by Soung-yue Liew. / "June 1999." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-169). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

Thesis. 1977. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil Engineering. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 222-226. / Ph.D.

A psychological experiment based on a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) sequence auditory interface was conducted initially to examine the rationale of using acoustic information in teleoperation. The experiment was designed to separately test subjects' perceptions of obstacle location and proximities of obstacles. The results revealed the potential use of audio stimuli in teleoperation tasks as well as several drawbacks about this interface. The interface translates information into a single audio stream, as a result, fails to exploit the spatial ability of the ear. Therefore, it was considered to represent the information acquired from the robotic communication sensors---microphones pair and one camera---by means of spatial audio in an ecological way. Firstly, a monitoring method based on the two microphones has been developed to supplement the narrow view of the camera, so that a better understanding of the environment can be formed. The developed bio-mimetic algorithm based on a new Aibo's head model is able to locate the sound event with 10° resolution. Afterwards, a new strategy for vision to audio sensory substitution has been proposed in which the task is concentrated on the spatial motion perception for mobile robot operation. After tracking a moving target from monocular image sequence by an active contour model, the spatial positions of the moving were determined by a pinhole camera model and camera calibration. Accordingly, the corresponding relations of the two modalities, e.g., spatial direction and scaled depth, were built for translation. / A scientific way of using auditory feedback as the substitute for visual feedback is proposed in the thesis to guarantee that the E-healthcare robotic system still functions under the conditions of image losses, visual fails and low-bandwidth communication links. This study is an experimental exploration into a relatively new topic about real-time robotic control. / Conclusions and recommendations for further research about the successful and extended usage of auditory display in teleoperation are also included. / Finally, an experimental e-healthcare robotic system has been developed with which high-frequency interactive contacts between patients and physicians or/and family members can be realized. Specifically, a new network protocol, Trinomial Protocol, has been implemented to facilitate data communication between client and server. Using two protocols: TCP and Trinomial Protocol, we have conducted experiments over a local network and the trans-pacific Internet. The experimental results about roundtrip time (RTT) and sending rate showed that there were large spikes corresponding to severe delay jitters when TCP was used and much less variance in RTTs when Trinomial protocol was used. To sum up, the Trinomial Protocol achieves better performance than the TCP. With this system, we also carried out some psychological experiments to compare the teleoperation performance under different sensory feedback conditions. The time it took to finish the task and the distance away to the target when the robot was controlled to stop were recorded for all the experiments. In addition, subjective workload assessments based on a set of NASA Task Load Index were collected. For the completion time of the task, the difference between the different modalities was not large. Even for vision only feedback, the average completion time was slightly larger than the auditory feedback. After pair t-test analysis, it was found there was no significant difference. Results of distance perception showed that the target was perceived more correctly using bimodal audiovisual integration than vision only condition, but less precise when compared with auditory only condition. As to the workload assessments, the average workload was 9.5973 for the auditory condition and 8.6147 for the visual one. There was no significant difference between them. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed auditory display approaches in navigating a robot remotely. / Liu Rong. / "September 2006." / Adviser: Max O. H. Meng. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: B, page: 1765. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 128-140). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Tang Wai-Kwan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-95). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Applications --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2 --- Motivation and Goal --- p.6 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Outline --- p.7 / Chapter 2 --- Background and Related Work --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- Panoramic Image Navigation --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Image Mosaicing --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Image Registration --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Image Composition --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- Immersive Display --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4 --- Video Streaming --- p.14 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Video Coding --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Transport Protocol --- p.18 / Chapter 3 --- System Design --- p.19 / Chapter 3.1 --- System Architecture --- p.19 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Video Capture Module --- p.19 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Video Streaming Module --- p.23 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Stitching and Rendering Module --- p.24 / Chapter 3.1.4 --- Display Module --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2 --- Design Issues --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Modular Design --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Scalability --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Workload distribution --- p.26 / Chapter 4 --- Panoramic Video Mosaic --- p.28 / Chapter 4.1 --- Video Mosaic to Image Mosaic --- p.28 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Assumptions --- p.29 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Processing Pipeline --- p.30 / Chapter 4.2 --- Camera Calibration --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Perspective Projection --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Distortion --- p.36 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Calibration Procedure --- p.37 / Chapter 4.3 --- Panorama Generation --- p.39 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Cylindrical and Spherical Panoramas --- p.39 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Homography --- p.41 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Homography Computation --- p.42 / Chapter 4.3.4 --- Error Minimization --- p.44 / Chapter 4.3.5 --- Stitching Multiple Images --- p.46 / Chapter 4.3.6 --- Seamless Composition --- p.47 / Chapter 4.4 --- Image Mosaic to Video Mosaic --- p.49 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Varying Intensity --- p.49 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Video Frame Management --- p.50 / Chapter 5 --- Immersive Display --- p.52 / Chapter 5.1 --- Human Perception System --- p.52 / Chapter 5.2 --- Creating Virtual Scene --- p.53 / Chapter 5.3 --- VisionStation --- p.54 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- F-Theta Lens --- p.55 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- VisionStation Geometry --- p.56 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Sweet Spot Relocation and Projection --- p.57 / Chapter 5.3.4 --- Sweet Spot Relocation in Vector Representation --- p.61 / Chapter 6 --- Video Streaming --- p.65 / Chapter 6.1 --- Video Compression --- p.66 / Chapter 6.2 --- Transport Protocol --- p.66 / Chapter 6.3 --- Latency and Jitter Control --- p.67 / Chapter 6.4 --- Synchronization --- p.70 / Chapter 7 --- Implementation and Results --- p.71 / Chapter 7.1 --- Video Capture --- p.71 / Chapter 7.2 --- Video Streaming --- p.73 / Chapter 7.2.1 --- Video Encoding --- p.73 / Chapter 7.2.2 --- Streaming Protocol --- p.75 / Chapter 7.3 --- Implementation Results --- p.76 / Chapter 7.3.1 --- Indoor Scene --- p.76 / Chapter 7.3.2 --- Outdoor Scene --- p.78 / Chapter 7.4 --- Evaluation --- p.78 / Chapter 8 --- Conclusion --- p.83 / Chapter 8.1 --- Summary --- p.83 / Chapter 8.2 --- Future Directions --- p.84 / Chapter A --- Parallax --- p.86

