Software Engineering Commons^™

A Virtual-Reality-Based Dental Simulator For Endodontics With Automated Formative Feedback, Yousef Salah Abo El Ela

Theses and Dissertations

Advancements in virtual reality (VR) and haptic technology are transforming the landscape of medical and dental education, offering new avenues for safe, immersive, and repeatable training experiences. Within dentistry, endodontics presents unique challenges for preclinical education due to anatomical complexity, limited access to extracted teeth, ethical concerns, and the shortcomings of conventional plastic models. Despite endodontics specific plastic teeth being available, they fall short of replicating the hardness of real extracted teeth, are relatively costly compared to generic plastic teeth, and are ultimately a disposable item which makes them inadequate as a sustainable long-term solution. Extracted teeth do a much …

Improving Home Security Through User Centered Device Positioning, Lalith Nadipalli

Theses and Dissertations

In today’s world, where technology is advancing rapidly and security threats are becoming more complex, the need for effective home safety measures is more critical than ever. Homeowners are increasingly turning to a variety of smart devices, such as smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and security cameras, to protect their living spaces against potential dangers like burglary, fire, and environmental hazards. These devices offer essential protection, acting as both early warning systems and visual surveillance tools. However, their effectiveness largely hinges on how well they are placed within the home. Proper placement of these safety devices ensures that they provide …

Towards Visual Inertial Navigation With Fixed Tetrahedral Targets, Joao Leonardo Silva Cotta

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a robust method for 6DoF position estimation under impaired visual conditions utilizing a minimum 4-point Perspective-n-Point (P4P) solver designed for tetrahedral targets. Using SO(3) × R 3 instead of SE(3), the method uses a Lie group-based formulation to discriminate between rotation and translation, thereby enabling computationally efficient, resource-conscious op- optimization while preserving correct geometric behavior. Designed using the contemporary C++17 library ShomerTarget, the solver is analytically formulated and assessed under pragmatic robotic conditions. Particularly in low-light and high-dynamic environments, experiments on embedded systems, UAVs, and NASA’s Astrobee show that the proposed solver attains enhanced accuracy compared to …

Exploratory Data Analysis (Eda) And Predictive Machine Learning (Ml) For Buildings’ Energy Fault Detection, Akshith Nukala

Theses and Dissertations

Building energy load fault detection is a critical challenge in energy usage analysis. It helps uncover energy wastage, machinery/appliance degradation or inefficiency, and failures or faults in buildings’ HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems. Early identification of machinery failure and energy wastages due to operational maintenance negligence in large sites such as campus buildings is indispensable for achieving energy efficiency. This is crucial for saving patrol and minimizing the response time to restore the building appliances or systems to their optimal state.

Advancements in state-of-the-art AI/ML data-driven algorithms and techniques enabled us to build accurate, efficient and scalable fault …

Exploration Of The Gap Between The Secure Web Application Development Competencies Needed By Industry And Those Competencies Provided By Graduates Of U.S. Undergraduate Software Engineering Programs, Gary Allen Harris

Theses and Dissertations

Literature demonstrates that threats and attacks on computer systems and networks have been around since the beginning of computing, and the number, severity, sophistication, and costs of attacks and data breaches are continuing to grow. Several studies suggest that one of the most common causes of data breaches is insecure web applications that contain vulnerable application code. These studies suggest that poor secure web application development practices are a prime cause of the susceptible web applications. Additionally, studies suggest that higher education is not meeting industry’s secure software/web application development needs. Employers have reported that they are not getting the …

Integrating Blockchain Technology Into The Software Development Life Cycle To Satisfy The Software Bill Of Materials Requirement For Government Software Systems, Walter T. Scott Ii

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the integration of Blockchain Technology (BT) into the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to satisfy the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) requirement for government software systems. This study begins by synthesizing a standard SDLC definition from various government and industry references, which may provide the foundation for future efforts to standardize software development practices across the government software development community. This study proceeds to define working definitions for the software supply chain (SSC) and software supply chain management (SCM) before introducing and detailing the SBOM requirement as well as providing an overview of prior research regarding SBOMs …

Exporting Sysml Designs To Simulink, Drew Q. Broadbent

Theses and Dissertations

Various software systems have been developed to aid a systems engineer in evaluating system requirements, such as Dassault’s Magic System of Systems Architect (MSOSA) and MathWorks’ Simulink. Both software packages have different strengths; therefore, it is beneficial to export models from one software package to another. MSOSA provides a built-in tool that facilitates this transfer, built upon the Extension for Physical Interaction and Signal Flow Simulation (SysPhS) standard. However, the process is often unreliable and error prone and online documentation is largely lacking. This research used extensive trial and error to fill in the documentation gaps and create a method …

