Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Probabilistic Road Map Sampling Strategies For Multi-Robot Motion Planning, Christopher M. Clark

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This paper presents a Probabilistic Road Map (PRM) motion planning algorithm to be queried within Dynamic Robot Networks—a multi-robot coordination platform for robots operating with limited sensing and inter-robot communication. First, the Dynamic Robot Networks (DRN) coordination platform is introduced that facilitates centralized robot coordination across ad hoc networks, allowing safe navigation in dynamic, unknown environments. As robots move about their environment, they dynamically form communication networks. Within these networks, robots can share local sensing information and coordinate the actions of all robots in the network. Second, a fast single-query Probabilistic Road Map (PRM) to be called within the DRN …

A Framework For Management Of Semistructured Probabilistic Data, Wenzhong Zhao, Alex Dekhtyar, Judy Goldsmith

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This paper describes the theoretical framework and implementation of a database management system for storing and manipulating diverse probability distributions of discrete random variables with finite domains, and associated information. A formal Semistructured Probabilistic Object (SPO) data model and a Semistructured Probabilistic Query Algebra (SP-algebra) are proposed. The SP-algebra supports standard database queries as well as some specific to probabilities, such as conditionalization and marginalization. Thus, the Semistructured Probabilistic Database may be used as a backend to any application that involves the management of large quantities of probabilistic information, such as building stochastic models. The implementation uses XML encoding of …

Improving After-The-Fact Tracing And Mapping: Supporting Software Quality Predictions, Jane Huffman Hayes, Alex Dekhtyar, Senthil Sundaram

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The software engineering industry undertakes many activities that require generating and using mappings. Companies develop knowledge bases to capture corporate expertise and possibly proprietary information. Software developers build traceability matrices to demonstrate that their designs satisfy the requirements. Proposal managers map customers' statements of work to individual sections of companies' proposals to prove compliance. Systems engineers authoring interface specifications record design rationales as they make relevant decisions. We developed an approach to tracing and mapping that aims to use fully automated information retrieval techniques, and we implemented our approach in a tool called RETRO (requirements tracing on target).

The Archway Project: Architecture For Research In Computing For Humanities Through Research, Teaching, And Learning, Kevin Kiernan, Jerzy W. Jaromczyk, Alex Dekhtyar, Dorothy Carr Porter, Kenneth Hawley, Sandeep Bodapati, Ionut E. Iacob

Computer Science and Software Engineering

An unusual alliance called the ARCHway Project is developing an Edition Production Technology (EPT), a technological infrastructure for collaborative research, teaching, and learning between computer scientists and specialists in Old English. Our goal is to identify and solve problems of mutual importance in building image-based electronic editions of significant cultural materials. The EPT will allow us to implement and integrate both new and already available software applications, to construct a digital library of previously unedited Old English manuscripts as a testbed for our solutions, and to distribute the digital library to the public. This paper introduces some of the tools …

Humans In The Traceability Loop: Can’T Live With ’Em, Can’T Live Without ’Em, Jane Huffman Hayes, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The human analyst is required as an active participant in the traceability process. Work to date has focused on automated methods that generate traceability information. There is a need for study of what the analysts do with traceability information as well as a study of how they make decisions.

On Improving Local Website Search Using Web Server Traffic Logs: A Preliminary Report, Qing Cui, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

In this paper we give a preliminary report on our study of the use of web server traffic logs to improve local search. Web server traffic logs are, typically, private to individual websites and as such – are unavailable to traditional web search engines conducting searches across multiple web sites. However, they can be used to augment search performed by a local search engine, restricted to a single site. Web server traffic logs, which we will refer to as simply logs throughout this paper, contain information on traffic patterns on a web site. By using this information, instead of pure …

Software Architecture Improvement Through Test-Driven Development, David S. Janzen

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This research involves empirical software engineering studies applied in academic and professional settings to assess the influence of test-driven development on software quality. Particular focus is given to internal software design quality. Pedagogical implications are also examined. Initial results and the study protocol and plans will be presented.

