Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Commons^™

Development Of Object-Based Teleoperator Control For Unstructured Applications, Hyunki Cho

Theses and Dissertations

For multi-fingered end effectors in unstructured applications, the main issues are control in the presence of uncertainties and providing grasp stability and object manipulability. The suggested concept in this thesis is object based teleoperator control which provides an intuitive way to control the robot in terms of the grasped object and reduces the operator's conceptual constraints. The general control law is developed using a hierarchical control structure, i.e., human interface I gross motion control level in teleoperation control and fine motion control/object grasp stability in autonomous control. The gross motion control is required to provide the position/orientation of the Super …

Exploring Knowledge Processes For Technology Assimilation, Rochelle K. Young

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In the emerging knowledge society, the ability to make the experience and expertise of those involved in and affected by new technology unconditionally available to all members of an organization is becoming increasingly important. One of the problems in developing such knowledge processes for technology assimilation is that current social structures do not easily accommodate unconditional participation. Since the implementation of modern information technology is changing the workplace and the nature of work itself, alternative social structures are needed. This research takes as given that deep questions concerning knowledge processes and social transformation are in principle undecidable; and, only questions …

The Emergence Of Alife, P.D. Quick

SWITCH

Interview with Kenneth E. Rinaldo, an artist who is on the Board of Directors of YLEM. Within this interview, many topics are covered, including artificial life, simulations, the meaning of art, spirituality, and television. The interview also goes into the personal work and life of Rinaldo, whose focus includes many of these subjects. Some of the more specific subjects include intelligence without consciousness, the combination of science and art, and Ken Rinaldo’s The Flock, an interactive A-Life sculpture.

Rudy Rucker's Calife, Rudy Rucker

SWITCH

This page performs as a guide to Rudy Rucker’s alife programs. The first page explains how to download the source codes as well as the compiled software. It is noted that the compiler used was Borland C++ 4.0. The second page performs as a list of each program and explains what they are used for. The zip files can be found at the bottom of the software download page 2.

Rucker, Rudy Rucker

SWITCH

In this article, Rudy Rucker shares his thoughts on hacking. He summarizes it as normal actions, such as building a car, or kneading clay. He compares hacking to things that are buildable by hand, and views creating computer programs the same way. One of the benefits of creating your own computer programs is that you can customize themn however you want. However customizing software on your own is extremely time consuming. He then goes into further detail about artificial life and how hyperspace works. Hacking bends the cyber reality that we are accustomed to, and modifying programs outside of what …

Artificial Love Life Is As Real As The Real Thing, Professor S. Farsad

SWITCH

This article explains how an experiment by two human subjects stimulates love compared to artificial life. Professor Farsad’s experiment consisted of seven procedures from Stendhal’s work on romantic love, Love (1822). Both this article and experiment aimed to answer the question; Can artificial life feel love in romance?

Rudy Rucker's Spirograph, Rudy Rucker

SWITCH

This article showcases the main aspects of how this spirograph was to be used. The spirograph is part of Rudy Rucker’s quest for the gnarl. The main page shows how to download this spirograph and how to utilize the program to its full potential.

Nanotechnology, Fullereness, & The Golden Mean, Loretta L. Lange

SWITCH

This article explains how nanotechnology can be used in digital art forms and how it may be used in the near future. The development of nanotechnology has led to breathroughts such as the discovery of buckyballs and fullerenes. Such concepts eventually led to the research into nanobiology. The world of nanotechnology is still considered new and all of the concepts that dabbled into this medium can be expectred to evolve as time goes by.

