Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2008. / Thesis Advisor(s): Kress, Moshe; Szechtman, Roberto. "December 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 28, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-56). Also available in print.

Bochum, Univ., Diss., 2003. / Computerdatei im Fernzugriff.

Bochum, Univ., Diss., 2004. / Computerdatei im Fernzugriff.

Bochum, Universiẗat, Diss., 2004.

Bochum, Universiẗat, Diss., 2003.

Bochum, Universiẗat, Diss., 2002.

The construction industry is in the midst of a progressive change in the way projects unfold from design and development to closeout and maintenance. There is a greater demand on contractors to build projects faster, with higher quality and an increased level of detail, while keeping costs lower than ever. Therefore, to meet such demands contractors must turn to an alternative approach of improving product and process with target costing. However, the adoption of target costing by the construction industry has been slow due to limitations in user understanding of the system. The objective of this paper is to identify an effective approach for teaching target costing to construction-focused individuals, by establishing improved user understanding with visual aids, and by determining if user comprehension is influenced by the complexity of the visual supports provided in the lessons. The study challenged the long-implied assumption that the construction community is composed of visual learners, while also differentiating between the levels of success for supporting figures based upon their degree of detail. Results of this study will provide the basis for the development of target costing material that is designed specifically for use in the education of construction industry professionals in Target Cost Estimating.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / A five microsecond, 15 joule, pulsed C0₂ Laser was used to irradiate polished 2024 aluminum targets. The target voltage response (TVR) was measured with respect to the incident laser radiation and showed a pulse width on the order of 30 nanoseconds. The voltage was measured at values from 22 to 140 volts with resistances varying from one ohm to two mega-ohms. The TVR was correlated to the emission and blow-off of electrons from the target surface and the possible ignition of a Laser Supported Detonation wave. The TVR, laser pulse, and flash associated with target surface breakdown were time correlated and shown to happen within the first 170 nanoseconds of the five microsecond laser pulse. Currents up to 500 amps were observed when the resistance to ground was reduced to less than 1 ohm. Also, the magnitude of the TVR was shown to be a function of background gas pressure. / http://archive.org/details/targetvoltageres00hark / Lieutenant, United States Navy

University, Diss., 2002--München.

With the recent advances in sensor technology and resulting sensor resolution, conven- tional point-based target tracking algorithms are becoming insufficient, particularly in application domains such as autonomous vehicles, visual tracking and surveillance using high resolution sensors. This has renewed the interest in extended target (ET) tracking, which aims to track not only the centroid of a target, but also its shape and size over time. This thesis addresses three of the most challenging problems in the domain of ET tracking applications. The first investigated challenge is the need for an accu- rate shape and centre estimate for the ET object with an arbitrary unknown star- convex shape in presence of non-Gaussian noise. The proposed method is based on a Student’s-t process regression algorithm which is defined in a recursive framework to be applicable for on-line tracking problems. The second problem tries to relax any constraints, including the star-convex con- straint, that is imposed on the shape of the ET object during the course of estimation by defining a novel Random Polytopes shape descriptor. Also, the proposed solution introduces a method to mitigate the troubles caused as a result of self-occlusion in ET tracking applications which its ignorance may cause catastrophic divergence in the ET state estimate.Finally, a framework for tracking multiple ET objects in the presence of clutter and occlusion is studied and a solution is proposed. The proposed method can estimate the centre and shape of the ET objects in a realistically scenario with the self- and mutual-occlusion challenges being considered. The proposed approach defines a time varying state-dependent probability of detection for each ET that enables the track to prolong even under adverse conditions caused due to mutual-occlusion. Plus, the proposed algorithm uses set-membership uncertainty models to bound the association and target shape uncertainties of occluded ET, to obtain more accurate state and shape estimates of an ET object. The performance of the proposed methods are quantified on realistically simulated scenarios with self- and mutual-occlusions and their results are compared against existing state-of-the-art methods for ET tracking applications. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)