infrastructure, Christopher Allen Hunt

Master's Theses

Creating a bicycle with a rideable geometry is more complicated than it may appear, with today’s mainstay designs having evolved through years of iteration. This slow evolution coupled with the bicycle’s intricate mechanical system has lead most builders to base their new geometries off of previous work rather than expand into new design spaces. This crutch can lead to slow bicycle iteration rates, often causing bicycles to all look about the same. To combat this, several bicycle design models have been created over the years, with each attempting to define a bicycle’s handling characteristics given its physical geometry. However, these …

Normalizer: Augmenting Code Clone Detectors Using Source Code Normalization, Kevin Ly

Master's Theses

Code clones are duplicate fragments of code that perform the same task. As software code bases increase in size, the number of code clones also tends to increase. These code clones, possibly created through copy-and-paste methods or unintentional duplication of effort, increase maintenance cost over the lifespan of the software. Code clone detection tools exist to identify clones where a human search would prove unfeasible, however the quality of the clones found may vary. I demonstrate that the performance of such tools can be improved by normalizing the source code before usage. I developed Normalizer, a tool to transform C …

Encouraging Development Of Mobile Applications As A Service To The Community, Vanessa Marie Forney

Master's Theses

The convenience of mobile applications combined with the efficiency and effectiveness provided by technology has contributed to an increased interest in mobile applications. Local groups and non-profit organizations often utilize outdated, manual processes and don’t have the resources or time to look into improving these systems. For Cal Poly students and other members of the community, this means there is an opportunity to apply technical skills and school projects to address these inefficiencies. This work explores whether a better system can be developed to provide the functionality of the existing system and enhance the experience of users through technology, data …

Inducing Emotional Response In Interactive Media, Keenan M. Reimer

Master's Theses

Video games, and entertainment media have been developed for many years, and eliciting emotional experiences is an integral part of that process. Producing and editing game content in order to affect desired emotional experiences can be expensive and cumbersome to developers. This paper presents a study intended to show that such experiences can be affected with simple after-the-fact audio-visual effects. As subjects of the study, participants experience three different emotional states, fear, peace, and none, over three rounds and in three different game environments. They are given a simple narrative in each environment that directs them to gather various objects. …

The Effects Of Latency On 3d Interactive Data Visualizations, Allen Korenevsky

Master's Theses

Interactive data visualizations must respond fluidly to user input to be effective, or so we assume. In fact it is unknown exactly how fast a visualization must run to present every facet within a dataset. An engineering team with limited resources is left with intuition and estimates to determine if their application performs sufficiently well.

This thesis studies how latency affects users' comprehension of data visualizations, specifically 3D geospatial visualizations with large data sets. Subjects used a climate visualization showing temperatures spanning from the 19th to the 21st century to answer multiple choice questions. Metrics like their eye movements, time …

Anex: Automated Network Exploitation Through Penetration Testing, Eric Francis Dazet

Master's Theses

Cyber attacks are a growing concern in our modern world, making security evaluation a critical venture. Penetration testing, the process of attempting to compromise a computer network with controlled tests, is a proven method of evaluating a system's security measures. However, penetration tests, and preventive security analysis in general, require considerable investments in money, time, and labor, which can cause them to be overlooked. Alternatively, automated penetration testing programs are used to conduct a security evaluation with less user effort, lower cost, and in a shorter period of time than manual penetration tests. The trade-off is that automated penetration testing …

Graph-Based Data Visualization In Virtual Reality: A Comparison Of User Experiences, Paul Andrew Sullivan

Master's Theses

Virtual reality is currently in the spotlight, attracting intense scrutiny by the press, technology companies, and consumers. After twenty years of dormancy, the technology has experienced a renaissance following advancements in both hardware and software. Most of these developments, and thus press attention, have been centered on entertainment. However, if the technology is going to continue to grow, it must be useful in a wide variety of situations. This paper explores the effectiveness of visualizing data in virtual reality in comparison to traditional presentations.

In this thesis, we present an approach to displaying data in a virtual reality environment. We …

Polyfs Visualizer, Paul Martin Fallon

Master's Theses

One of the most important operating system topics, file systems, control how we store and access data and form a key point in a computer scientists understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a computer. However, file systems, with their abstract concepts and lack of concrete learning aids, is a confusing subjects for students. Historically at Cal Poly, the CPE 453 Introduction to Operating Systems has been on of the most failed classes in the computing majors, leading to the need for better teaching and learning tools. Tools allowing students to gain concrete examples of abstract concepts could be used to …

Toward The Systematization Of Active Authentication Research, Daniel Fleming Gerrity

Master's Theses

Authentication is the vital link between your real self and your digital self. As our digital selves become ever more powerful, the price of failing authentication grows. The most common authentication protocols are static data and employed only once at login. This allows for authentication to be spoofed just once to gain access to an entire user session. Behaviometric protocols continuously consume a user’s behavior as a token of authentication and can be applied throughout a session, thereby eliminating a fixed token to spoof. Research into these protocols as viable forms of authentication is relatively recent and is being conducted …

Mos Current Mode Logic (Mcml) Analysis For Quiet Digital Circuitry And Creation Of A Standard Cell Library For Reducing The Development Time Of Mixed Signal Chips, David Marusiak

Master's Theses

Many modern digital systems use forms of CMOS logical implementation due to the straight forward design nature of CMOS logic and minimal device area since CMOS uses fewer transistors than other logic families. To achieve high-performance requirements in mixed-signal chip development and quiet, noiseless circuitry, this thesis provides an alternative toCMOSin the form of MOS Current Mode Logic (MCML). MCML dissipates constant current and does not produce noise during value changing in a circuit CMOS circuits do. CMOS logical networks switch during clock ticks and with every device switching, noise is created on the supply and ground to deal with …

A System For Cell Phone Anti-Theft Through Gait Recognition, Cameron P. Cstearns Stearns

Master's Theses

Studies show that smartphone thefts are a significant problem in the United States. [30] With many upcoming proposals to decrease the theft-rate of such devices, investigating new techniques for preventing smartphone theft is an important area of research. The prevalence of new biometric identification techniques for smartphones has led some researchers to propose biometric anti-theft measures for such devices, similar to the current fingerprint authentication system for iOS. Gait identification, a relatively recent field of study, seems to be a good fit for anti-theft because of the non-intrusive nature of passive pattern recognition in walking. In this paper, we reproduce …

Tspoons: Tracking Salience Profiles Of Online News Stories, Kimberly Laurel Paterson

Master's Theses

News space is a relatively nebulous term that describes the general discourse concerning events that affect the populace. Past research has focused on qualitatively analyzing news space in an attempt to answer big questions about how the populace relates to the news and how they respond to it. We want to ask when do stories begin? What stories stand out among the noise? In order to answer the big questions about news space, we need to track the course of individual stories in the news. By analyzing the specific articles that comprise stories, we can synthesize the information gained from …

Toward General Purpose 3d User Interfaces: Extending Windowing Systems To Three Dimensions, Forrest Freiling Reiling

Master's Theses

Recent growth in the commercial availability of consumer grade 3D user interface devices like the Microsoft Kinect and the Oculus Rift, coupled with the broad availability of high performance 3D graphics hardware, has put high quality 3D user interfaces firmly within the reach of consumer markets for the first time ever. However, these devices require custom integration with every application which wishes to use them, seriously limiting application support, and there is no established mechanism for multiple applications to use the same 3D interface hardware simultaneously. This thesis proposes that these problems can be solved in the same way that …

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 …