An Adaptive Fuzzy Logic Controller For Intelligent Networking And Control, Irshad Nainar

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

In this thesis, we present a fuzzy logic control scheme to regulate the flow of traffic approaching a set of intersections. An adaptive Fuzzy Logic Traffic Controller (FLTC) is used to adjust the green phase split of the north-south and east-west approaches of a set of traffic signals based on the actual traffic approaching the intersection. Each intersection is coordinated with its neighbouring intersections by adjusting the offset of the local intersection. The offset is adjusted by a local fuzzy logic controller loacted at each intersection. A new fuzzy control scheme, using a supervisory Fuzzy Logic Controller, is also proposed …

Combinatorial Approaches For Hard Problems In Manpower Scheduling, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Manpower scheduling is concerned with the construction of a workers' schedule which meets demands while satisfying given constraints. We consider a manpower scheduling Problem, called the Change Shift Assignment Problem(CSAP). In previous work, we proved that CSAP is NP-hard and presented greedy methods to solve some restricted versions. In this paper, we present combinatorial algorithms to solve more general and realistic versions of CSAP which are unlikely solvable by greedy methods. First, we model CSAP as a fixed-charge network and show that a feasible schedule can be obtained by finding disjoint paths in the network, which can be derived from …

Randomized Approximation Of The Constraint Satisfaction Problem, Hoong Chuin Lau, Osamu Watanabe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We consider the Weighted Constraint Satisfaction Problem (W-CSP) which is a fundamental problem in Artificial Intelligence and a generalization of important combinatorial problems such as MAX CUT and MAX SAT. In this paper, we prove non-approximability properties of W-CSP and give improved approximations of W-CSP via randomized rounding of linear programming and semidefinite programming relaxations. Our algorithms are simple to implement and experiments show that they are run-time efficient.

Design And Evaluation Of Standard Telerobotic Control Software, Kevin P. Anchor

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis represents the first implementation of a proposed Air Force standard telerobotic control architecture. This architecture was developed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology under contract to the Air Force Materiel Command Robotics and Automation Center of Excellence (RACE) as the Unified Telerobotics Architecture Project (UTAP). The AFIT Robotics and Automation Applications Group (RAAG) Lab B facility computational structure was redesigned to be compliant with the UTAP architecture. This thesis shows that the UTAP specification to be implementable. However, if the underlying operating system does not support generic message passing, an …

Intelligent Control Of Vehicles: Preliminary Results On The Application Of Learning Automata Techniques To Automated Highway System, Cem Unsal, John S. Bay, Pushkin Kachroo

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

We suggest an intelligent controller for an automated vehicle to plan its own trajectory based on sensor and communication data received. Our intelligent controller is based on an artificial intelligence technique called learning stochastic automata. The automaton can learn the best possible action to avoid collisions using the data received from on-board sensors. The system has the advantage of being able to work in unmodeled stochastic environments. Simulations for the lateral control of a vehicle using this AI method provides encouraging results.

Text Independent Speaker Verification Using Binary-Pair Partitioned Neural Networks, Claude A. Norton Iii

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A method is presented for the application of binary-pair partitioned neural networks to the task of speaker verification. This technique is based on a previously developed neural network classifier for speaker identification.

The main focus of this research was the development and testing of the algorithms necessary to extend the binary-pair partitioning approach from speaker identification to speaker verification. The method is based on the development of a user profile which is obtained from discriminative data provided by the binary-pair partitioned neural networks.

Experimental results are provided which demonstrate the viability of this approach, using the TIMIT speech corpus for …

Virtual Celluoid, Switch Staffs

SWITCH

The article is an analysis of the author’s research pertaining to films relating to or containing the concept of virtual reality. The author lists several films such as Johnny Mnemnonic, Virtuosity, The Net, and Disclosure and provides a brief synopsis and review of each movie. Each film explains the concept of virtual reality through differing plots and methods such as cyberspace, progressive software, and artificial intelligence. The author also gives their own insight into and ratings of the films, explaining what they think is the most relatable in terms of overall storyline as well as how realisticly the movie portrays …

Vr Products, P.D. Quick

SWITCH

The article is an analysis of the author’s experience testing several virtual reality items at Siggraph, an annual convention displaying computer machinery and interactive technology products. The author explains each device and how they work, the company behind the invention, as well as how it can help with future technological advancements. Several products are explained in more depth; the i-Glasses by Virtual I/O, Red Planet by Virtual World Entertainment Inc., Venturer S-2 by Thomson Entertainment Systems, and several more. Each item explores virtual reality in differing ways such as interactive video games, more user-friendly 3D modeling, and virtual movie theater …