Lam Lui-fuk. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-76). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ABSTRACT --- p.I / 摘要 --- p.II / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --- p.III / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.IV / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.VIII / LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS --- p.X / Chapter CHAPTER 1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2. --- Motivation and Research Objective --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3. --- Organization of the Dissertation --- p.3 / Chapter CHAPTER 2 --- BACKGROUND STUDIES --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- The Contract Net Protocol --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- Two-tier software architectures --- p.8 / Chapter 2.3 --- Three-tier software architecture --- p.9 / Chapter CHAPTER 3 --- SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE --- p.12 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.12 / Chapter 3.2 --- System Architecture Overview --- p.12 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Client Layer --- p.13 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Middle Layer --- p.13 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Back-end Layer --- p.14 / Chapter 3.3 --- Advantages of the System Architecture --- p.14 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- "Separate the presentation components, business logic and data storage" --- p.14 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Provide a central-computing platform for user using different computing platforms --- p.15 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Improve system capacity --- p.15 / Chapter 3.3.4 --- Enable distributed computing --- p.16 / Chapter CHAPTER 4. --- SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE --- p.17 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.17 / Chapter 4.2 --- Descriptions of Middle Layer Server Side Software Components --- p.17 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Data Cache --- p.18 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Functions Library --- p.18 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Communicator --- p.18 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Planner Module --- p.19 / Chapter 4.2.5 --- Scheduler module --- p.19 / Chapter 4.2.6 --- Execution Module --- p.20 / Chapter 4.3 --- Overview the Execution of Service Request inside Server --- p.20 / Chapter 4.4 --- Descriptions of Client layer Software Components --- p.21 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Graphical User Interface --- p.22 / Chapter 4.5 --- Overview of Task Execution in Advanced Client ´ةs Application --- p.23 / Chapter 4.6 --- The possible usages of task allocation protocol --- p.24 / Chapter 4.6.1 --- Chart Drawing --- p.25 / Chapter 4.6.2 --- Compute user-defined technical analysis indicator --- p.25 / Chapter 4.6.3 --- Unbalance loading --- p.26 / Chapter 4.6.4 --- Large number of small data mining V.S. small number of large data mining --- p.26 / Chapter 4.7 --- Summary --- p.27 / Chapter CHAPTER 5. --- THE CONTRACT NET PROTOCOL FOR TASK ALLOCATION --- p.28 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.28 / Chapter 5.2 --- The FIPA Contract Net Interaction Protocol --- p.28 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Introduction to the FIPA Contract Net Interaction Protocol --- p.28 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Strengths of the FIPA Contract Net Interaction Protocol for our system --- p.30 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Weakness of the FIPA Contractor Net Interaction Protocol for our system --- p.32 / Chapter 5.3 --- The Modified Contract Net Protocol --- p.33 / Chapter 5.4 --- The Implementation of the Modified Contract Net Protocol --- p.39 / Chapter 5.5 --- Summary --- p.46 / Chapter CHAPTER 6. --- A CLIENT AS SERVER MODEL USING MCNP FOR TASK ALLOCATION --- p.48 / Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.48 / Chapter 6.2 --- The CASS System Model --- p.48 / Chapter 6.3 --- The analytical model of the CASS system --- p.51 / Chapter 6.4 --- Performance Analysis of the CASS System --- p.55 / Chapter 6.5 --- Performance Simulation --- p.62 / Chapter 6.6 --- An Extension of the Load-Balancing Algorithm for Non-Uniform Client's Service Time Distribution --- p.68 / Chapter 6.7 --- Summary --- p.69 / Chapter CHAPTER 7. --- CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK --- p.71 / Chapter 7.1 --- Conclusion --- p.71 / Chapter 7.2 --- Future Work --- p.73 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.75

Thesis. 1978. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: p. 110-111. / by Rowland Frank Archer, Jr. / M.S.

