The Ll\12500 Gas Turbine engine Simulator/Trainer is composed of a User Interface environment as well as an LNl2500 engine rnodel. The user interface software runs on an ~ Intel 386 microprocessor board \vith a UNIX operating system \Vhich runs at a 33MHz cycle. The engine model runs on an Intel 386 1nicroprocessor board \vhich runs at a 20 ~IHz cycle. The two software environments interface via dual port RAM. The User Interface environment is menu-driven and includes the following options: l. Real-time Data Monitoring 2. Data Processing .., .., . Signal Injection 4. Data Capture 5. Fault Insertion 6. Parameter Modification 7. Historical Data Plots The User Interface environment may be modified to interface with other simulation models. The engine model sunulates the start/stop sequencing, dynamic operation (above idle and running), and failure modes associated \Vith the G .E. LM2500 marine gas turbine engine. The accuracy of the engine model is verified by comparing the results of the simulation to the data supplied by the Land Based Enginerrring Site (LBES) in Philadelphia. The user interface software is verified by visually checking that the results of the menu selections are as expected. The options available in the user interface software are utilized in the verification of the engine model. Once the model is verified, the Universal Engine Controller (UEC) software is incorporated into the system in order to exercise the LM2500 Simulator/frainer as a dynamic tester.

<p>Accurate measurement of surface grids through imaging enables a variety of applications. One important example can be found in automotive manufacturing, where deformed sheet metal surface strains must be validated in safety critical regions, and rapidly measured to correct process variations. This thesis advances machine vision techniques in the context of close-range surface imaging and measurement. Sheet metal surface strain analysis provides a motivating application, but the contributions may be directly transferred to a variety of other machine vision applications where reliable, accurate measurements are required in adverse imaging conditions.</p> <p>Close-range imaging in practical environments presents a number of challenges, primarily relating to depth of field blur and the regional field of view. This thesis contributes to three major components required for close-range optically-based surface measurement. First, an approach for grid line intersection measurement in the presence of significant and varying depth-of-field blur is considered, with a solution based on scale-space ridge extraction. An architecture for acceleration of the computationally intensive algorithm is then developed, and implemented using state of the art graphics (GPU) hardware. Acceleration to camera video frame rates is achieved.</p> <p>The second contribution is a novel approach for interframe motion tracking of uniform gridded surfaces. The algorithm exploits topological structure of the imaged grid pattern, thereby reducing dimensionality of the interframe tracking problem. Intrinsic fiducial measurement is proposed to avoid the need for explicit feature detectors that locate fiducials in the presence of varying size and blur. Close-range interframe tracking is demonstrated, and statistics are presented on the registration objective function.</p> <p>Finally, an approach is considered for camera and hand-eye calibration of a monocular camera mounted to the tool point of a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). Pre-processing algorithms are contributed to prepare close-range gridded image data for the calibration process. Ideal model coordinate points are coherently assigned to detected grid features across video sequences, and grid approximation is performed for highly blurred image frames where reliable features have not been extracted.</p> <p>The contributions of this thesis make significant progress toward enabling video frame rate, close-range, computer vision-based sheet metal surface strain analysis, and other applications where challenging image conditions impede measurement.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This thesis presents two practical coding schemes based on low-density generatormatrix (LDGM) codes, for two cases of the multiple description (MD) problem. The first one is for the two description problem for finite-alphabet sources with Hammingdistortion measure. The proposed MD code targets the Zhang-Berger region, which is the best inner bound known so far for the corresponding MD rate-distortion region.The coding scheme can be regarded as a practical implementation of a theoreticalsequential coding system for the corner points of a related rate-region, where the random codebooks are replaced by multilevel LDGM codebooks and the encoding at each stage is performed via a message passing algorithm. This coding system is further applied in three notable cases: 1) no excess sum-rate case for binary sources;2) successive refinement for general finite-alphabet sources, 3) no excess marginal ratefor uniform binary sources. Furthermore, in order to assist the code design in the noexcesssum-rate case for binary sources, the exact expression of the distortion regionand of the auxiliary variables needed to achieve its boundary, are derived, which is another important contribution of the thesis.</p> <p>The second proposed MD code is for the case of L descriptions with individual and central distortion constraints, for the memoryless Gaussian source with squared distortion measure. It is shown first that the coding problem for an arbitrary point on the dominant face of an L-description El Gamal-Cover (EGC) rate region, can be converted to that for a vertex of a K-description EGC rate region for some K<=2L-1,where the latter problem can be solved via successive coding. The practical coding scheme reduces each successive coding step to a Gaussian quantization operation, and implements this operation using multilevel LDGM codes.</p> <p>The LDGM-based coding schemes are extensively tested in practice for all aforementionedcases. The experimental results show very good performance, verifyingthat the proposed schemes can approach the theoretical rate-distortion bounds.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>Most existing classification algorithms either consider all features as equally important (equal weights), or do not analyze consistency of weights assigned to features. When features are not equally important, assigning consistent weights is a not obvious task. In general we have two cases. The first case assumes that a given sample of data does not contain any clue about the importance of features, so the weights are provided by a pool of experts and they are usually inconsistent. The second case assumes that the given sample contains some information about features importance, hence we can derive the weights directly from the sample. In this thesis we deal with both cases. Pairwise Comparisons and Weighted Support Vector Machines are used for the first case. For the second case a new approach based on the observation that the feature importance could be determined by the discrimination power of features has been proposed. For the first case, we start with pairwise comparisons to rank the importance of features, then we use distance-based inconsistency reduction to refine the weights assessment and make comparisons more precise. As the next step we calculate the weights through the fully-consistent or almost consistent pairwise comparison tables. For the second case, a novel concept of feature domain overlappings has been introduced. It can measure the feature discrimination power. This model is based on the assumption that less overlapping means more discrimination ability, and produces weights characterizing the importance of particular features. For both cases Weighted Support Vector Machines are used to classify the data. Both methods have been tested using two benchmark data sets, Iris and Vertebal.</p> <p>The results were especially superior to those obtained without weights.</p> / Master of Computer Science (MCS)

