Computer Sciences Commons^™

Neural Networks For Autonomous Control Of Unmanned Helicopters, Padraig M. Moriarty

Theses

Landing a helicopter on a ship in high seas can be a dangerous endeavour. This thesis proposes to examine the possible uses of Artificial Neural Networks (A.N.N.) in the aiding and/or the landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (U.A.V.). It proposes that this procedure can be segregated into three distinct phases. The data for the A.N.N. training and testing sets is generated through simulation in the Unity cross-platform game engine. Phase 1 is intended to convert video images from an on-board camera to a set of numeric outputs suitable for use in Phase 2. Phase 2 estimates the current relative …

Design Of Oppnet Virtual Machine For Opportunistic Resource Utilization Networks: A Universal Standard For Application-Level Resource Sharing, Mai A. Alduailij

Dissertations

Opportunistic resource utilization networks or oppnets are a paradigm for specialized ad hoc networks. The Oppnet Virtual Machine (OVM) is a collection of primitives designed to create a middleware for application-level resource acquisition by oppnets and oppnet-enabled systems and devices (where the latter are defined as the computational entities able to communicate with other oppnets or oppnet-enabled entities). Acquisition of communication resources is the foundation for acquisition of other resources.

The OVM primitives can be downloaded by any computational entity—making entity oppnet-enabled. OVM ensures that oppnet-enabled entities can communicate and acquire resources in an opportunistic and ad hoc manner. This …

Novel Software Defined Radio Architecture With Graphics Processor Acceleration, Lalith Narasimhan

Dissertations

Wireless has become one of the most pervasive core technologies in the modern world. Demand for faster data rates, improved spectrum efficiency, higher system access capacity, seamless protocol integration, improved security and robustness under varying channel environments has led to the resurgence of programmable software defined radio (SDR) as an alternative to traditional ASIC based radios. Future SDR implementations will need support for multiple standards on platforms with multi-Gb/s connectivity, parallel processing and spectrum sensing capabilities. This dissertation implemented key technologies of importance in addressing these issues namely development of cost effective multi-mode reconfigurable SDR and providing a framework to …

Flow Experience In Virtual Worlds: Individuals Versus Dyads, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Brenda Eschenbrenner

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Flow is a state of mind in which one is deeply absorbed and immersed in an activity to the point where nothing else matters. Although flow can occur in solitary and social contexts, which context fosters greater flow is unclear. Consistent with self-determination theory, dyads working collaboratively achieved higher states of flow than individuals working alone. In other words, dyads achieved higher states of focused concentration and experienced greater temporal dissociation than individuals working alone. Surprisingly and contradictory to previous findings, dyads did not experience greater enjoyment than individuals working alone. We attributed this surprising finding to the hedonic nature …

Salad: A Multimodal Approach For Contextual Video Advertising, Chen Xiang, Tam Nguyen, Mohan Kankanhalli

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The explosive growth of multimedia data on Internet has created huge opportunities for online video advertising. In this paper, we propose a novel advertising technique called SalAd, which utilizes textual information, visual content and the webpage saliency, to automatically associate the most suitable companion ads with online videos. Unlike most existing approaches that only focus on selecting the most relevant ads, SalAd further considers the saliency of selected ads to reduce intentional ignorance. SalAd consists of three basic steps. Given an online video and a set of advertisements, we first roughly identify a set of relevant ads based on the …

An Immersive Telepresence System Using Rgb-D Sensors And Head-Mounted Display, Xinzhong Lu, Ju Shen, Saverio Perugini, Jianjun Yang

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the instructor to effectively and efficiently explain and illustrate complex concepts or sophisticated problems in an intuitive manner. The …

Objective Real-Time Motion Analysis Using Wearable Devices For Post Stroke Rehabilitation, Brandon J. Allen

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

With the growing population of the elderly, there is an increasing need for reliable, inexpensive, and quantifiable clinical measures. This thesis proposes mStroke, a practical, accurate, and mobile health system that remotely measures a stroke patient's proficiency in standard post-stroke therapy activities. The proposed system is delivered as an application (App) running on a hardware system consisting of two bluetooth low energy (BLE) modular sensor devices and an iPad. The system uses accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers to measure movement during three single-tasked clinical activities: the functional reach test, the NIHSS motor arm test, and the NIHSS motor leg test. The …

