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Behavioral research involves the study of the behaviors of one or more agents (often animals) in order to better understand the agents' thoughts and actions. Identifying subject movements and behaviors based upon those movements is a critical, time-consuming step in behavioral research. To successfully perform behavior analysis, three goals must be met. First, the agents of interest are observed, and their movements recorded. Second, each individual must be uniquely identified. Finally, behaviors must be identified and recognized. I explore a system that can uniquely identify and track agents, then use these tracks to automatically build behavioral models and recognize similar behaviors in the future. I address the tracking and identification problems using a combination of laser range finders, active RFID sensors, and probabilistic models for real-time tracking. The laser range component adds environmental flexibility over vision based systems, while the RFID tags help disambiguate individual agents. The probabilistic models are important to target identification during the complex interactions with other agents of similar appearance. In addition to tracking, I present work on automatic methods for generating behavioral models based on supervised learning techniques using the agents' tracked data. These models can be used to classify new tracked data and identify the behavior exhibited by the agent, which can then be used to help automate behavior analysis.

Modern civil structures as well as loads on them are still too complex to be accurately modeled or simulated. Therefore, structural failures and structural defects are NOT uncommon! More and more full-scale structural monitoring systems have been deployed in order to monitor how structures behave under various loading conditions. This research focuses on how to maximise benefits from such full-scale measurements by employing advanced digital signal processing techniques. This study is based on accelerometer and GPS data collected on three very different structures, namely, the steel tower in Tokyo, the long and slender suspension bridge in Hong Kong, and the tall office tower in Sydney, under a range of loading conditions, i.e., typhoon, earthquake, heavy traffic, and small scale wind. Systematic analysis of accelerometer and GPS data has demonstrated that the two sensors complement each other in monitoring the static, quasi-static and dynamic movements of the structures. It has also been confirmed that the Finite Element Model could under-estimate the natural frequencies of structures by more than 40% in some case. The effectiveness of using wavelet to de-noise GPS measurement has been demonstrated. The weakness and strengths of accelerometer and GPS have been identified and framework has been developed on how to integrate the two as well as how to optimize the integration. The three-dimensional spectral analysis framework has been developed which can track the temporal evolution of all the frequency components and effectively represents the result in the 3D spectrogram of frequency, time and magnitude. The dominant frequency can also be tracked on the 3D mesh to vividly illustrate the damping signature of the structure. The frequency domain coherent analysis based on this 3D analysis framework can further enhance the detection of common signals between sensors. The developed framework can significantly improve the visualized performance of the integrated system without increasing hardware costs. Indoor experiments have shown the excellent characteristics of the optical fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) for deformation monitoring. Innovative and low-cost approach has been developed to measure the shift of FBG???s central wavelength. Furthermore, a schematic design has been completed to multiplex FBGs in order to enable distributed monitoring. In collaboration with the University of Sydney, the first Australian full-scale structural monitoring system of GPS and accelerometer has been deployed on the Latitude Tower in Sydney to support current and future research.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Michaels, Jennifer; Committee Member: Habetler, Thomas; Committee Member: Jacobs, Laurence; Committee Member: Michaels, Thomas; Committee Member: Vachtsevanos, George.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2009. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-111).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-111)

Thesis (M.S.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2004. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Todd J. Kaiser. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-171).

M.Ing. / The dissertation covers the establishment of a project from the point of view of a project manager. The document refers to examples where possible to illustrate the actual process through which a project goes during the life-cycle of the project. The first chapter provides an introduction to the context of the project and informs the reader of the type of project which the dissertation discusses. An overview of SCAD A (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems is discussed followed by field hardware to highlight the environment of typical engineering projects in the automation industry. An introduction to project management is discussed to set the context of the dissertation in motion. The second chapter covers the relevant theoretical stages of a project starting from the early stages of defining the project scope through to the project closure. Each of the stages in the project are dissected and considered within the context of a typical SCAD A oriented project. The third chapter is a case study of the "Jwaneng SCADA Project," which is the name assigned to the project from this point onwards. The project illustrates a typical project which an engineering project manager will manage. The project covers the details of the work involved in the project by passing through all the stages involved in an engineering project. Each stage of the project is illustrated by making reference to appendices containing project specific documents. The project is considered from the point of the original development of the project plan through to the completion of the project. This involves extensive controlling and ensuring that the project is running smoothly. These basic principles are illustrated in the document and aim to inform the reader on the successful dissection and implementation of a proper engineering project plan from start to finish.

M. Tech. (Electrical & Electronic Engineering) / In this research we compare conventional data acquisition system (DAS) with the embedded data acquisition systems. The performance specifications of 4 different types of DAQ cards are drawn up with special emphasis made on the following parameters: Slew rate, settling time, relative accuracy and system noise. These parameters are taken from 2 conventional DAS and then compared to those taken from 2 embedded data acquisition systems under the same electrical conditions. The embedded DAQ system’s hardware was built using the PIC Microcontroller interfaced to the Digital to Analog Convertors (DAC). MPLAB C18 is used to create a program which communicates with the embedded DAQ system, to transmit generated signals. National Instrument's LabView is used to create a program which communicates with the conventional DAQ system, to acquire external generated signals and retransmit the signals. In most cases the performance of conventional and embedded are close, but one of the embedded DAS seem to be unstable at high frequencies.