Towards Effective Developer Communication In Open Source Software Via Emotional Awareness, Mia Mohammad Imran

Theses and Dissertations

Emotions play an integral yet understudied role in open-source software development, profoundly shaping critical collaborative processes such as knowledge sharing, decision-making, and team dynamics. However, accurately detecting and analyzing emotions in developer communications poses significant challenges due to the lack of visual and auditory cues in text-based interactions. This dissertation investigates techniques to enhance the understanding and modeling of emotions within the textual artifacts of open-source projects. We conduct an extensive evaluation of existing emotion classification tools using a novel dataset of annotated GitHub comments. An error analysis reveals deficiencies in handling implicit emotional expressions and figurative language. We demonstrate …

Ide-Based Learning Analytics For Assessing Introductory Programming Skill, Phyllis J. Beck

Theses and Dissertations

Providing a sufficient level of personalized feedback on students' current level of strategic knowledge within the context of the natural programming environment through IDE-based learning analytics would transform learning outcomes for introductory programming students. However, providing sufficient insight into the programming process was previously inaccessible due to the need for more complex and scalable data collection methods and metrics with a wider variety for understanding programming metacognition and the full programming process.

This research developed a custom-built web-based IDE and event compression system to investigate two of the five components of a five-dimensional model of cognition for programming skill estimation …

Beyond Algorithms: A User-Centered Evaluation Of A Feature Recommender System In Requirements Engineering, Oluwatobi Lasisi

Theses and Dissertations

Several studies have applied recommender technologies to support requirements engineering activities. As in other application areas of recommender systems (RS), many studies have focused on the algorithms’ prediction accuracy, while there have been limited discussions around users’ interactions with the systems. Since recommender systems are designed to aid users in information retrieval, they should be assessed not just as recommendation algorithms but also from the users’ perspective. In contrast to accuracy measures, user-related issues can only be effectively investigated via empirical studies involving real users. Furthermore, researchers are becoming increasingly aware that the effectiveness of the systems goes beyond recommendation …

An Analysis Of Text-Based Machine Learning Models For Vulnerability Detection, Kollin Ryne Napier

Theses and Dissertations

With an increase in complexity of software, developers rely more on reuse and dependencies in their source code via code snippets. As a result, it is becoming harder to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities. Although traditional analysis tools are still utilized, machine learning models are being adopted to expand efforts and combat such threats. Given the possibilities towards usage of such models, research in this area has introduced various approaches which vary in usability and prediction. In generalizing models to a more natural language approach, researchers have opted to train models on source code to identify existing and potential vulnerabilities. Exploratory …

Safe And Reliable Software And The Formal Verification Of Prim's Algorithm In Spark, Brian S. Wheelhouse

Theses and Dissertations

Despite evidence that formal verification helps produce highly reliable and secure code, formal methods, i.e., mathematically based tools and approaches for software and hardware verification, are not commonly used in software and hardware development. The limited emphasis on formal verification in software education and training suggests that many developers have never considered the benefits of formal verification. Despite the challenging nature of their mathematical roots, software verification tools have improved; making it easier than ever to verify software. SPARK, a programming language and a formal verification toolset, is of particular interest for the AFRL, and will be a primary focus …

An Enhanced Cloud-Native Deep Learning Pipeline For The Classification Of Network Traffic, Ahmed Sobhy Elkenawy

Theses and Dissertations

In a rapidly changing world, the way of solving real-world problems has changed to leverage the power of the advancements in multiple fields. Cloud-native computing approaches can be utilized with deep learning techniques to provide solutions in several important areas. For instance, with the emergence of the pandemic, much dependence on modern technologies came out as a replacement for face-to-face interaction. Deep learning can reach a high level of accuracy, which makes it very effective in the support of modern services and technologies. However, there are some challenging issues because deep learning requires many large-scale experiments, which demand a lot …

Face Anti-Spoofing And Deep Learning Based Unsupervised Image Recognition Systems, Enoch Solomon

Theses and Dissertations

One of the main problems of a supervised deep learning approach is that it requires large amounts of labeled training data, which are not always easily available. This PhD dissertation addresses the above-mentioned problem by using a novel unsupervised deep learning face verification system called UFace, that does not require labeled training data as it automatically, in an unsupervised way, generates training data from even a relatively small size of data. The method starts by selecting, in unsupervised way, k-most similar and k-most dissimilar images for a given face image. Moreover, this PhD dissertation proposes a new loss function to …