A Framework For Comparing Requirements Tracing Experiments, Jane Huffman Hayes, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The building of traceability matrices by those other than the original developers is an arduous, error prone, prolonged, and labor intensive task. Thus, after-the-fact requirements tracing is a process where the right kind of automation can definitely assist an analyst. Recently, a number of researchers have studied the application of various methods, often based on information retrieval after-the-fact tracing. The studies are diverse enough to warrant a means for comparing them easily as well as for determining areas that require further investigation. To that end, we present here an experimental framework for evaluating requirements tracing and traceability studies. Common methods, …

Continuations From Generalized Stack Inspection, Greg Pettyjohn, John Clements, Joe Marshall, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Matthias Felleisen

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Implementing first-class continuations can pose a challenge if the target machine makes no provisions for accessing and re-installing the run-time stack. In this paper, we present a novel translation that overcomes this problem. In the first half of the paper, we introduce a theoretical model that shows how to eliminate the capture and the use of first-class continuations in the presence of a generalized stack inspection mechanism. The second half of the paper explains how to translate this model into practice in two different contexts. First, we reformulate the servlet interaction language in the PLT Web server, which heavily relies …

Laziness Without All The Hard Work: Combining Lazy And Strict Languages For Teaching, Eli Barzilay, John Clements

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Students have trouble understanding the difference between lazy and strict programming. It is difficult to compare the two directly, because popular strict languages and popular lazy languages differ in their syntax, in their type systems, and in other ways unrelated to the lazy/strict evaluation discipline. While teaching programming languages courses, we have discovered that an extension to PLT Scheme allows the system to accommodate both lazy and strict evaluation in the same system. Moreover, the extension is simple and transparent. Finally, the simple nature of the extension means that the resulting system provides a rich environment for both lazy and …

Test-Driven Development:Concepts, Taxonomy,And Future Direction, David S. Janzen, Hossein Saiedian

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Test-driven development creates software in very short iterations with minimal upfront design. Poised for widespread adoption, TDD has become the focus of an increasing number of researchers and developers.

Tracing Requirements To Defect Reports: An Application Of Information Retrieval Techniques, Suresh Yadla, Jane Huffman Hayes, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

To support debugging, maintenance, verification and validation (V&V) and/or independent V&V (IV&V), it is necessary to understand the relationship between defect reports and their related artifacts. For example, one cannot correct a code-related defect report without being able to find the code that is affected. Information retrieval (IR) techniques have been used effectively to trace textual artifacts to each other. This has generally been applied to the problem of dynamically generating a trace between artifacts in the software document hierarchy after the fact (after development has proceeded to at least the next lifecycle phase). The same techniques can also be …

Revisiting The Semantics Of Interval Probabilistic Logic Programs, Alex Dekhtyar, Michael I. Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Two approaches to logic programming with probabilities emerged over time: bayesian reasoning and probabilistic satisfiability (PSAT). The attractiveness of the former is in tying the logic programming research to the body of work on Bayes networks. The second approach ties computationally reasoning about probabilities with linear programming, and allows for natural expression of imprecision in probabilities via the use of intervals.
In this paper we construct precise semantics for one PSAT-based formalism for reasoning with inteval probabilities, probabilistic logic programs (p-programs), orignally considered by Ng and Subrahmanian. We show that the probability ranges of atoms and formulas in p-programs cannot …

Automatic Source Attribution Of Text: A Neural Networks Approach, Foaad Khosmood, Franz J. Kurfess

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Recent advances in automatic authorship attribution have been promising. Relatively new techniques such as N-gram analysis have shown important improvements in accuracy [2]. Much of the work in this area does remain in the realm of statistics best suited for human assistance rather than autonomous attribution [6]. While there have been attempts at using neural networks in the area in the past, they have been extremely limited and problem-specific [7]. This paper addresses the latter points by demonstrating a practical and truly autonomous attribution process using neural networks. Furthermore, we use a word-frequency classification technique to demonstrate the feasibility of …

Searching Multi-Hierarchical Xml Documents: The Case Of Fragmentation, Alex Dekhtyar, Ionut E. Iacob, Srikanth Methuku