Evaluating The Intrinsic Similarity Between Neural Networks, Stephen Charles Ashmore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We present Forward Bipartite Alignment (FBA), a method that aligns the topological structures of two neural networks. Neural networks are considered to be a black box, because neural networks contain complex model surface determined by their weights that combine attributes non-linearly. Two networks that make similar predictions on training data may still generalize differently. FBA enables a diversity of applications, including visualization and canonicalization of neural networks, ensembles, and cross-over between unrelated neural networks in evolutionary optimization. We describe the FBA algorithm, and describe implementations for three applications: genetic algorithms, visualization, and ensembles. We demonstrate FBA's usefulness by comparing a …

Faster Maximium Priority Matchings In Bipartite Graphs, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A maximum priority matching is a matching in an undirected graph that maximizes a priority score defined with respect to given vertex priorities. An earlier paper showed how to find maximum priority matchings in unweighted graphs. This paper describes an algorithm for bipartite graphs that is faster when the number of distinct priority classes is limited. For graphs with k distinct priority classes it runs in O(kmn1/2) time, where n is the number of vertices in the graph and m is the number of edges.

Neural Decomposition Of Time-Series Data For Effective Generalization, Luke Godfrey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We present a neural network technique for the analysis and extrapolation of time-series data called Neural Decomposition (ND). Units with a sinusoidal activation function are used to perform a Fourier-like decomposition of training samples into a sum of sinusoids, augmented by units with nonperiodic activation functions to capture linear trends and other nonperiodic components. We show how careful weight initialization can be combined with regularization to form a simple model that generalizes well. Our method generalizes effectively on the Mackey-Glass series, a dataset of unemployment rates as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, a time-series of monthly international …

When Disclosure Is Involuntary: Empowering Users With Control To Reduce Concerns, David W. Wilson, Ryan M. Schuetzler, Bradley Dorn, Jeffrey Gainer Proudfoot

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Modern organizations must carefully balance the practice of gathering large amounts of valuable data from individuals with the associated ethical considerations and potential negative public image inherent in breaches of privacy. As it becomes increasingly commonplace for many types of information to be collected without individuals' knowledge or consent, managers and researchers alike can benefit from understanding how individuals react to such involuntary disclosures, and how these reactions can impact evaluations of the data-collecting organizations. This research develops and empirically tests a theoretical model that shows how empowering individuals with a sense of control over their personal information can help …

Information Technology For Development In Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises, Jie Xiong, Sajda Qureshi

Information Systems and Quantitative Analysis Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

Development is a concept that is often used to describe growth in organizations and the regions in which they reside. While research in Information Systems (IS) recognizes the importance of Information Technology (IT) in improving the organizational performance, a great deal of emphasis is given towards understanding large organizations. While social-economic development and transformation relies on new technological infrastructures and organizational changes, there is still a weak link between the organization studies with Information Technology (IT) as it relates to the growth of organizations. It appears that a greater research focus is needed in understanding the use of IT in …

Mobilerp, Anthony Fata

Computer Engineering

MobilERP is a system that increases traceability of parts in a manufacturing process in a simple paperless way. The system contains three components, a desktop application, a mobile app, and a database. The mobile application allows employees to scan (using a bar code scanner) parts that they are working/finishing on during the manufacturing process. As the part goes down the assembly line, individuals will barcode scan using the app to track the progress. These changes would get updated to the database, where then the designated person can track the progress of the part as well as any problems or concerns …

Pthreads Profiler, Ryan Van Quinlan

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The goal of this senior project was to design and implement a program which would allow users to profile programs that utilize the Pthreads library. This profiler allows users to measure load balance and lock contention between threads as well as discover deadlocks. These tools can be essential to developers of multi-threaded applications, which are notoriously difficult to debug. Additionally, this tool can help find vital performance benefits by providing relative execution measurements. The profiler is written in C++ and utilizes the standard template library as well as glibc extensions.

Transforming C Openmp Programs For Verification In Civl, Michael Rogers

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There are numerous way to express parallelism which can make it challenging for developers to verify these programs. Many tools only target a single dialect but the Concurrency Intermediate Verification Language (CIVL) targets MPI, Pthreads, and CUDA. CIVL provides a general concurrency model that can represent pro- grams in a variety of concurrency dialects. CIVL includes a front-end that support all of the dialects mentioned above. The back-end is a verifier that uses model checking and symbolic execution to check standard properties.

