Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Trinity University

Theses/Dissertations

2005

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Expanding The Use Of Cellular Automata, Joseph Bertles Sep 2005

Expanding The Use Of Cellular Automata, Joseph Bertles

Computer Science Honors Theses

Cellular automata are a type of simulation based upon dividing space into cells. More specifically, cellular automata are characterized by parallelism, locality, and homogeneity. A simulation is run by conducting a series of updates, consisting of running a set of rules that all cells follow. The rules typically consist of looking at a cell's immediate neighbors and/or itself to determine what will be in the cell at the next step. The rules are applied to all the cells at exactly the same time in exactly the same manner. The use of cellular automata has been limited to computer scientists, those …

Go to article

Self-Adjusting Finite State Machines: An Approach To Real-Time Autonomous Behavior In Robots, Scott Schwartz Aug 2005

Self-Adjusting Finite State Machines: An Approach To Real-Time Autonomous Behavior In Robots, Scott Schwartz

Computer Science Honors Theses

In the Robotics industry, it is a frequent requirement that robots operate in real-time. The usual approach to this issue involves creating robots driven entirely by direct environmental input rather than complicated planning and decision-making AI. This approach means that the current state of the robot in relation to its environment exclusively determines the actions of the robot. In the simplest terms, this approach creates a Finite State Machine (FSM). Clearly, a standard FSM is completely pre-deterministic upon its creation. This is a drawback which immediately disallows the robot to cope with dynamic environments in an autonomous manner. This research …

Go to article

Computing Isodose Curves For Radiotherapy Treatment Plans, Ryan Acosta May 2005

Computing Isodose Curves For Radiotherapy Treatment Plans, Ryan Acosta

Computer Science Honors Theses

Radiation therapy increasingly means Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) and withit a trend towards inverse treatment planning. The metrics of a treatment consist of important conformality indices such as the Ian Paddick Conformality Index (IPCI), Dose Volume Histograms (DVH), as well as the conformance isodose lines. This final metric, which offers spatial information of radiation dose that the others do not, shows the results of simulating the treatment plan on the CAT scan images. A physician is able to examine this image and ascertain which portions of the anatomy are the recipients of different levels of radiation dose. Computing isodose …

Go to article

Generation Of Office Buildings In Large Scale Virtual Worlds, Michael Mcbryde Apr 2005

Generation Of Office Buildings In Large Scale Virtual Worlds, Michael Mcbryde

Computer Science Honors Theses

Virtual worlds are used in many different areas, from military training simulations to massive multiplayer online role-playing games. In the past, the sizes of these worlds was limited by the power of the computers that ran them as well as the man-hours needed to draw them. However, as computers have become more powerful, the limiting fctor has become the man-hours needed to manually draw every object in such a world. So there is now a need for large scale, traversable, dynamic, algorithmically generated virtual worlds. For these worlds to be realistic, cities need to be generated, and for these cities …

Go to article

A Benchmark And Analysis Of Spatial Data Structures For Physical Simulations, Domingo Lara Apr 2005

A Benchmark And Analysis Of Spatial Data Structures For Physical Simulations, Domingo Lara

Computer Science Honors Theses

Collision detection is an issue in physical simulations; without it simulations are inaccurate. Unfortunately, effective collision detection can require a significant amount of computational power. To reduce the number of computations and make the problem more tractable, computer scientists have used date structures to partition the system. This removes the need to have every single partical check for possible collisions with every other particle in the system; however, generic data structures typically do not work as well as specialized data structures, so this has led to the creation of multiple spatial data structures. Some spatial data structures and algorithms were …

Go to article

Algorithmic Generation Of Cities Using Cellular Automata In A Dynamically Generated World, Eric Garza Apr 2005

Algorithmic Generation Of Cities Using Cellular Automata In A Dynamically Generated World, Eric Garza

Computer Science Honors Theses

The procedures and algorithms used to create a realistic city in a virtual world are outlined in this paper. The world is algorithmically created from a single random number. The terrain, water, and population of various races are created in real time as a viewer walks around the world. The world is created in various levels of detail; objects that are close to the viewer are fully generated in high detail, and objects further away from the viewer are not created. The locations of the cities are first based on the pre-existing world then on the set of tolerances of …

Go to article

Algorithmic Beauty Of Buildings Methods For Procedural Building Generation, Jess Martin Jan 2005

Algorithmic Beauty Of Buildings Methods For Procedural Building Generation, Jess Martin

Computer Science Honors Theses

As virtual reality simulations, video games, and computer animated movies become more prevalent, the need arises to generate the content the three-dimensional models via an algorithm rather than crafting them by hand. Previous research in the area of procedural building generation has focused merely on the external appearance of commercial buildings. These methods are unsatisfactory for certain applications due to the lack of a walk-through feature. A new algorithm is proposed to generate residential units with realistic floor plans based partially on the architectural observations of Christopher Alexander. Results for the algorithm display real-time performance and a resemblance to real …

Go to article