Computer Sciences Commons^™

Pollinator Power: Supporting Bees Through Ecoregion Specific Planting Guides, Maya Thomas

Scripps Senior Theses

The pollination of flowering crops by bees is an invaluable ecosystem service that supports biodiversity and much of the global agricultural system. Pollinators move pollen between the male structures of a plant to the female structures of a plant of the same species. This fertilizes the female plant, which then produces the next generation. This process also provides the pollinator with the nectar or pollen it needs to survive. While some plants transfer pollen through different means, the majority of plants need help from pollinators to reproduce. Depending on the means of pollination, pollination can be classified as abiotic or …

An Autonomous Intelligent Robotic Wheelchair To Assist People In Need: Standing-Up, Turning-Around And Sitting-Down, Iosif Papadakis Ktistakis

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The world’s ageing population has significantly increased over the last decades, which will result in one of the most significant transformations of the twenty-first century. As people age, they become more vulnerable to diseases and their health may need constant monitoring. At the same time, the number of people who have some kind of disability is also increasing. These people with disabilities may need daily assistance and monitoring of their health condition that is provided by specialists (health providers) at a high cost. A possible solution to the aforementioned problem comes from the assistive and intelligent robotics research area. The …

Interactive Visualization Of Search Results Of Large Document Sets, James D. Anderson

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When presented with many search results, finding information or patterns within the data poses a challenge. This thesis presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a visualization enabling users to browse through voluminous information and comprehend the data. Implemented with the JavaScript library Data Driven Documents (D3), the visualization represents the search as clusters of similar documents grouped into bubbles with the contents depicted as word-clouds. Highly interactive features such as touch gestures and intuitive menu actions allow for expeditious exploration of the search results. Other features include drag-and-drop functionality for articles among bubbles, merging nodes, and refining the search …

Overwhelming The Saa System Of Delivery Uavs By Drone Swarming, Barry Lynn Pfaff

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As the Internet continues to replace the brick-and-mortar store as the main place for purchasing goods, web-based companies are looking for ways to reduce the cost of delivering those goods. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, is one delivery method that is increasingly being used. These UAVs can be programmed with delivery routes and destinations and can complete the job while requiring limited intervention from human controllers. Sense and Avoidance (SAA) systems have recently been incorporated into these UAVs so that they can detect objects in their flight path, reroute the UAV accordingly and operate even more autonomously. …

Fully Transparent Computer Vision Framework For Ship Detection And Tracking In Satellite Imagery, Jason T. Gottweis

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Tracking of ships in satellite imagery is a challenging problem in remote sensing since it requires both object detection and object recognition. Most of the resources available only cover one of these problems and are often filled with machine learning techniques which are costly to train. Additionally, the techniques covered in these resources are often difficult to replicate or may be hard to combine with other solutions to get a full tracking algorithm. The proposed framework offers a transparent and efficient alternative to machine learning approaches and includes preprocessing, detection, and recognition needed for tracking. All components of the framework …

Augment The Multi-Modal Interaction Capabilities Of Hololens Through Networked Sensory Devices, Subhadra Tummalapally

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Augmented Reality (AR) places virtual contents along with real objects to enhance user perception in the physical environment. It is a technology that has shown great potential in many industries such as medicine, education and transportation. AR devices, such as Microsoft HoloLens, come with multi-modal interaction capabilities, such as voice, gesture and gaze, to support intuitive and reliable human-computer interactions. However, HoloLens gesture support is limited to simple gestures like tap, bloom and hold, it stops short to support meaningful interaction through full hand gesture and motion tracking, which may be critical in field operations of various industry practices in …

Elephant 2000: A Programming Language For Remembering The Past And Building On It, Kerry J. Holmes

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Elephant 2000 is a programming language to specify programs that accept user speech as text inputs and outputs speech text. The inputs and outputs are based on Dialogue Act theory which describes several forms of speech outputs, such as requests, questions, and answers. The language also relies on Named Entity Recognition to determine what types of objects a user references. These entities include persons, locations, times and so on. Using these attributes of user speech, a program is able to perform simple rule matching and pattern recognition to respond to input. The result is a programming language with English like …

The Feasibility Of Dementia Caregiver Task Performance Measurement Using Smart Gaming Technology, Garrett G. Goodman