Interview: Brenda Laurel, Jason Challas

SWITCH

This interview with Brenda Laurel, Virtual Reality (VR) author and thinker, discusses the applications and challenges of VR. Creating an emphatic experience using VR technology is possible, but the challenge lies in designing an environment that models the senses to stimulate emotions. VR enables experiences of different genders, but physiological differences between the sexes exist and are important to understand. However, technology used to create the environment and simulation of physical objects in VR is only in the developmental stage. Laurel believes in the importance of keeping the mind grounded in the physical body, in order to strengthen the appreciation …

Teaching Accommodation Task Skills: From Human Demonstration To Robot Control Via Artificial Neural Networks, Paul V. Whalen

Theses and Dissertations

A simple edge-mating task, performed automatically by accommodation control, was used to study the feasibility of using data collected during a human demonstration to train an artificial neural network (ANN) to control a common robot manipulator to complete similar tasks. The 2-dimensional (planar) edge-mating task which aligns a peg normal to a fiat table served as the basis for the investigation. A simple multi-layered perceptron (MLP) ANN with a single hidden layer and linear output nodes was trained using the back-propagation algorithm with momentum. The inputs to the ANN were the planar components of the contact force between the peg …

Comparing Traditional Statistical Models With Neural Network Models: The Case Of The Relation Of Human Performance Factors To The Outcomes Of Military Combat, William Oliver Hedgepeth

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Statistics and neural networks are analytical methods used to learn about observed experience. Both the statistician and neural network researcher develop and analyze data sets, draw relevant conclusions, and validate the conclusions. They also share in the challenge of creating accurate predictions of future events with noisy data.

Both analytical methods are investigated. This is accomplished by examining the veridicality of both with real system data. The real system used in this project is a database of 400 years of historical military combat. The relationships among the variables represented in this database are recognized as being hypercomplex and nonlinear.

The …

Autonomous Robot Navigation In Unknown Terrains Using Parallel Numerical Artificial Potential Fields, John C. Schneider

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

We present a new artificial potential field formulation for resolution complete robot navigation that unifies the purely geometric path planning problem with the lower level force control problem. Our formulation is designed for numerical computation over a massively parallel mesh of processors and is responsive to newly discovered terrain features. It does not suffer from many of the problems commonly associated with potential fields and with adequate resolution provides provably correct, collision free convergence to the goal. In addition, our formulation supports many desirable, practical features required for implementation, such as bounded actuator torques, attainable incremental constructability, realizable computation and …

Artificially Intelligent Air Combat Simulation Agents, Daniel E. Gisselquist

Theses and Dissertations

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), in an effort to improve military simulations, has proposed a standard for Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS). This network protocol will allow dissimilar applications to communicate simulation information. In the field of air combat, this will allow pilots in remote simulators to fly in a common simulation. The success of this standard is dependent on applications being able to work within that standard, as well as a large variety of Computer Generated Forces (CGFs) to complement interactive forces. CGFs are needed to help simulate the large combat scenarios that can only occur in wartime. By …

Survey And Implementation Of Commercial Manual Controllers For A Generic Telerobotics Architecture, Thomas E. Deeter

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine an input device for the Air Force's generic telerobotics architecture for large aircraft maintenance and repair. One area of concern is the human to machine interface, more specifically, which manual controller should be used for the specified tasks in this architecture. We mailed a survey to 68 companies in order to compile a list of possible input devices that the telerobotics architecture could use. 32 companies responded which gave me enough data to generate a list that described the physical traits of the input devices. We then divided the required tasks into …

A Model Of Visual Recognition Implemented Using Neural Networks, Vincent C. Phillips

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The ability to recognise and classify objects in the environment is an important property of biological vision. It is highly desirable that artificial vision systems also have this ability. This thesis documents research into the use of artificial neural networks to implement a prototype model of visual object recognition. The prototype model, describing a computtional architecture, is derived from relevant physiological and psychological data, and attempts to resolve the use of structural decomposition and invariant feature detection. To validate the research a partial implementation of the model has been constructed using multiple neural networks. A linear feed-forward network performs pre-procesing …

Discovery Learning In Autonomous Agents Using Genetic Algorithms, Edward O. Gordon