Design Of Ethical Autonomous Agents For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Fuzzy Logic, Gavin Giovanni Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous systems have, over the years become part of our everyday lives. These systems have been deployed to executed a diverse range of applications in different industries; finance, healthcare, military, and in particular, the flight industry. With the rise of UAVs, new opportunities arose, but with those opportunities came new pitfalls within any industry. For UAVs, one of the pitfalls came in the form of ethical decisionmaking, which led to a variety of questions. Can the Autonomous systems within UAVs be designed with ethics in mind? Which ethical guidelines would we use to implement such a system? How would we …

Gpgpu Microbenchmarking For Irregular Application Optimization, Dalton R. Winans-Pruitt

Theses and Dissertations

Irregular applications, such as unstructured mesh operations, do not easily map onto the typical GPU programming paradigms endorsed by GPU manufacturers, which mostly focus on maximizing concurrency for latency hiding. In this work, we show how alternative techniques focused on latency amortization can be used to control overall latency while requiring less concurrency. We used a custom-built microbenchmarking framework to test several GPU kernels and show how the GPU behaves under relevant workloads. We demonstrate that coalescing is not required for efficacious performance; an uncoalesced access pattern can achieve high bandwidth - even over 80% of the theoretical global memory …

A Tool-Supported Metamodel For Program Bugfix Analysis In Empirical Software Engineering, Manal Zneit

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes a software modeling approach aimed at addressing empirical studies in software engineering. We build a metamodel that provides an overview of the taxonomy of program bugfixes in deep learning programs. For modeling purposes, we present a prototype tool that is an implementation of the model-driven techniques presented.

Development Of Software Tools For Efficient And Sustainable Process Development And Improvement, Jake P. Stengel

Theses and Dissertations

Infrastructure is a key component in the well-being of our society that leads to its growth, development, and productive operations. A well-built infrastructure allows the community to be more competitive and promotes economic advancement. In 2021, the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) ranked the American infrastructure as substandard, with an overall grade of C-. The overall ranking suffers when key infrastructure categories are not maintained according to the needs of the population. Therefore, there is a need to consider alternative methods to improve our infrastructure and make it more sustainable to enhance the overall grade. One of the challenges …

An Entity-Component System Based, Ieee Dis Interoperability Interface, Noah W. Scott

Theses and Dissertations

In practice, there are several different methods of organizing data within a given software to fulfil its function. The method known as the Entity-Component System (ECS) is a software architecture where data components define entities. These components are stored as organized lists which are operated upon by systems to inject the system's desired behavior. Data is sent across the networks to communicate between simulation nodes as Protocol Data Units (PDUs). When sending PDUs across a network protocol, each simulation represents a common understanding of the world at the desired level of detail. DIS-compliant simulations are commonly written using an Object-Oriented …

Formal Spark Verification Of Various Resampling Methods In Particle Filters, Osiris J. Terry

Theses and Dissertations

The software verification in this thesis concentrates on verifying a particle filter for use in tracking and estimation, a key application area for the Air Force. The development and verification process described in this thesis is a demonstration of the power, limitation, and compromises involved in applying automated software verification tools to critical embedded software applications.

An Investigation Of Data Storage In Entity-Component Systems, Bailey V. Compton

Theses and Dissertations

Entity-Component Systems (ECS) have grown vastly in application since their introduction more than 20 years ago. Providing the ability to efficiently manage data and optimize program execution, ECSs, as well as the wider field of data-oriented design, have attained popularity in the realms of modeling, simulation, and gaming. This manuscript aims to elucidate and document the storage frameworks commonly found in ECSs, as well as suggesting conceptual connections between ECSs and relational databases. This formal documentation of the in-memory storage formats of entity-component systems affords the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, and the software engineering community a …

Investigating Collaboration In Software Reverse Engineering, Allison M. Wong

Theses and Dissertations

Reverse engineering (RE) is a rigorous process of exploration and analysis to support software design recovery and exploit development. The process is often conducted in teams to divide the workload and take full advantage of engineers' individual expertise and strengths. Collaboration in RE requires versatile and reliable tools that can match the environment's unpredictable and fluid nature. While studies on collaborative software development have indicated common best practices and implementations, similar standards have not been explored in reverse engineering. This research conducts semi-structured interviews with reverse engineering experts to understand their needs and solutions while working in a team. The …

Formal Verification For High Assurance Software: A Case Study Using The Spark Auto-Active Verification Toolset, Ryan M. Baity

Theses and Dissertations

Software is an increasingly integral and sophisticated part of safety- and mission-critical systems. Poorly written software can lead to information leakage, undetected cyber breaches, and even human injury in cases where the software directly interfaces with components of a physical system. These systems may range from power facilities to remotely piloted aircraft. Software bugs and vulnerabilities can lead to severe economic hardships and loss of life in these domains. As fast as software spreads to automate many facets of our lives, it also grows in complexity. The complexity of software systems combined with the nature of the critical domains dependent …