<p>The set of related products is referred to as a product family, and feature-modeling is a widely used technique to capture the commonalities and variabilities of a product family in terms of "features". With the growing complexity of software product families in several software industries, the development, maintenance and evolution of complex and large feature models are among the main challenges faced by feature-modeling practitioners. In particular, more sophisticated feature-modeling techniques are required to address the problems caused by unanticipated changes and crosscutting concerns in feature models.</p> <p>This thesis tackles the above challenges in feature-modeling by adopting the aspect-oriented paradigm at the feature-modeling level. I first introduce a specification language, called AO-PFA, which is an extension of the Product Family Algebra (PFA) language. I then proposed a formal verification technique to check the compatibility of aspects with their base specifications in AO-PFA. In the aspect-oriented paradigm, the process of combining aspects with base specifications is referred to as the weaving process. I finally discussed how to perform the weaving process in AO-PFA. By proposing a systematic approach to extend product family algebra with the abilities of specifying, verifying, and weaving aspects, we are able to handle the difficulties that arise from crosscutting concerns and unanticipated changes in large-scale feature models.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>Interval arithmetic is used to enclose roundoff, truncation, and modeling errors in interval methods, thus obtaining numerical methods with automatic verification of the results. The Fundamental Theorem of Interval Arithmetic (FTIA) shows that, when evaluating an expression using interval arithmetic, the computed result contains the mathematically correct value of the expression.</p> <p>Decorations were introduced in the IEEE P1788 working group for standardizing interval arithmetic. Their role is to help track properties of interval evaluations. That is, we wish to say if a function is defined, undefined, or continuous in its inputs. Moreover, decorations act as local exception flags and do not lead to interruption of the computations. The FTIA plus the decoration system is expanded into the Fundamental Theorem of Decorated Interval Arithmetic (FTDIA).</p> <p>Several versions of this theorem are formulated and proved by J. Pryce. This thesis formalizes and proves the core of this theorem (version 3.0 of the IEEE-P1788 proposal) using the theorem prover Coq. Namely, we prove it for the common case where all the inputs to a function are non-empty intervals.</p> <p>There are two distinctive features of our formalization and proof. First, we define the semantics of an interval as a set of real numbers (including the empty set), and we do not impose any other restrictions on such a set, except that models of this interval can decide if the set is empty or not. For example, an interval need not be closed and bounded, as in traditional interval arithmetic. Second, our formalization and proof do not rely on specific interval operations: it works with any interval operation that satisfies the requirements for decorated interval library operations.</p> <p>As the FTDIA is central to the IEEE-P1788 proposal, the correctness of the FTDIA is crucial. Our mechanized proof can give the research community in interval computations much confidence in its correctness. The current version of the FTDIA (in P1788 version 8.0) is slightly different from the theorem proved here. Modifying our proof to reflect this is left as future work.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Over the years, gaming has developed rapidly from simple pixel-based experiences to fully blown three-dimensional worlds. As developing technologies improve, so does the complexity and flexibility of what can be created. Encounters, along with all aspects of any gaming experience, have evolved along with the technologies that create them. These intense combat instances, often times referred to as “bosses”, represent a chance for the developer to challenge player skill, cooperation, and coordination. In addition to being major challenges, encounters also allow players to feel a sense of progression as they learn and adapt to mechanics incorporated within an encounter’s design. Eventually these mechanics are mastered, and surmounted to a lasting sense of accomplishment and success. This project details a personal process of encounter design from initial conception to eventual player testing, along with design choices, outside influences, and development methods. These were ultimately utilized in an attempt to create an engaging and successful boss encounter.

This project is the design and implementation of a web-based message board for software developers. The purpose of “Social Network for Software Developers” is to connect inexperienced software developers with experienced software developers.

A system is proposed which separates clauses from complex sentences into simpler stand-alone sentences. This is useful as an initial step on raw text, where the resulting processed text may be fed into text-to-text applications such as Automatic Summarization, Question Answering, and Machine Translation, where complex sentences are difficult to process. Grammatical natural language transformations provide a possible method to simplify complex sentences to enhance the results of text-to-text applications. Using shallow parsing, this system improves the performance of existing systems to identify and separate marked and unmarked embedded clauses in complex sentence structure resulting in syntactically simplified source for further processing.

The purpose of this thesis was to automate verification of the software requirements for an implantable cardioverter defibrillator with minimal manual rework. The requirements were written in plain English with only loose stylistic constraints. While full automation proved infeasible, many significant advances were made towards solving the problem, including a framework for storing requirements, a program which translates most of the natural language requirements into the framework, and a novel approach to parts of speech analysis.