Theses and Dissertations

As the new Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) draft standard evolves into a useful document and distributed simulations begin to emerge that implement parts of the standard, there is renewed interest in available methods to effectively control autonomous aircraft agents in such a simulated environment. This investigation examines the use of a genetics-based classifier system for agent control. These are robust learning systems that use the adaptive search mechanisms of genetic algorithms to guide the learning system in forming new concepts (decision rules) about its environment. By allowing the rule base to evolve, it adapts agent behavior to environmental changes. Addressed …

Using Discovery-Based Learning To Prove The Behavior Of An Autonomous Agent, David N. Mezera

Theses and Dissertations

Computer-generated autonomous agents in simulation often behave predictably and unrealistically. These characteristics make them easy to spot and exploit by human participants in the simulation, when we would prefer the behavior of the agent to be indistinguishable from human behavior. An improvement in behavior might be possible by enlarging the library of responses, giving the agent a richer assortment of tactics to employ during a combat scenario. Machine learning offers an exciting alternative to constructing additional responses by hand by instead allowing the system to improve its own performance with experience. This thesis presents NOSTRUM, a discovery-based learning DBL system …

Design And Construction Of The Aerobot Robotic Manipulator (Arm), William L. Cochran

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis designed, constructed, and tested a robotic arm for the Aerobot Aerial Robot. The main purpose of the ARM is to enable the Aerobot to retrieve objects for use in an annual robotics competition. Design of the ARM involved synthesizing the characteristics of simplicity, weight, strength, and size. The result was a three-degree-of-freedom manipulator that uses electric motors, cable linkages, and telescoping tubes to access a work space below the Aerobot. Forward and inverse kinematics were investigated to enable automation of the ARM. Data was collected from infrared sensors to validate the model. Manipulation of the ARM is presently …

A Study Of Automated Estimating Of Software Cost, Steven Shouli Wang

Masters Theses

The objectives of this thesis are to survey software cost estimation methods and to discuss how the methods can be applied as conceptual knowledge in a software cost estimation expert database system. The various applications of expert database systems are discussed. Consequently, a new method to approach the software cost estimation has been proposed.

This proposed method is based upon a dozen years of analyzing software cost models which have been done by some dedicated scientists in universities, research organizations, and industry. A CASE tool called IASCE has been designed to assist the project manager to estimate a proposed project …

Real Time Texture Analysis From The Parallel Computation Of Fractal Dimension, Halford I. Hayes Jr.

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

The discrimination of texture features in an image has many important applications: from detection of man-made objects from a surrounding natural background to identification of cancerous from healthy tissue in X-ray imagery. The fractal structure in an image has been used with success to identify these features but requires unacceptable processing time if executed sequentially.

The paradigm of data parallelism is presented as the best method for applying massively parallel processing to the computation of fractal dimension of an image. With this methodology, and sufficient numbers of processors, this computation can reach real time speeds necessary for many applications. A …

Recognition Of Quadric Surfaces From Range Data: An Analytical Approach, Ivan X. D. D'Cunha

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, a new technique based on analytic geometry for the recognition and description of three-dimensional quadric surfaces from range images is presented. Beginning with the explicit representation of quadrics, a set of ten coefficients are determined for various three-dimensional surfaces. For each quadric surface, a unique set of two-dimensional curves which serve as a feature set is obtained from the various angles at which the object is intersected with a plane. Based on a discriminant method, each of the curves is classified as a parabola, circle, ellipse, hyperbola, or a line. Each quadric surface is shown to be …

Matching Points To Lines: Sonar-Based Localization For The Psubot, Kevin Blythe Stanton

Dissertations and Theses

The PSUBOT (pronounced pea-es-you-bought) is an autonomous wheelchair robot for persons with certain disabilities. Its use of voice recognition and autonomous navigation enable it to carry out high level commands with little or no user assistance. We first describe the goals, constraints, and capabilities of the overall system including path planning and obstacle avoidance. We then focus on localization-the ability of the robot to locate itself in space. Odometry, a compass, and an algorithm which matches points to lines are each employed to accomplish this task. The matching algorithm (which matches "points" to "lines") is the main contribution to this …