Computer Science and Software Engineering

To properly encode properties of textual documents using XML, multiple markup hierarchies must be used, often leading to conflicting markup in encodings. Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines [1] recognize this problem and suggest a number of ways to incorporate multiple hierarchies in a single well-formed XML document. In this paper, we present a framework for processing XPath queries over multi-hierarchical XML documents represented using fragmentation, one of the TEI-suggested techniques. We define the semantics of XPath over DOM trees of fragmented XML, extend the path expression language to cover overlap in markup, and describe FragXPath, our implementation of the proposed …

Goods Movement Security: An Information Technology Problem, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

This paper discusses the security problems associated with the movement of goods across international in-land borders and at ocean ports. The author proposes an information technology solution approach that is based on the profiling of international shipments. The collection of data describing the end-to-end movement of a shipment from the initial acquisition transactions, throughout the various transshipment stages, to the final delivery, allows intelligent software to assist customs and homeland security officials to determine the risks associated with the shipment long before it reaches the inspection point. The technical basis and architecture of the SecureOrigins™ software system is described. Designed …

Towards Gaussian Multi-Robot Slam For Underwater Robotics, Dave Kroetsch, Christopher M. Clark

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This paper presents initial steps towards developing autonomous navigation capabilities for cooperating underwater robots. Specifically, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, or SLAM, capabilities are investigated for a group of micro vehicles each equipped with a single downward facing camera and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). To verify the approach, simulations of the multi-robot SLAM running in a 3D environment were conducted, where vehicles in close proximity of one another exchange maps to improve localization.

Localization Of Multiple Robots With Simple Sensors, Mike Peasgood, Christopher M. Clark, John Mcphee

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This paper presents a distributed particle filter algorithm for localizing multiple mobile robots that are equipped only with low cost/low power sensors. This method is applicable to multi-micro robot systems, where size limitations restrict sensor selection (e.g. small infrared range finders). Localization of three robots in a known environment is conducted by combining measurements from a small number of simple range sensors with inter-robot distances obtained through an acoustic range finder system. The localization problem is formulated as estimating the global position and orientation of a single triangle, where corners of the triangle represent the positions of robots. The robot …

Interactive Preferences And Decision-Theoretic Planning, Derek Williams, Kyle Bailey, Alex Dekhtyar, Judy Goldsmith, Beth Goldstein, Raphael Finkel, Joan Mazur

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We introduce a suite of interlinked software tools for eliciting preferences, doing decision-theoretic planning, and displaying the plans. The software allows a user to walk through possible trajectories, adjust preferences, and compare potential trajectories. This paper focuses on the elicitation process, the plan display, and interactions between the two.

Xtagger: A New Approach To Authoring Document-Centric Xml, Ionut E. Iacob, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The process of authoring document-centric XML documents in humanities disciplines is very different from the approach espoused by the standard XML editing software with the data-centric view of XML. Where data-centric XML is generated by first describing a tree structure of the encoding and then providing the content for the leaf elements, document-centric encodings start with content which is then marked up. In the paper we describe our approach to authoring document-centric XML documents and the tool, xTagger, originally developed for this purpose within the Electronic Boethius project, otherwise enhanced within the ARCHway project, an interdisciplinary project devoted to development …

Concurrent Markup Hierarchies: A Computer Science Approach, Ionut E. Iacob, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

It is known that text has not, in general, a regular structure. However, since its invention and despite to the fact that it represents hierarchical structures, XML has gained a lot of popularity among humanities researchers: XML is easy to use and it comes with a handful of free processing tools. A variety of solutions were proposed to represent overlapping structures in XML. More or less easy to maintain from the point of view of data management, none of these solutions provides full support for two of the most demanded processing tasks: querying and presentation (XSL-like transformation).

We propose a …

Building Tools For Image-Based Electronic Editions, Ionut E. Iacob, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

No abstract provided.

Edition Production Technology: An Eclipse Based Platform For Building Image-Based Electronic Editions, Ionut E. Iacob, Alex Dekhtyar, Jerzy W. Jaromczyk, Kevin Kiernan, Neil Moore, Dorothy Carr Porter

Computer Science and Software Engineering

No abstract provided.

A Framework For Processing Complex Document-Centric Xml With Overlapping Structures, Ionut E. Iacob, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Management of multihierarchical XML encodings has attracted attention of a number of researchers both in databases [8] and in humanities[10]. Encoding documents using multiple hierarchies can yield overlapping markup. Previously proposed solutions to management of document-centric XML with overlapping markup rely on the XML expertise of humans and their ability to maintain correct schemas for complex markup languages.

