The development of a prototype intelligent user interface subsystem for NASA's scientific database systems

The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) has initiated an Intelligent Data Management (IDM) research effort which has as one of its components the development of an Intelligent User Interface (IUI).The intent of the latter is to develop a friendly and intelligent user interface service that is based on expert systems and natural language processing technologies. The purpose is to support the large number of potential scientific and engineering users presently having need of space and land related research and technical data but who have little or no experience in query languages or understanding of the information content or architecture of the databases involved. This technical memorandum presents prototype Intelligent User Interface Subsystem (IUIS) using the Crustal Dynamics Project Database as a test bed for the implementation of the CRUDDES (Crustal Dynamics Expert System). The knowledge base has more than 200 rules and represents a single application view and the architectural view. Operational performance using CRUDDES has allowed nondatabase users to obtain useful information from the database previously accessible only to an expert database user or the database designer

Design and implementation of a compliant robot with force feedback and strategy planning software

Force-feedback robotics techniques are being developed for automated precision assembly and servicing of NASA space flight equipment. Design and implementation of a prototype robot which provides compliance and monitors forces is in progress. Computer software to specify assembly steps and makes force feedback adjustments during assembly are coded and tested for three generically different precision mating problems. A model program demonstrates that a suitably autonomous robot can plan its own strategy

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Legal knowledge acquisition and multimedia applications

Search, retrieval, and management of multimedia contents are challenging tasks for users and researchers alike. The aim of e-sentencias Project is to develop a software-hardware system for the global management of the multimedia contents produced by the Spanish Civil Courts. We apply technologies such as the Semantic Web, ontologies, NLP techniques, audio-video segmentation and IR. The ultimate goal is to obtain an automatic classification of images and segments of the audiovisual records that, coupled with textual semantics, allows anefficient navigation and retrieval of judicial documents and additional legal sources

Human Motion Analysis Using Very Few Inertial Measurement Units

Realistic character animation and human motion analysis have become major topics of research. In this doctoral research work, three different aspects of human motion analysis and synthesis have been explored. Firstly, on the level of better management of tens of gigabytes of publicly available human motion capture data sets, a relational database approach has been proposed. We show that organizing motion capture data in a relational database provides several benefits such as centralized access to major freely available mocap data sets, fast search and retrieval of data, annotations based retrieval of contents, entertaining data from non-mocap sensor modalities etc. Moreover, the same idea is also proposed for managing quadruped motion capture data. Secondly, a new method of full body human motion reconstruction using very sparse configuration of sensors is proposed. In this setup, two sensor are attached to the upper extremities and one sensor is attached to the lower trunk. The lower trunk sensor is used to estimate ground contacts, which are later used in the reconstruction process along with the low dimensional inputs from the sensors attached to the upper extremities. The reconstruction results of the proposed method have been compared with the reconstruction results of the existing approaches and it has been observed that the proposed method generates lower average reconstruction errors. Thirdly, in the field of human motion analysis, a novel method of estimation of human soft biometrics such as gender, height, and age from the inertial data of a simple human walk is proposed. The proposed method extracts several features from the time and frequency domains for each individual step. A random forest classifier is fed with the extracted features in order to estimate the soft biometrics of a human. The results of classification have shown that it is possible with a higher accuracy to estimate the gender, height, and age of a human from the inertial data of a single step of his/her walk

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

In-Suit Doppler Technology Assessment

The objective of this program was to perform a technology assessment survey of non-invasive air embolism detection utilizing Doppler ultrasound methodologies. The primary application of this technology will be a continuous monitor for astronauts while performing extravehicular activities (EVA's). The technology assessment was to include: (1) development of a full understanding of all relevant background research; and (2) a survey of the medical ultrasound marketplace for expertise, information, and technical capability relevant to this development. Upon completion of the assessment, LSR was to provide an overview of technological approaches and R&D/manufacturing organizations