Teamwork is crucial to many disciplines, from activities such as organized sports to economic and military organizations. Team training is difficult and as yet there are few automated tools to assist in the training task. As with the training of individuals, effective training depends upon practice and proper training protocols. In this research, we defined a team training framework for constructing team training systems in domains involving command and control teams. This team training framework provides an underlying model of teamwork and programming interfaces to provide services that ease the construction of team training systems. Also, the framework enables experimentation with training protocols and coaching to be conducted more readily, as team training systems incorporating new protocols or coaching capabilities can be more easily built. For this framework (called CAST-ITT) we developed an underlying intelligent agent architecture known as CAST (Collaborative Agents Simulating Teamwork). CAST provides the underlying model of teamwork and agents to simulate virtual team members. CAST-ITT (Intelligent Team Trainer) uses CAST to also monitor trainees, and support performance assessment and coaching for the purposes of evaluating the performance of a trainee as a member of a team. CAST includes a language for describing teamwork called MALLET (Multi-Agent Logic Language for Encoding Teamwork). MALLET allows us to codify the behaviors of team members (both as virtual agents and as trainees) for use by CAST. In demonstrating CAST-ITT through an implemented team training system called TWP-DDD we have shown that a team training system can be built that uses the framework (CAST-ITT) and has good performance and can be used for achieving real world training objectives.

Advances in technologies and the idea of incorporating technological solutions into buildings have made it possible to provide more comfortable and secure spaces for living or working. The term &ldquo / intelligent building&rdquo / is becoming very popular in terms of attaching prestige to a project and improving its desirability. However too many buildings are claimed to be intelligent and adaptive to change but, without an appropriate understanding of intelligent building concept and also capabilities of assessing an intelligent building, it is not possible to judge such claims. In view of the fact that truly intelligent buildings provide their occupants with efficient facilities and comfortable space, many experts and researchers have discussed the characteristics of intelligent buildings and come up with different definitions and assessment systems, but none agree with each other completely. The aim of this study was to evaluate intelligence in intelligent buildings and provide responsiveness clues in terms of system efficiency and user convenience to find out whether buildings claimed to be intelligent meet the intelligence requirements or not. v After conducting a literature survey to identify main intelligence characteristics, two buildings both claimed to be intelligent and able to provide occupants with healthy, secure and comfortable space, were selected as the case studies. The intelligent building principals and specific design considerations together with efficient system integration and system requirements were examined in the case studies. It was concluded that, even though case studies were admired in terms of holding commercial value and applying new technologies but there existed a lack in either employing or incorporating that technologies to meet desired responsiveness and dynamism which, are main attributes of intelligent buildings.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009. / Title from title screen (site viewed January 5, 2010). PDF text: xi, 178 p. : ill. ; 2 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3360157. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-141).

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-127).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-127).

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)--Vanderbilt University, May 2002. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Parking garages have remained fairly outdated even as embedded systems have been introduced virtually everywhere to improve the human existence. Some provide information about whether they are full or not, but that does not offer a better parking experience, it only informs people once they are already there and is inconvenient. This causes people to circle the parking lot numerous times, making the process inefficient and wasteful. The SmartPark parking system fills that gap by providing an automated infrastructure that collects information regarding the availability of parking spaces in a garage. As modern technology grows and expands the connectivity available on automobiles, it would be even possible to interface with the car itself to provide parking information. Each space has an ultrasonic sensor attached to a microcontroller that communicates with a master, who keeps and displays the overall count of spaces available. The purpose of this paper is to provide the capability of dynamically adding and removing slaves, without requiring individual configuration for each slave prior to its deployment. A sequence of communication exchanges will be described in order for a slave to register itself with its master. Through a series of messages, the slave will be able to identify its location and begin reporting the state of its space, and the master will continue to keep track of existing slaves and their states. The result of the research is a protocol that allows successful pairing of a new slave with its master without previous static configuration, which allows an easy deployment of the system without dependence on its original configuration. This functionality will make the system more scalable, allowing the parking system to be extended by connecting new slaves wherever they are needed. It will also make it more maintainable, since slave replacement or relocation will become an easy task. SmartPark can easily be adapted to existing parking structures with only the installation of the master and slave nodes, due to its limited resource requirements. Related work is also discussed and an insight into how this methodology can be used to modernize current automated parking systems is provided. / text

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Not available / text