Localization and sensing applications in the Pushpin Computer Network

Thesis (M. Eng. and S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-124).The utility and purpose of a node in a wireless sensor network is intimately tied to the physical space in which it is distributed. As such, it is advantageous under most circumstances for a sensor node to know its position. In this work, we present two systems for localizing a network of roughly 60 sensor nodes distributed over an area of 1-m2. One is based on a linear lateration technique, while the second approach utilizes non-linear optimization techniques, namely spectral graph drawing and mesh relaxation. In both cases, localization is accomplished by generating distance constraints based on ultrasound time-of-flight measurements to distinct, global sensor stimuli. These distance constraints alone are sufficient to achieve localization; no a priori knowledge of sensor node coordinates or the coordinates of the global sensor events are required. Using this technique, we have achieved a localization error of 2.30-cm and an error standard deviation of 2.36-cm.by Michael Joseph Broxton.M.Eng.and S.B

Comics and Agency

This volume focuses on the attribution of agency across comics production (authorship and institutionalization), reception (appropriation and discursivation), and circulation (participation and canonization). Contributors from a range of different fields investigate the interrelations between individual, collective, and institutional actors within historical and contemporary comics cultures

Social capital in urban environments: intersection of theory, research and practice literature

This paper attempts to stretch the understanding of the relationship between social capital and attributes of the physical environment through an exploration of the intersection of social capital theory, urban design practitioner guidance and empirical research on social capital that considers the built environment as a variable. Viewing such knowledge through the lens of social capital, the links, overlaps, and extensions were extrapolated thereby attempting to operationalise the theoretical notion of social capital, within sustainability assessment

Improving Negotiations Through Awareness

Negotiations are an essential part of personal and professional life, and computer-support helps facilitate them as they become increasingly complex. Being aware of the priorities of the partner plays an essential role in successful negotiations. Two cognitive errors – the fixed-sum and the incompatibility error – hinder an integration of different priorities for achieving an economically beneficial outcome. Also, personality traits as well as figural intelligence and social value orientation interdependently influence the negotiator’s individual outcomes in such computer-supported negotiations. Two studies were conducted for this thesis resulting in three articles. Each study with 132 participants, 66 dyads, negotiating in their roles as car seller or buyer. Priority awareness, the awareness about the priorities of the partner, is introduced as a solution approach. Non-interactive bar charts are used to facilitate such awareness without the need for special experience, training or instructions to diminish the two errors and improve different measures of negotiation performance. Performance awareness, a more detailed priority awareness, is a possible successor to the priority awareness approach and compared to it. It uses more of information and communication technologies interactive abilities with the intention to further improve negotiation outcomes and diminish the still existent incompatibility error. The actor-partner interdependence model is used for the analyzes of individual characteristics which may have a different influence on the negotiator’s individual outcomes under the two approaches. Results show that the priority awareness approach improves the joint outcome and pareto efficiency without adverse effects on fairness, satisfaction and duration. The performance awareness approach, although having the capability to outperform the priority awareness approach, does not further improve joint outcome and pareto efficiency and has adverse effects on satisfaction, fairness and deceptiveness. Individual analyses show only hints for different effects for these approaches. In general, a good individual outcome of one partner seems highly dependent upon the lower emotionality, prosocial behavior and higher figural intelligence of the opposing partner. Priority awareness is a useful approach which can already be implemented in current negotiation support system. Future studies building upon the findings of this thesis are discussed.Verhandlungen als essenzieller Bestandteil des privaten und beruflichen Lebens werden stets komplexer und erfordern daher zunehmend eine computertechnische Unterstützung. Das Bewusstsein über die Prioritäten des Partners spielt bei erfolgreichen Verhandlungen eine wesentliche Rolle. Zwei kognitive Fehler – der Fixed-Sum-Error und der Incompatibility Error – behindern eine Integration unterschiedlicher Prioritäten, um ein wirtschaftlich vorteilhaftes Ergebnis zu erzielen. Zudem beeinflussen Persönlichkeitsmerkmale sowie figurale Intelligenz und soziale Wertorientierung die gegenseitigen individuellen Ergebnisse der Verhandlungsführer in solchen computerunterstützen Verhandlungen. Zwei Studien wurden für diese Dissertation durchgeführt und in drei Artikeln verschriftlicht. Jede Studie hatte 132 Teilnehmer, 66 Dyaden, die in ihren Rollen als Autoverkäufer oder -käufer verhandelten. Priority Awareness, das Bewusstsein über die Prioritäten des Partners, wird als Lösungsansatz eingeführt. Nicht-interaktive Balkendiagramme werden verwendet, um ein solches Bewusstsein zu fördern, ohne dass spezielle Erfahrungen, Trainings oder Instruktionen erforderlich sind, um die beiden kognitiven Fehler zu verringern und verschiedene Maße des Verhandlungserfolgs zu verbessern. Performance Awareness, eine detailliertere Priority Awareness, ist ein möglicher Nachfolger für den Priority-Awareness-Ansatz und wird damit verglichen. Es werden hierbei mehr interaktive Fähigkeiten der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien verwendet mit der Absicht, die Verhandlungs-ergebnisse weiter zu verbessern und den noch bestehenden Incompatibility Error zu verringern. Das Actor-Partner Interdependence Model dient der Analyse individueller Merkmale, welche unter den beiden Ansätzen, unterschiedlichen Einfluss auf die individuellen Ergebnisse haben können. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Priority-Awareness-Ansatz das gemeinsame Ergebnis und die Pareto-Effizienz ohne negative Auswirkungen auf Fairness, Zufriedenheit und Dauer verbessert. Der Performance-Awareness-Ansatz, obwohl er die Fähigkeit hätte, den Priority-Awareness-Ansatz zu übertreffen, verbessert das gemeinsame Ergebnis und die Pareto Effizienz nicht weiter und hat negative Auswirkungen auf Zufriedenheit, Fairness und Täuschung. Individuelle Analysen deuten nur unterschiedliche Effekte zwischen den Ansätzen an. Im Allgemeinen hängt ein gutes individuelles Ergebnis eines Partners stark von der geringeren Emotionalität, dem prosozialen Verhalten und der höheren figuralen Intelligenz des gegnerischen Partners ab. Priority Awareness ist ein nützlicher Ansatz, der bereits in aktueller Software zur Unterstützung von Verhandlungen umgesetzt werden kann. Zukünftige Studien, welche auf den Ergebnissen dieser Arbeit aufbauen, werden diskutiert

