Operations research and computers

operational research

Controlling a mobile robot with a biological brain

The intelligent controlling mechanism of a typical mobile robot is usually a computer system. Some recent research is ongoing in which biological neurons are being cultured and trained to act as the brain of an interactive real world robot�thereby either completely replacing, or operating in a cooperative fashion with, a computer system. Studying such hybrid systems can provide distinct insights into the operation of biological neural structures, and therefore, such research has immediate medical implications as well as enormous potential in robotics. The main aim of the research is to assess the computational and learning capacity of dissociated cultured neuronal networks. A hybrid system incorporating closed-loop control of a mobile robot by a dissociated culture of neurons has been created. The system is flexible and allows for closed-loop operation, either with hardware robot or its software simulation. The paper provides an overview of the problem area, gives an idea of the breadth of present ongoing research, establises a new system architecture and, as an example, reports on the results of conducted experiments with real-life robots

Metric-based method of software requirements correctness improvement

The work highlights the most important principles of software reliability management (SRM). The SRM concept construes a basis for developing a method of requirements correctness improvement. The method assumes that complicated requirements contain more actual and potential design faults/defects. The method applies a newer metric to evaluate the requirements complexity and double sorting technique evaluating the priority and complexity of a particular requirement. The method enables to improve requirements correctness due to identification of a higher number of defects with restricted resources. Practical application of the proposed method in the course of demands review assured a sensible technical and economic effect

An architecture for a viable information system : application of “viable system model” in modern systems architecture for the creation of viable information system

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThe idea of present work is born in the context of problems that nowadays organizations facing with their information systems. Modern information systems are monolithic, complex and not ready for the future challenges. But, at the same time, they are playing a key role in a chain of value delivery. Such systems are not fitting perfectly into the businesses where they are employed (not providing all desired outcomes as they are expected by the creators and users of the system). There are three main areas where critical problems can arise in the process of information systems development: modelling, managing, and maintaining information systems. Once an architecture of the system is designed and implemented, the organization faces several problems in maintaining it. It is important to notice that, most of the time, people do not approach ISs problems in a systemic thinking way, but instead in a reductionist way. Which means that no one trying to understand all the interactions between components of the system, which may lead to very interesting and useful findings when studied properly. But the information system it’s just a system, sometimes very complex and monolithic, but it’s still just a system. In this work, Viable System Model will be used to help solve problems described above. The goal of this work is to apply VSM to the Information artifacts to take advantage of all benefits VSM offers. The main outcome from this work will be an architecture for Viable Information System. Systems thinking area will be taken as a basis for the development of the ideas presented in this dissertation. We are proposing a new architecture for modern organizations to use, to take advantage of benefits that VSM must offer. Namely: understanding of complexity, resilience to change, survival to an external environment and ability to exist independently of its external environment. Given that Information System is a system, and, so, obeys laws of general system theory, we could take advantage of using the “Viable System Model” architecture

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationStochastic methods, dense free-form mapping, atlas construction, and total variation are examples of advanced image processing techniques which are robust but computationally demanding. These algorithms often require a large amount of computational power as well as massive memory bandwidth. These requirements used to be ful lled only by supercomputers. The development of heterogeneous parallel subsystems and computation-specialized devices such as Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) has brought the requisite power to commodity hardware, opening up opportunities for scientists to experiment and evaluate the in uence of these techniques on their research and practical applications. However, harnessing the processing power from modern hardware is challenging. The di fferences between multicore parallel processing systems and conventional models are signi ficant, often requiring algorithms and data structures to be redesigned signi ficantly for efficiency. It also demands in-depth knowledge about modern hardware architectures to optimize these implementations, sometimes on a per-architecture basis. The goal of this dissertation is to introduce a solution for this problem based on a 3D image processing framework, using high performance APIs at the core level to utilize parallel processing power of the GPUs. The design of the framework facilitates an efficient application development process, which does not require scientists to have extensive knowledge about GPU systems, and encourages them to harness this power to solve their computationally challenging problems. To present the development of this framework, four main problems are described, and the solutions are discussed and evaluated: (1) essential components of a general 3D image processing library: data structures and algorithms, as well as how to implement these building blocks on the GPU architecture for optimal performance; (2) an implementation of unbiased atlas construction algorithms|an illustration of how to solve a highly complex and computationally expensive algorithm using this framework; (3) an extension of the framework to account for geometry descriptors to solve registration challenges with large scale shape changes and high intensity-contrast di fferences; and (4) an out-of-core streaming model, which enables developers to implement multi-image processing techniques on commodity hardware