This thesis deals with the control of a highly maneuverable miniature helicopter about trajectories, generated online, from a library of prespecified maneuvers. Linearizing the nonlinear equations describing the helicopter dynamics about the prespecified, library maneuvers results in a hybrid linear time-varying (LTV) model. Two control approaches are used to design controllers corresponding to each library maneuver: the standard L2-induced norm approach and an approach which also uses the L2-induced norm as a performance measure while accounting for uncertain initial states. Each control approach is evaluated in closed-loop simulation with a nonlinear helicopter model. The controllers are set to drive the helicopter model to track desired trajectories in the presence of disturbances such as wind gusts, turbulence, sensor noise, and uncertain initial conditions. For the specific plant formulations and trajectories presented, performance is comparable for both control approaches; however, it is possible to improve controller performance by exploiting some of the features of the approach accounting for uncertain initial states. These improvements in performance are topics for future work along with implementation of the presented approaches and results on a remote control helicopter. / Master of Science

Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine if a librarybased personal digital assistant (PDA) service is a significant factor in the clinical use of PDAs at an academic medical center. Methods: Health sciences students, faculty, staff, and residents at an academic medical center were the participants. The library has serviced several thousand PDAs. This population was used as the basis for the study group. The study design is a cross-sectional study using survey methodology. The analysis was done based on age, college affiliation, and gender, and answered questions such as frequency of PDA use, usefulness of library’s PDA service, and usefulness of programs the library installed on users’ PDAs. Results: One hundred and eight people responded. Seventy-five percent of the respondents would still be PDA users, even if the library did not assist or promote the service. Almost 90% were daily PDA users. Seventy-five percent stated that they would not feel confident that they could install the software without the library’s help. Conclusions: The survey results reenforced the library’s feeling that the service fills a crucial need in the community it serves. The survey also provided information on the databases it buys, which gives the library information for future collection development.

Programmers worldwide share components and jointly develop components on a global scale in contemporary software development. An important aspect of such library-based programming is the need for technical communication with regard to libraries – library communication. As part of their work, programmers must discover, study, and learn as well as debate problems and future development. In this sense, the electronic, networked media has fundamentally changed programming by providing new mechanisms for communication and global interaction through global networks such as the Internet. Today, the baseline for library communication is hypertext documentation. Improvements in quality, efficiency, cost and frustration of the programming activity can be expected by further developments in the electronic aspects of library communication. This thesis addresses the use of the electronic networked medium in the activity of library communication and aims to discover design knowledge for communication tools and processes directed towards this particular area. A model of library communication is provided that describes interaction among programmer as webs of interrelated library communities. A discussion of electronic, networked tools and processes that match such a model is also provided. Furthermore, research results are provided from the design and industrial valuation of electronic reference documentation for the Java domain. Surprisingly, the evaluation did not support individual adaptation (personalization). Furthermore, global library communication processes have been studied in relation to open-source documentation and user-related bug handling. Open-source documentation projects are still relatively uncommon even in open-source software projects. User-related Open-source does not address the passive behavior users have towards bugs. Finally, the adaptive authoring process in electronic reference documentation is addressed and found to provide limited support for expressing the electronic, networked dimensions of authoring requiring programming skill by technical writers. Library communication is addressed here by providing engineering knowledge with regards to the construction of practical electronic, networked tools and processes in the area. Much of the work has been performed in relation to Java library communication and therefore the thesis has particular relevancefor the object-oriented programming domain. A practical contribution of the work is the DJavadoc tool that contributes to the development of reference documentation by providing adaptive Java reference documentation. / On the day of the public defence the title of article I was: Designing Electronic Library Reference Documentation.