VLSI and Circuits, Embedded and Hardware Systems Commons^™

Discrete Alarm Clock, Travis Moore, Collin Barth

Electrical Engineering

The standard alarm clock, as used daily by millions worldwide, has clear room for modification and improvement. This paper documents an implementation that rectifies many of these flaws. Improvements include adjustable snooze length, an IR remote for ease of use, and an RF headset for discrete alarm use or potential incorporation into a device much like a hearing aid. The processes involved in creating a digital alarm clock, as well as the obstacles met in the implementation of the enhanced design, are detailed within.

Imirok: Real-Time Imitative Robotic Arm Control For Home Robot Applications, Heng-Tze Cheng, Zheng Sun, Pei Zhang

Zheng Sun

Training home robots to behave like human can help people with their daily chores and repetitive tasks. In this paper, we present Imirok, a system to remotely control robotic arms by user motion using low-cost, off-the-shelf mobile devices and webcam. The motion tracking algorithm detects user motion in real-time, without classifier training or predefined action set. Experimental results show that the system achieves 90% precision and recall rate on motion detection with blank background, and is robust under the change of cluttered background and user-to-camera distance.

Leveraging Mobile Context For Effective Collaboration And Task Management In Disaster Response, Faisal Luqman, Martin L. Griss

Martin L Griss

Collaboration and task management is challenging in distributed, dynamically-formed teams, typical in large scale disaster response scenarios. Ineffective collaboration may result in poor performance and possible loss of life. In this paper, we present Overseer, an agent-based system that exploits context information from mobile devices to facilitate collaboration and task allocation. We describe our system architecture and show how mobile context can be used to create dynamic role-based assignments to support collaboration and effective task management.

Anubis: An Attestation Protocol For Distributed Context-Aware Applications, Senaka Buthpitiya, Feng-Tso Sun, Heng-Tze Chen, Patrick Tague, Martin L. Griss, Anind K. Dey

Martin L Griss

Sharing sensitive context information among multiple distributed components in mobile environments introduces major security concerns. The distributed sensing, processing and actuating components of these applications can be compromised and modified or impersonated to extract private and confidential information or to inject false information. In this paper we present the Anubis protocol for remote code attestation and access control of distributed components using remote execution of trusted code. Our Anubis protocol leverages previous work in the fields of wireless sensor networks and secure web browsing. Anubis allows new components to be introduced to the environment without updating existing components. Our implementation …

Mobile Context-Aware Personal Messaging Assistant, Senaka Buthpitiya, Deepthi Madamanchi, Sumalatha Kommaraju, Martin L. Griss

Martin L Griss

A previous study shows that busy professionals receive in excess of 50 emails per day of which approximately 23% require immediate attention, 13% require attention later and 64% are unimportant and typically ignored. The flood of emails impact mobile users even more heavily. Flooded inboxes cause busy professionals to spend considerable amounts of time searching for important messages, and there has been much research into automating the process using email content for classification; but we find email priority depends also on user context. In this paper we describe the Personal Messaging Assistant (PMA), an advanced rule-based email management system which …

Sensorchestra: Collaborative Sensing For Symbolic Location Recognition, Heng-Tze Cheng, Feng-Tso Sun, Senaka Buthpitiya, Martin L. Griss

Martin L Griss

"Symbolic location of a user, like a store name in a mall, is essential for context-based mobile advertising. Existing fingerprint- based localization using only a single phone is susceptible to noise, and has a major limitation in that the phone has to be held in the hand at all times. In this paper, we present SensOrchestra, a col- laborative sensing framework for symbolic location recognition that groups nearby phones to recognize ambient sounds and images of a location collaboratively. We investigated audio and image features, and designed a classifier fusion model to integrate estimates from diff erent phones. We also …

Activity-Aware Mental Stress Detection Using Physiological Sensors, Feng-Tso Sun, Cynthia Kuo, Heng-Tze Cheng, Senaka Buthpitiya, Patricia Collins, Martin Griss

Martin L Griss

"Continuous stress monitoring may help users better understand their stress patterns and provide physicians with more reliable data for interventions. Previously, studies on mental stress detection were limited to a laboratory environment where participants generally rested in a sedentary position. However, it is impractical to exclude the effects of physical activity while developing a pervasive stress monitoring application for everyday use. The physiological responses caused by mental stress can be masked by variations due to physical activity. We present an activity-aware mental stress detection scheme. Electrocardiogram (ECG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and accelerometer data were gathered from 20 participants across …

Omnisense: A Collaborative Sensing Framework For User Context Recognition Using Mobile Phones, Heng-Tze Cheng, Senaka Buthpitiya, Feng-Tso Sun, Martin L. Griss