In this thesis, we have designed and implemented a transformer that will take C OpenMP programs and transform …

Routing Optimization In Interplanetary Networks, Sara El Alaoui

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Interplanetary Internet or Interplanetary Networking (IPN) is envisaged as a space network which interconnects spacecrafts, satellites, rovers and orbiters of different planets and comets for efficient exchange of scientific data such as telemetry and images. IPNs are classified among challenged networks because of the unpredictable changes in the network and the large varying delays in communication. These networks are hard to model using static graphs and do not behave optimally when operated using the standards and techniques of static networks. Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN), in its different implementations, is one of the suggested solutions to overcome these challenges. DTN has …

Stability Condition Of A Retrial Queueing System With Abandoned And Feedback Customers, Amina A. Bouchentouf, Abbes Rabhi, Lahcene Yahiaoui

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

This paper deals with the stability of a retrial queueing system with two orbits, abandoned and feedback customers. Two independent Poisson streams of customers arrive to the system, and flow into a single-server service system. An arriving one of type i; i = 1; 2, is handled by the server if it is free; otherwise, it is blocked and routed to a separate type-i retrial (orbit) queue that attempts to re-dispatch its jobs at its specific Poisson rate. The customer in the orbit either attempts service again after a random time or gives up receiving service and leaves the system …

Group Decision Making Using Comparative Linguistic Expression Based On Hesitant Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets, Ismat Beg, Tabasam Rashid

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

We introduce a method for aggregation of experts’ opinions given in the form of comparative linguistic expression. An algorithmic form of technique for order preference is proposed for group decision making. A simple example is given by using this method for the selection of the best alternative as well as ranking the alternatives from the best to the worst.

Analysis Of Repairable M[X]/(G1,G2)/1 - Feedback Retrial G-Queue With Balking And Starting Failures Under At Most J Vacations, P. Rajadurai, M. C. Saravanarajan, V. M. Chandrasekaran

Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM)

In this paper, we discuss the steady state analysis of a batch arrival feedback retrial queue with two types of service and negative customers. Any arriving batch of positive customers finds the server is free, one of the customers from the batch enters into the service area and the rest of them join into the orbit. The negative customer, arriving during the service time of a positive customer, will remove the positive customer in-service and the interrupted positive customer either enters into the orbit or leaves the system. If the orbit is empty at the service completion of each type …

Generalized Techniques For Using System Execution Traces To Support Software Performance Analysis, Thelge Manjula Peiris

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation proposes generalized techniques to support software performance analysis using system execution traces in the absence of software development artifacts such as source code. The proposed techniques do not require modifications to the source code, or to the software binaries, for the purpose of software analysis (non-intrusive). The proposed techniques are also not tightly coupled to the architecture specific details of the system being analyzed. This dissertation extends the current techniques of using system execution traces to evaluate software performance properties, such as response times, service times. The dissertation also proposes a novel technique to auto-construct a dataflow model …

Assessing The Physical Security Of Idfs With Psatool: A Case Study, Sulabh Bista

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

PSATool is a checklist-based, web-based application for assessing the physical security of Intermediate Distribution Frameworks. IDFs, or wiring closets, are an integral if often neglected component of information security. Earlier work by Timbs (2013) identified 52 IDF-related security requirements based on federal and international standards for physical security. PSATool refines Timbs’ prototype application for IDF assessment, extending it with support for mobile-device-based data entry.

PSATool was used to assess 25 IDFs at a regional university, a college and a manufacturing corporation, with an average of 9 minutes per assessment. Network managers and assessors involved in the assessments characterized PSATool as …

Adaptive Duty Cycling In Sensor Networks With Energy Harvesting Using Continuous-Time Markov Chain And Fluid Models, Ronald Wai Hong Chan, Pengfei Zhang, Ido Nevat, Sai Ganesh Nagarajan, Alvin Cerdena Valera, Hwee Xian Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The dynamic and unpredictable nature of energy harvesting sources available for wireless sensor networks, and the time variation in network statistics like packet transmission rates and link qualities, necessitate the use of adaptive duty cycling techniques. Such adaptive control allows sensor nodes to achieve long-run energy neutrality, where energy supply and demand are balanced in a dynamic environment such that the nodes function continuously. In this paper, we develop a new framework enabling an adaptive duty cycling scheme for sensor networks that takes into account the node battery level, ambient energy that can be harvested, and application-level QoS requirements. We …

3d Reconstruction Of Close Range Objects Using Free And Open Source Software And Raspberry Pi Technologies, Juan Lorenzo Monrreal

