Thesis (Masters Diploma (Electrical Engineering)--Cape Technikon, Cape Town,1994 / This thesis describes the design, development and implementation of a digitising workstation for the electronics laboratory that utilises the personal computer.

The use of embedded Internet systems is growing rapidly in the manufacturing sector. These systems allow the monitoring and controlling of plant machinery and manufactured items from a remote location via a standard Web interface. In a manufacturing environment, it is inevitable that long running processes will require support for dynamic reconfiguration because, for example, machines may fail, services may be moved or withdrawn and user requirements may change. In such an environment it is essential that the operation and architecture of such processes can be modified to reflect such changes. This research project will present methods and ideas for establishing a reconfigurable remote system by using standard 8-bit microcontrollers and reconfigurable hardware. It will allow a manufacturing process to be modified and changed within minutes without even having to be physically present at the location where the process is running.

This thesis describes the design, development and implementation of the core hardware and software of a modular data acquisition system for geophysical data collection. The primary application for this system is the acquisition and realtime processing of seismic data captured in mines. This system will be used by a commercial supplier of seismic instrumentation, ISS International, as a base architecture for the development of future products. The hardware and software has been designed to be extendable and support distributed processing. The IEEE-1394 High Performance Serial Bus is used to communicate with other CPU modules or peripherals. The software includes a pre-emptive multitasking microkernel, an asynchronous mailbox-based message passing communications system, and a functional IEEE-1394 protocol stack. The reasons for the end design and implementation decisions are given, and the problems encountered in the development of this system are described. A critical assessment of the match between the requirements for the project and the functionality of the implementation is made.

In recent years there has been significant research in the field of computational neuroscience and many of these biologically inspired cognitive models are based on the theory of operation of mammalian visual cortex. One such model of neocortex developed by George & Hawkins, known as Hierarchical Temporal Memories (HTM), is considered for the research discussed here. We propose a simple hierarchical model that is derived from HTM. The aim of this work is to evaluate the hardware cost and performance against software based simulations. This work presents a detailed hardware implementation and analysis of the derived hierarchical model. We show that these networks are inherently parallel in their architecture, similar to the biological computing, and that parallelism can be exploited by massively parallel architectures implemented using reconfigurable devices such as the FPGA. Hardware implementation accelerates the learning process which is useful in many real world problems. We have implemented a complex network node that operates in real time using an FPGA. The current architecture is modular and allows us to estimate the hardware resources and computational units required to realize large scale networks in the future.

The transition from text-oriented software to graphically-based software has brought about a rapid increase in the number of mouse users. Recently, increased usage of the mouse has been linked with the development of cumulative trauma disorders. This investigation concerns the effects that mouse surface height and wrist support have on wrist posture. Distance between targets and target width were varied to determine performance time and performance accuracy throughout the conditions. Results showed that the presence of a wrist support decreased wrist extension and radial deviation, and increased wrist flexion. However, wrist support had no significant effect on ulnar deviation. There was a significant interaction of support and surface height for wrist extension. Surface height had a significant effect on all dimensions of wrist posture. Higher surface height resulted in increased flexion and ulnar deviation, and decreased extension and radial deviation. Distance between targets was a significant effect for ulnar deviation. The long distance resulted in a greater amount of ulnar deviation. Accuracy was significantly affected by distance between targets and target width. There was a significant interaction of distance and width for flexion. When distance between targets and target width were converted to Indices of Difficulty (ID), it was found that as ID became larger, movement time between targets became longer (as predicted by Fitts' Law). / Master of Science

The design of an I/O Controller capable of processing data in real time in a tactical training simulator is presented. The controller consists of two microprocessor systems that communicate with peripherals by means of programmed I/O, and with the host computer by Direct Memory Access (DMA) and a serial RS232 link. This thesis addresses both the hardware and software aspects of the controller design.

This study was designed to investigate whether learning style and attitudes toward voice input technology were related to performance in using the technology. Three null hypotheses were tested: (a) No differences exist in the performance in dictating a paragraph using voice input for individuals with different learning styles; (b) No differences exist in attitude toward voice input for individuals with different learning styles; and (c) No interaction exists for the performance scores for individuals with different learning styles and different attitudes toward voice input technology. The statistical procedure used to examine the hypotheses was analysis of variance. Participants were 50 students preparing to become vocational teachers enrolled in vocational education courses at Virginia Tech. Procedures involved having the participants complete three stages. First, they completed the Gregorc Style Delineator (GSD) learning style instrument. Due to a lack of individuals of one learning style category, abstract sequential (AS), only three learning style categories were used in the study. Second, they completed a background information sheet. Third, they participated in the voice-input training and dictation phase. Each student completed a one-hour session that included training, practice using voice input, and dictating a paragraph. Participants also completed the Attitude Toward Voice Input Scale developed by the researcher. It includes 21 attitude statements, 11 positively worded and 10 negatively worded. The first hypothesis was not rejected. A student's learning style does not relate to the performance of the student when dictating a paragraph using voice input technology. The second hypothesis was not rejected either. A student's attitude toward voice input technology was not related to learning style. The third hypothesis was also not rejected. A student's learning style, regardless of whether the student had a "high" or "low" attitude toward voice input, was not significantly related to performance in using voice input technology. However, the mean performance scores of individuals with concrete sequential (CS) learning styles with "high" and "low" attitudes did appear to be different. Those with "high" attitudes toward voice input had better performance scores than those with "low" attitudes toward the technology. / Ph. D.

A major design aspect of touch tablet operation is the display/control (D/C) gain. The primary objective of this research was the development and optimization of a variable D/C gain to improve human performance with touch tablets. This variable gain minimizes the speed-accuracy trade-off problem associated with traditional D/C gains. An additional objective.of this research was to determine the effect of tablet size on human performance. Display/control (D/C) gain is defined as the amount of movement which occurs on the display in response to a unit amount of movement of the control. With traditional D/C gains, there is a trade-off between low D/C gain which enables fine positioning, but results in very slow cursor movement, and high D/C gain which produces quick cursor movement but results in poor fine positioning ability. A lead-lag compensator which ameliorates this trade-off problem was developed. A lead-lag compensator is composed of a pure position gain component plus an additional velocity gain component. The results indicate that a lead-lag compensator greatly increased the target acquisition rate relative to a traditional D/C gain system. Percentage error increased with lead-lag compensation relative to an uncompensated system. The overall error rates were very low in all cases, however. Tablet size did not appear to significantly affect performance; performance on the three tablet sizes was generally consistent. / M.S.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

The purpose of this project was to describe a novel design approach for a digital computer peripheral controller, then design and construct a case study controller. This document consists of three chapters and an appendix. Chapter II presents the design approach chosen; a variation to a design presented by Charles R. Richards in an article published in Electronics magazine. Richards' approach consists of a finite state machine circuitry controlling all the functions of a controller. The variation to Richards' approach consists of considering the various logically independent processes which a controller carries out and assigning control of each process to a separate finite state machine. The appendix contains the documentation of the design and construction of the controller.