Martin L Griss

Context information, including a user’s locations and activities, is indispensable for context-aware applications such as targeted advertising and disaster response. Inferring user context from sensor data is intrinsically challenging due to the semantic gap between low-level signals and high-level human activities. When implemented on mobile phones, more challenges on resource limitations are present. While most existing work focuses on context recognition using a single mobile phone, collaboration among multiple phones has received little attention, and the recognition accuracy is susceptible to phone position and ambient changes. Simply putting a phone in one’s pocket can render the microphone muffled and the …

Room-Level Wi-Fi Location Tracking, Joshua Correa, Ed Katz, Patricia Collins, Martin Griss

Martin L Griss

Context-aware applications for indoor intelligent environments require an appropriately accurate and stable interior positioning system to adapt services to the location of a mobile user or mobile device in a building. Different technologies provide a varying mix of resolution, accuracy, stability and challenges. In this paper we report on our experience using an existing Wi-Fi infrastructure without specialized hardware added to support location tracking. There are several approaches to track the location of Wi-Fi enabled devices within a building such as signal propagation models and signature matching. We found signature matching most effective in our environment. Signature matching is accomplished …

An Fpga Based Implementation Of The Exact Stochastic Simulation Algorithm, Phani Bharadwaj Vanguri

Masters Theses

Mathematical and statistical modeling of biological systems is a desired goal for many years. Many biochemical models are often evaluated using a deterministic approach, which uses differential equations to describe the chemical interactions. However, such an approach is inaccurate for small species populations as it neglects the discrete representation of population values, presents the possibility of negative populations, and does not represent the stochastic nature of biochemical systems. The Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) developed by Gillespie is able to properly account for these inherent noise fluctuations. Due to the stochastic nature of the Monte Carlo simulations, large numbers of simulations …

Asynchronous Mips Processors: Educational Simulations, Robert L. Webb

Master's Theses

The system clock has been omnipresent in most mainstream chip designs. While simplifying many design problems the clock has caused the problems of clock skew, high power consumption, electromagnetic interference, and worst-case performance. In recent years, as the timing constraints of synchronous designs have been squeezed ever tighter, the efficiencies of asynchronous designs have become more attractive. By removing the clock, these issues can be mitigated. How- ever, asynchronous designs are generally more complex and difficult to debug. In this paper I discuss the advantages of asynchronous processors and the specifics of some asynchronous designs, outline the roadblocks to asynchronous …

Embedded Systems As Datacenters, Robert Iannucci

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Application Specific Customization And Scalability Of Soft Multiprocessors, Deepak C. Unnikrishnan

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Soft multiprocessor systems exploit the plentiful computational resources available in field programmable devices. By virtue of their adaptability and ability to support coarse grained parallelism, they serve as excellent platforms for rapid prototyping and design space exploration of embedded multiprocessor applications. As complex applications emerge, careful mapping, processor and interconnect customization are critical to the overall performance of the multiprocessor system. In this thesis, we have developed an automated scalable framework to efficiently map applications written in a high-level programmer-friendly language to customizable soft-cores. The framework allows the user to specify the application in a high-level language called Streamit. After …

Platform Thinking In Embedded Systems, Robert Iannucci

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Configuring Client Software Using Remote Notification Us:6219698, Robert Iannucci, Chris Weikart

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Computer System For Simulating Physical Processes Using Multiple Integer State Vectors Us:5594671, Hudong Chen, Peter Churchill, Robert Iannucci, Kim Molvig, Gregory Papadopoulos, Stephen Remondi, Christopher Teixeira, Kenneth Traub

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Genetic Algorithms Vs. Simulated Annealing: A Comparison Of Approaches For Solving The Circuit Partitioning Problem, Theodore W. Manikas, James T. Cain

Computer Science and Engineering Research

An important stage in circuit design is placement, where components are assigned to physical locations on a chip. A popular contemporary approach for placement is the use of simulated annealing. While this approach has been shown to produce good placement solutions, recent work in genetic algorithms has produced promising results. The purpose of this study is to determine which approach will result in better placement solutions.

A simplified model of the placement problem, circuit partitioning, was tested on three circuits with both a genetic algorithm and a simulated annealing algorithm. When compared with simulated annealing, the genetic algorithm was found …

System For Synchronizing Execution By A Processing Element Of Threads Within A Process Using A State Indicator Us:5553305, Robert Iannucci, Steven Gregor

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Multithreaded Computer Architecture: A Summary Of The State Of The Art, Robert Iannucci, Guang Gao, Robert Halstead, Burton Smith

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

High Performance Memory System Pct:Ep0199134, Robert Iannucci

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Parallel Machines: Parallel Machine Languages, Robert Iannucci

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Method And Apparatus For Division Pct:Ep0075745, Robert Iannucci, James Kleinsteiber

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

High Performance Memory System Utilizing Pipelining Techniques Us:4685088, Robert Iannucci

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.

Method And Apparatus For Division Employing Associative Memory Us:4466077, Robert Iannucci, James Kleinsteiber

Robert A Iannucci

No abstract provided.