Theses and Dissertations

Existing 3D rendering open source software along with Raspberry Pi technology can be used to create an affordable method and workflow for time efficient, accurate and quality scans for 3D printing. The emergence of technology spurs a technological community working to progress in a collaborative effort. This brings a potential to the possibility of efficient and economical solutions to emerging problems, in this case, the ability to render three dimensional scans using free and open source software as well as Raspberry Pi technology. The focus of this paper will be divided into three different aspects including the background needed to …

Oriented Object Proposals, Shengfeng He, Rynson W. H. Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a new approach to generate oriented object proposals (OOPs) to reduce the detection error caused by various orientations of the object. To this end, we propose to efficiently locate object regions according to pixelwise object probability, rather than measuring the objectness from a set of sampled windows. We formulate the proposal generation problem as a generative probabilistic model such that object proposals of different shapes (i.e., sizes and orientations) can be produced by locating the local maximum likelihoods. The new approach has three main advantages. First, it helps the object detector handle objects of different …

Bring-Your-Own-Application (Byoa): Optimal Stochastic Application Migration In Mobile Cloud Computing, Jonathan David Chase, Dusit Niyato, Sivadon Chaisiri

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The increasing popularity of using mobile devices in a work context, has led to the need to be able to support more powerful computation. Users no longer remain in an office or at home to conduct their activities, preferring libraries and cafes. In this paper, we consider a mobile cloud computing scenario in which users bring their own mobile devices and are offered a variety of equipment, e.g., desktop computer, smart- TV, or projector, to migrate their applications to, so as to save battery life, improve usability and performance. We formulate a stochastic optimization problem to optimize the allocation of …

Object Detection And Tracking In Wide Area Surveillance Using Thermal Imagery, Santosh Bhusal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The main objective behind this thesis is to examine how existing vision-based detection and tracking algorithms perform in thermal imagery-based video surveillance. While color-based surveillance has been extensively studied, these techniques can not be used during low illumination, at night, or with lighting changes and shadows which limits their applicability. The main contributions in this thesis are (1) the creation of a new color-thermal dataset, (2) a detailed performance comparison of different color-based detection and tracking algorithms on thermal data and (3) the proposal of an adaptive neural network for false detection rejection.

Since there are not many publicly available …

Multiple Instance Fuzzy Inference., Amine Ben Khalifa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A novel fuzzy learning framework that employs fuzzy inference to solve the problem of multiple instance learning (MIL) is presented. The framework introduces a new class of fuzzy inference systems called Multiple Instance Fuzzy Inference Systems (MI-FIS). Fuzzy inference is a powerful modeling framework that can handle computing with knowledge uncertainty and measurement imprecision effectively. Fuzzy Inference performs a non-linear mapping from an input space to an output space by deriving conclusions from a set of fuzzy if-then rules and known facts. Rules can be identified from expert knowledge, or learned from data. In multiple instance problems, the training data …

Analyzing Repetitive Sequences With Structured Dynamic Bayesian Networks, Thomas. L. Lake

Masters Theses

Time series often feature structure that is known a priori and easily described using natural language terms such as repetitive, symmetric, seasonal, and self-similar. However, the typical conjugate priors used in Bayesian analysis do not capture such complex phenomena well. As a result of this mismatch, known structure is modeled poorly or completely ignored. Focusing on time series with repetitive structure, this thesis proposes to overcome this problem by reducing rather than in- creasing the capacity of a well know time series model, the Hidden Markov Model. Through a careful choice in the way model capacity is reduced the model …

A Methodology For Evaluating The Strength Of Cued-Recall Graphical Passwords, Mohammad N. Alshehri

Theses and Dissertations

With the revolution of computers, in particular smartphones, people use them to deal with sensitive information such as making online payments, online banking, managing medical records, and communicating with others via messages, emails, and social media. Consequently, computers and smartphones have become a storehouse of private information that must be protected from getting in the hands of unauthorized people. Verifying the identity of a computer’s users before granting access to them is one option of protection. Textual passwords and PINs are commonly used for authentication on standalone PCs, and smartphones. Users create problems, such as using easy to guess passwords …

Detecting Harmful Hand Behavior With Machine Learning From Wearable Motion Sensor Data, Lingfeng Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

In medical care and special needs areas, human activity recognition helps doctors track the patients while they are unsupervised. In this paper, we will present our classifier system for detecting harmful hand behavior. The data comes from a wearable sensor on the user’s wrist. It collects signals in the three axes x, y and z. For each axis, it contains multiple attributes. Because reducing irrelevant attributes can decrease the time complexity and increase the accuracy, we started processing the raw data by ignoring some attributes from the whole attributes set. Our design approach is to apply a classification algorithm which …