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Dementia caregiver burnout is detrimental to both the familial caregiver and their loved ones with dementia. As the population of older adults increases, both the number of individuals with dementia and their corresponding caregivers increase as well. Thus, we are interested in developing a potential tool to non-invasively detect signs of caregiver burnout using a mobile application combined with machine learning. Hence, the mobile application "Caregiver Assessment using Smart Technology" (CAST) was developed which personalizes a word scramble game. The CAST application utilizes a heuristically constructed Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) optimized via a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to provide an individualized …

Development Of A Human-Ai Teaming Based Mobile Language Learning Solution For Dual Language Learners In Early And Special Educations, Saurabh Shukla

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Learning English as a secondary language is often an overwhelming challenge for dual language learners (DLLs), whose first language (L1) is not English, especially for children in early education (PreK-3 age group). These early DLLs need to devote a considerable amount of time learning to speak and read the language, in order to gain the language proficiency to function and compete in the classroom. Fear of embarrassment when mispronouncing words in front of others may drive them to remain silent; effectively hampering their participation in the class and overall curricular growth. The process of learning a new language can benefit …

Multiple Drone Detection And Acoustic Scene Classification With Deep Learning, Hari Charan Vemula

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Classification of environmental scenes and detection of events in one's environment from audio signals enables one to create better-planning agents, intelligent navigation systems, pattern recognition systems, and audio surveillance systems. This thesis will explore the use of Convolutional Neural Networks(CNN'S) with spectrograms and raw audio waveforms as inputs to Deep Neural Networks with hand engineered features extracted from large-scale feature extraction schemes to identify the acoustic scenes and events. The first part focuses on building an audio pattern recognition system capable of detecting the if there are zero, one, or two DJI phantoms in the scene within the range of …

A Framework To Understand Emoji Meaning: Similarity And Sense Disambiguation Of Emoji Using Emojinet, Sanjaya Wijeratne

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Pictographs, commonly referred to as `emoji’, have become a popular way to enhance electronic communications. They are an important component of the language used in social media. With their introduction in the late 1990’s, emoji have been widely used to enhance the sentiment, emotion, and sarcasm expressed in social media messages. They are equally popular across many social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In 2015, Instagram reported that nearly half of the photo comments posted on Instagram contain emoji, and in the same year, Twitter reported that the `face with tears of joy’ emoji has been tweeted 6.6 …

Developing A Kinect Based Holoportation System, Soumya Chiday

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Holographic communication and distributed collaboration offer great potential for empathic computing to help remove the cost, distance, language and expertise barriers in many social and economic activities. Recent advances in AR-enhanced communication as evident by Microsoft Holoportation technology demonstrate the progress toward fully immersive collaborations distributed and remotely. Current holoportation system requires the use of extensive camera-arrays and powerful server system due to the computation demand and sensory needs to capture and reconstruct the subject of interests Thus, they suffer in mobility and applicability in real-world scenarios. In this thesis, we present an ultra-portable holoportation system design that requires only …

Using Natural Language Processing And Machine Learning For Analyzing Clinical Notes In Sickle Cell Disease Patients, Shufa Khizra

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Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a hereditary disorder in red blood cells that can lead to excruciating pain episodes. SCD causes the normal red blood cells to distort its shape and turn into sickle shape. The distorted shape makes the hemoglobin inflexible and stick to the walls of the vessels thereby obstructing the free flow of blood and eventually making the tissues suffer from lack of oxygen. The lack of oxygen causes serious problems including Acute Chest Syndrome (ACS), stroke, infection, organ damage, and over the lifetime an SCD can harm a persons spleen, brain, kidneys, eyes, bones. Sickling of …

Logic -> Proof -> Rest, Maxwell Taylor

Senior Independent Study Theses

REST is a common architecture for networked applications. Applications that adhere to the REST constraints enjoy significant scaling advantages over other architectures. But REST is not a panacea for the task of building correct software. Algebraic models of computation, particularly CSP, prove useful to describe the composition of applications using REST. CSP enables us to describe and verify the behavior of RESTful systems. The descriptions of each component can be used independently to verify that a system behaves as expected. This thesis demonstrates and develops CSP methodology to verify the behavior of RESTful applications.