Thesis. 1976. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Aero. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.S.

A common characteristic among parallel/distributed programming languages is that the one language is used to specify not only the overall organisation of the distributed application, but also the functionality of the application. That is, the connectivity and functionality of processes are specified within a single program. Connectivity and functionality are independent aspects of a distributed application. This thesis shows that these two aspects can be specified separately, therefore allowing application designers to freely concentrate on either aspect in a modular fashion. Two new programming languages have been developed for specifying each aspect. These languages are for loosely coupled distributed applications based on message passing, and have been designed to simplify distributed programming by completely removing all low level interprocess communication. A suite of languages and tools has been designed and developed. It includes the two new languages, parsers, a compilation system to generate intermediate C code that is compiled to binary object modules, a run-time system to create, manage and terminate several distributed applications, and a shell to communicate with the run-tune system. DAL (Distributed Application Language) and DAPL (Distributed Application Process Language) are the new programming languages for the specification and development of process oriented, asynchronous message passing, distributed applications. These two languages have been designed and developed as part of this doctorate in order to specify such distributed applications that execute on a cluster of computers. Both languages are used to specify orthogonal components of an application, on the one hand the organisation of processes that constitute an application, and on the other the interface and functionality of each process. Consequently, these components can be created in a modular fashion, individually and concurrently. The DAL language is used to specify not only the connectivity of all processes within an application, but also a cluster of computers for which the application executes. Furthermore, sub-clusters can be specified for individual processes of an application to constrain a process to a particular group of computers. The second language, DAPL, is used to specify the interface, functionality and data structures of application processes. In addition to these languages, a DAL parser, a DAPL parser, and a compilation system have been designed and developed (in this project). This compilation system takes DAL and DAPL programs to generate object modules based on machine code, one module for each application process. These object modules are used by the Distributed Application System (DAS) to instantiate and manage distributed applications. The DAS system is another new component of this project. The purpose of the DAS system is to create, manage, and terminate many distributed applications of similar and different configurations. The creation procedure incorporates the automatic allocation of processes to remote machines. Application management includes several operations such as deletion, addition, replacement, and movement of processes, and also detection and reaction to faults such as a processor crash. A DAS operator communicates with the DAS system via a textual shell called DASH (Distributed Application SHell). This suite of languages and tools allowed distributed applications of varying connectivity and functionality to be specified quickly and simply at a high level of abstraction. DAL and DAPL programs of several processes may require a few dozen lines to specify as compared to several hundred lines of equivalent C code that is generated by the compilation system. Furthermore, the DAL and DAPL compilation system is successful at generating binary object modules, and the DAS system succeeds in instantiating and managing several distributed applications on a cluster.

Bibliography : leaves 225-232. / xii, 232 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Computer Science, 1994

Multimedia applications such as video streaming and Voice over IP are becoming common today with the tremendous growth of the Internet. General purpose operating systems thus are required to support these applications. These multimedia applications have some timing constraints that need to be satisfied for good quality. For example, video streaming applications require that each video frame be decoded in time to be displayed every 33.3 milliseconds. In order to satisfy these timing requirements, general purpose operating systems need to have fine-grained scheduling. Current general purpose operating systems unfortunately are designed to maximize throughput to serve traditional data-oriented applications and have coarse-grained scheduling and timers. Time Sensitive Linux (TSL), designed by Goel, et al., solves this problem with fine-grained timers and schedulers. The scheduler for TSL is implemented at a very low level. The controller that implements the algorithm for resource allocation is implemented at a higher level. This controller can easily be modified to implement new control algorithms. Successful implementation of resource allocation to satisfy timing constraints of multimedia applications requires two problems to be addressed. First, the resources required by the application to satisfy the timing constraints should not exceed the total available resources in the system. Second, the controller must adapt to changing needs of the applications and allocate enough resources to satisfy the timing constraints of each application over time. The first problem has been addressed elsewhere using intelligent data dropping with TSL. We focus on the second problem in this thesis. We design a proportion-period controller in this thesis for allocating CPU to multimedia video applications with timing constraints. The challenges for the controller design include the coarse granularity of the time-stamp markings of the video frames, the unpredictable decoding completion times of the frames, the large variations in the decoding times of the frames, and the limit of the control actuation to positive values. We set up the problem in a state space. We design a predictive estimating controller to allocate the proportion of the CPU to a thread when its long term error is small. When the decoding process is running behind by more than a certain threshold, we switch to a different controller to drive the error back to a small value. This controller is the solution to a dynamic optimization LQR tracking problem. / Graduation date: 2003