Two Published Flight Dynamics Models Rewritten In Rust And Structures As An Ecs, Chad A. Willis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores using the Entity-Component System (ECS) architecture to implement a Flight Dynamics Model (FDM) by re-implementing two published versions in the Rust programming language using the Specs Parallel ECS (SPECS) [1] for military simulation advancement. One FDM is based on Grant Palmers published textbook titled Physics for Game Programmers [2], and another is based on David Bourgs textbook titled Physics for Game Developers [3]. Furthermore, this thesis uses these models within an interactive flight simulator.The ECS architecture is based on the Data-Oriented Design (DOD) paradigm, where Components contain the data and the Systems implement the behavior which transforms …

Refinements Of The Concept Of Privacy In Distributed Computing, Entisar Seedi Alshammry

Theses and Dissertations

In light of the tremendous development of technology in the modern world in which we live, privacy concerns are increasing, especially after the massive spread of distributed computing systems and the technologies that depend on it, whether in personal devices or public services. Hence, this research proposes refinements on the concept of privacy for enhancing the development of privacy-related strategies in distributed computing systems to address the elements of privacy. In particular, the study introduces the new concept of Privacy Appetite to describe and model the nature of the relationship between the intended disclosure of private information and gained value …

Analytic Provenance For Software Reverse Engineers, Wayne C. Henry

Theses and Dissertations

Reverse engineering is a time-consuming process essential to software-security tasks such as malware analysis and vulnerability discovery. During the process, an engineer will follow multiple leads to determine how the software functions. The combination of time and possible explanations makes it difficult for the engineers to maintain a context of their findings within the overall task. Analytic provenance tools have demonstrated value in similarly complex fields that require open-ended exploration and hypothesis vetting. However, they have not been explored in the reverse engineering domain. This dissertation presents SensorRE, the first analytic provenance tool designed to support software reverse engineers. A …

Sliver: Simulation-Based Logic Bomb Identification/Verification For Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Jake M. Magness

Theses and Dissertations

This research introduces SLIVer, a Simulation-based Logic Bomb Identification/Verification methodology, for finding logic bombs hidden within Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) autopilot code without having access to the device source code. Effectiveness is demonstrated by executing a series of test missions within a high-fidelity software-in-the-loop (SITL) simulator. In the event that a logic bomb is not detected, this methodology defines safe operating areas for UAVs to ensure to a high degree of confidence the UAV operates normally on the defined flight plan. SLIVer uses preplanned flight paths as the baseline input space, greatly reducing the input space that must be searched …

Assume-Guarantee Reasoning Using A Cyber Security Ontology, Ali Abdurhman Alfageeh

Theses and Dissertations

Design of a network is a challenging problem as it involves the integration of several complex components such as routers, servers, computers, smart devices. This is further complicated by the need to have robust security policies implemented to prevent violation of confidentiality as the networked devices interact. The design of such complex networked systems demand a more rigorous approach to the modeling and analysis, which can be inherited from the field of Software engineering. Presently, network or security engineers do not use a system/software engineering approach to design and build cybersecurity systems. Thus, we propose a system/software engineering approach to …

The Effect Of Modeling Simultaneous Events On Simulation Results, John M. Carboni

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the method that governs the prioritizing process for simultaneous events in relation to simulation results for discrete-event simulations. Specifically, it contrasts typical discrete-event simulation (DES) execution algorithms with how events are selected and ordered by the discrete-event system specification (DEVS) formalism. The motivation for this research stems from a desire to understand how the selection of events affects simulation output (i.e., response). As a particular use case, we briefly investigate the processing of simultaneous events by the Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration and Modeling (AFSIM), a military discrete-event combat modeling and simulation package. To facilitate the building …

Near Real-Time Rf-Dna Fingerprinting For Zigbee Devices Using Software Defined Radios, Frankie A. Cruz

Theses and Dissertations

Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Network(s) (LR-WPAN) usage has increased as more consumers embrace Internet of Things (IoT) devices. ZigBee Physical Layer (PHY) is based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.15.4 specification designed to provide a low-cost, low-power, and low-complexity solution for Wireless Sensor Network(s) (WSN). The standard’s extended battery life and reliability makes ZigBee WSN a popular choice for home automation, transportation, traffic management, Industrial Control Systems (ICS), and cyber-physical systems. As robust and versatile as the standard is, ZigBee remains vulnerable to a myriad of common network attacks. Previous research involving Radio Frequency-Distinct Native Attribute …