Sports Analytics With Computer Vision, Colby T. Jeffries

Senior Independent Study Theses

Computer vision in sports analytics is a relatively new development. With multi-million dollar systems like STATS’s SportVu, professional basketball teams are able to collect extremely fine-detailed data better than ever before. This concept can be scaled down to provide similar statistics collection to college and high school basketball teams. Here we investigate the creation of such a system using open-source technologies and less expensive hardware. In addition, using a similar technology, we examine basketball free throws to see whether a shooter’s form has a specific relationship to a shot’s outcome. A system that learns this relationship could be used to …

Computer Science And Cultural History: A Dialogue, David B. Dennis, George K. Thiruvathukal

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Google Street View As A Medium For Social Gaming, Steven Dao, Tien Ho, Austin Pahl

Senior Theses

safehouse is a head-to-head Street View game drawing inspiration from GeoGuessr and Pursued. It will be available to play in a web browser on our website, http://thesafe.house. The game aims to let players discover new places in the world in a uniquely competitive way. At the start of each match, players will find themselves in a random Street View location in an unknown area, pitted against each other with one of two tasks: the pursued must locate a safe house somewhere in the city, and the pursuer must catch the pursued. Each player will have to rely on quick …

Let’S Try Something New: Service Learning In Boise State's Computer Science Department, Daniel Kondratyuk

International Journal of Undergraduate Community Engagement

In this article I explain how a group of Computer Science students at Boise State University participated in a new service learning project. I provide a few testimonials on the students’ experiences and describe the rewarding aspects of service learning in the greater Computer Science community.

On Barrier Graphs Of Sensor Networks, Kirk Anthony Boyer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study of sensor networks begins with a model, which usually has a geometric component. This thesis focuses on networks of sensors modeled as collections of rays in the plane whose use is to detect intruders, and in particular a graph derived from this geometry, called the barrier graph of the network, which captures information about the network's coverage. Every such ray-barrier sensor network corresponds to a barrier graph, but not every graph is the barrier graph of some network.

We show that any barrier graph is not just tripartite, but perfect. We describe how to find networks which have …

Parallel, Cross-Platform Unit Testing For Real-Time Embedded Systems, Tosapon Pankumhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Embedded systems are used in a wide variety of applications (e.g., automotive, agricultural, home security, industrial, medical, military, and aerospace) due to their small size, low-energy consumption, and the ability to control real-time peripheral devices precisely. These systems, however, are different from each other in many aspects: processors, memory size, develop applications/OS, hardware interfaces, and software loading methods. Unit testing is a fundamental part of software development and the lowest level of software testing, as it tests individual or groups of functions, methods, and classes, to increase confidence that the developed software satisfies both software specifications and user requirements. Although …

Evolving Art: Modifying Context Free Art With A Genetic Algorithm, Marina Kent

Scripps Senior Theses

Context Free Design Grammar (CFDG) is a programming language for defining recursive structures that can be used to create art. I use CFDG as a design space for genetic programming, experimenting with various options for crossover, mutation, and fitness. In this exploratory work, multiple generations are manually assessed to determine the usefulness of the mutation strategies and fitness functions. I find that simple value mutation and fitness that alters general program structure is not enough to produce an increase of interesting images in CFDG. I discuss these findings as well as future avenues of inquiry for genetic programming in artistic …

A New Frontier: But For Whom? An Analysis Of The Micro-Computer And Women’S Declining Participation In Computer Science, Eliana Keinan

CMC Senior Theses

Though women’s participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields has greatly increased over the past 60 years, women’s participation in computer science peaked in the 1980s. The paper searches for key motivators for women entering computer science at the peak in order to isolate factors for the subsequent steep decline. A major finding of the paper is that having a computer at home is (weakly) statistically significant as a determinant for female students choosing to pursue computer science. This relationship is insignificant for students in other STEM and non-STEM fields. A final section of the paper examines employment …

Grasping The Void: Immersion Tactics Using Gesture Controlled Physics Interaction Systems In Virtual Reality, Avery Rapson

Senior Independent Study Theses

This thesis uses the HTC Vive in Unity to compare two different types of object interaction systems in order to determine the effectiveness of physics based interaction systems in a virtual environment. The research problem that motivates this project is the fact that there is no standardized method for defining successful object interaction techniques in VR. There are numerous interaction techniques in VR that fall short of simulating realistic object interaction. This project explores a physics based interaction system and examines how effective it is by comparing it to a non-physics based system. A model house with various interactable objects …

Autonomous Driving With A Simulation Trained Convolutional Neural Network, Cameron Franke

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous vehicles will help society if they can easily support a broad range of driving environments, conditions, and vehicles.