We demonstrate a unified solution for management of complex, multihierarchical document-centric XML. Our framework includes software for storing, parsing, in-memory access, editing and querying, multihierarchical XML documents with conflicting structures.

Processing Xml Documents With Overlapping Hierarchies, Ionut E. Iacob, Alex Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The problem of overlapping markup hierarchies, first mentioned in the context of SGML, often occurs in XML text encoding applications for humanities. Previous solutions to the problem rely on manual maintenance of the markup and address only the problem of representing overlapping features in XML, leaving the issues of automated maintenance and querying open. As a consequence, traditional XML tools are of little practical use when dealing with overlapping markup. In this work we demonstrate the implementation of our framework for management of concurrent XML hierarchies from a computer science perspective. We propose an underlying model, data structures, APIs, and …

Baselines In Requirements Tracing, Senthil Karthikeyan Sundaram, Jane Huffman Hayes, Alexander Dekhtyar

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We summarize the results of our requirements tracing work to date, focusing on our empirical results with open source datasets. Specifically, we describe the problem of after-the-fact requirements tracing for Verification and Validation (V&V) analysts, we provide a brief overview of Information Retrieval methods we have applied as well as measures used to evaluate them, we describe our tracing tool, and we present the results of a number of empirical studies. Two of the open source datasets that we have used are available to the research community at http://promise.site.uottawa.ca/SERepository/.

Text Mining For Software Engineering: How Analyst Feedback Impacts Final Results, Jane Huffman Hayes, Alex Dekhtyar, Senthil Sundaram

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The mining of textual artifacts is requisite for many important activities in software engineering: tracing of requirements; retrieval of components from a repository; location of manpage text for an area of question, etc. Many such activities leave the “final word” to the analyst – have the relevant items been retrieved? are there other items that should have been retrieved? When analysts become a part of the text mining process, their decisions on the relevance of retrieved elements impact the final outcome of the activity. In this paper, we undertook a pilot study to examine the impact of analyst decisions on …

The Tirac™ Development Toolkit: Technical Description, Russell Leighton, Lakshmi Vempati, Alan Davis, Mark Porczak, Jens G. Pohl

Collaborative Agent Design (CAD) Research Center

This report provides a technical description of the Toolkit for Information Representation and Agent Collaboration (TIRAC^™) software framework for the development of intelligent decision-support applications. An overview of the transformational forces that have precipitated the need for a development toolkit capable of supporting a distributed, information-centric software environment, and the objectives of TIRAC™ are contained in a companion CDM Technical Report (CDM-17-04) entitled: “The TIRAC^™ Development Toolkit: Purpose and Overview.”

TIRAC™ is an application development framework and toolkit for distributed decision-support systems incorporating software agents that collaborate with each other and human users to monitor changes (i.e., …

Software Architecture Improvement Through Test-Driven Development: An Empirical Study, David S. Janzen

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Despite a half century of advances, the software construction industry still shows signs of immaturity. Professional software development organizations continue to struggle to produce reliable software in a predictable and repeatable manner. While a variety of development practices are advocated that might improve the situation, developers are often reluctant to adopt new, potentially better practices based on anecdotal evidence alone. As a result, empirical software engineering has gained credibility as a discipline that provides scientific data about practice efficacy on which developers can make critical decisions. This research proposes to apply empirical software engineering techniques to evaluate a new approach …

Rapid Delivery Of Massive Geospatial Data Over Internet2, Rollin Strohman, Michael Haungs

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We study the feasibility of the on-demand delivery of a massive geospatial dataset over Internet2 for educational use. The dataset (20TB uncompressed, 2.5TB compressed), generously made available for this study by AirphotoUSA, provides a seamless, one-meter resolution aerial orthophotograph covering over three million square miles of the continental United States. We identify factors that limit the scalability, availability and user-perceived performance of serving such a dataset. To do this, we conduct experiments that measure response times for various levels of network congestion, bandwidth, and load. We also provide a proof-of-concept experiment by serving the dataset over Internet2 to students at …