Achieving this requires reducing the complexity of the algorithmic system, easing the collection of training data, and verifying operation using real-world experiments. Our work addresses these issues by utilizing a reflexive neural network that translates images into steering and throttle commands. This network is trained using simulation data from Grand Theft Auto V~\cite{gtav}, which we augment to reduce the number of simulation hours driven. We then validate our work using a RC car system through numerous tests. Our system successfully drive …

A Simulator Application For Distributed Leader Election Algorithms, Sugeeswara Gurudeniya

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

We present an application program, Distributed Algorithm Simulator, to simulate the execution of distributed leader election algorithms in a ring-network. The application was developed using Visual C# on Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5. The Distributed Algorithm Simulator consists of two major components: A Visual Simulator, which visually demonstrates the execution of the algorithms; and a Textual Simulator, which simulates the execution in text format. In both cases the end-result can be saved to a file.

The Visual Simulator displays the network in a ring orientation with circles representing the nodes, and numbers on them showing the node IDs. The user has …

Software Interoperability And The Pods Openhds System, Benjamin S. Heasly Ms

All Student Scholarship

This work addressed challenges of software system interoperability faced by the Open Health and Demographics Surveillance System (OpenHDS). OpenHDS is a distributed application for demographic data collection which was used during a public health intervention in Equatorial Guinea. Specific challenges faced during this intervention included offline data collection and synchronization, changing data collection and software requirements, data size and system performance, and correction of software and data collection errors. This work produced in a new system, the PODS OpenHDS System, which applied four design themes in order to address these challenges: Polymorphism, developer Operations, Declarative style, and Self-description.

Educational Methods For Inverted-Lecture Computer Science And Engineering Classrooms To Overcome Common Barriers To Stem Student Success, Kathleen Timmerman

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New educational pedagogies are emerging in an effort to increase the number of new engineers available to enter the workforce in the coming years. One of the re-occurring themes in these pedagogies is variations of the flipped classroom. Often the additional classroom time gained from flipping is used to reinforce learning objectives. It is hypothesized that it might be more beneficial to students if a portion of that time is used to address common non-cognitive barriers that prevent students from succeeding in the major. In a freshman Introductory Computer Science course, three different pedagogies are compared: a hybrid lecture-active learning …

Implementing Agile Development At Scale: An Industry Case Study, Nikita Kataria

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Agile software development methodologies are extremely popular. Their dynamic restructuring of the development process has been seen as the silver bullet for increasing the productivity of software development. A significant number of studies have analyzed the impact of implementing agile techniques. However these are mostly evaluated only in smaller team settings. There is very little reporting done on how agile development methods can be implemented at the team level and scaled up at the program/portfolio level in large software organizations.

We present the results of an empirical study conducted at Pearson Education. The study focuses on the penetration of agile …

Optimizing Vehicle Usage Using Csp, Sat And Max-Sat, Raheem T. Al Rammahi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Most of the companies in Iraq spend significant amounts of time and money when transferring employees between home and work. In this thesis, we model the problem of the Dhi Qar Oil company (DQOC) transportations using three modeling languages from AI: Constraint Programing (CP), Boolean Satisfiability (SAT), and Maximum Satisfiability (MAX-SAT). We then use solvers to find optimal solutions to this problem.

We show which of these solvers is more efficient when finding optimal solutions. For this purpose, we create a test suite of 360 problems to test these solvers. All solvers are applied to these problems and the final …

Greenc5: An Adaptive, Energy-Aware Collection For Green Software Development, Junya Michanan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic data structures in software applications have been shown to have a large impact on system performance. In this paper, we explore energy saving opportunities of interface-based dynamic data structures. Our results suggest that savings opportunities exist in the C5 Collection between 16.95% and 97.50%. We propose a prototype and architecture for creating adaptive green data structures by applying machine learning tools to build a model for predicting energy efficient data structures based on the dynamic workload. Our neural network model can classify energy efficient data structures based on features such as the number of elements, frequency of operations, interface …