An Integrated Control and Data Acquisition System for Pharmaceutical Capsule Inspection

Pharmaphil Inc. manufactures two-part gelatin capsules for the pharmaceutical industry. Their current methods of quality control of their product is by performing manual inspection of every carton of capsules prior to shipment. In today\u27s modern manufacturing world, more efficient and cost-effective means of quality control exist. It is Pharmaphil\u27s desire to develop a custom machine vision system to replace manual inspection with a potential opportunity in the capsule manufacturing quality control market. In collaboration with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Windsor, a novel system was developed to achieve this goal. The objective was to develop a system capable of inspecting 1000 capsules per minute with the ability to detect holes, cracks, dents, bubble, double caps and incorrect colour or size. Using an antiquated machine vision system for capsule inspection from the mid-nineties as a base, a modern inspection system was developed that performed faster and more thorough inspections. As a measure to minimize the overall system cost as well as to increase flexibility, a full custom design was undertaken. The resulting system follows a traditional machine vision system whereby the main components include an image acquisition component, a processing unit and machine control. The designed system uses custom USB2.0 cameras to acquire images, a standard desktop PC to process image data and a custom machine control board to perform machine control and timing. The system operates with four identical quadrants operating in parallel to increase throughput. The final system developed provided a proof-of-concept for the approach taken. The machine control and image acquisition component of the system yielded a maximum throughput of 1200 capsules per minute. After incorporating image inspection, the final result was a system that was capable of inspecting capsules at a rate of about 800 capsules per minute with high accuracy. With optimizations, the system throughput can be further improved. The findings throughout the development of the prototype system provide an excellent basis from which the first generation commercial unit can be designed

2017-2018 Undergraduate Catalog

Contains course descriptions, academic calendar, directory, and related information.https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/undergraduate-catalogs/1000/thumbnail.jp

2012-2013 Undergraduate Catalog

Contains course descriptions, academic calendar, directory, and related information.https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/undergraduate-catalogs/1005/thumbnail.jp

EDGE Mentoring App

The EDGE Mentoring Program helps incoming freshmen transition more easily into Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). In the EDGE Program, mentees are paired with sophomore, junior, and senior mentors, who guide incoming students in three areas: academic, social, and personal wellness. Additionally, in today’s college environment, mobile applications (apps) assist college students in areas such as time management, sleep, fitness, and social networking. The goal of this interactive qualifying project (IQP) was to develop a mobile app that will help peer mentors in the EDGE Program. The mentors in the EDGE Program could then use the app to help their mentees succeed

2014-2015 Undergraduate Catalog

Contains course descriptions, academic calendar, directory, and related information.https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/undergraduate-catalogs/1003/thumbnail.jp

Making Migrations: Population Displacement Strategies in Civil Wars

Why do armed groups uproot civilians in wartime? This dissertation identifies variation across civil wars in three population displacement strategies - cleansing, depopulation, and forced relocation - and tests different explanations for their use. I develop a new "assortative" theory of displacement, which argues that while some strategies (cleansing) aim to expel undesirable or disloyal populations, others (forced relocation, and perhaps depopulation) seek to identify the undesirables or the disloyal in the first place. When combatants lack information about opponents' identities and civilians' loyalties, they can use human mobility to infer wartime sympathies through "guilt by location." Triggering displacement forces people to send costly and visible signals of loyalty based on whether, and where, they flee. This makes communities more "legible," enabling combatants to use people's movements as a continuous indicator of affiliation and allegiance; and to extract rents and recruits from the population. I therefore show that in some cases, displacement is attractive because it offers unique solutions to information and resource problems in civil wars by acting as a sorting mechanism and a force multiplier.To evaluate my theory, I adopt a multi-method, multi-level research design that focuses on displacement by state actors, the primary perpetrators of these methods. I introduce a new dataset of population displacement strategies in 160 civil wars (1945-2008), disaggregated by type, and conduct a series of quantitative tests. The data show that strategic displacement has been much more common in wartime than previously thought. I also find that, consistent with my expectations, different displacement strategies occur in different contexts and appear to follow different logics. Cleansing is more likely in conventional wars, where territorial conquest takes primacy, and when counterinsurgents have access to group-level identifiers that link civilians to an armed group. Forced relocation - the most common displacement strategy - is more likely in irregular wars, where identification problems are most acute, and when counterinsurgents lack access to other group-level heuristics for inferring civilian loyalties. The evidence indicates that cleansing follows a logic of punishment. The results for relocation, however, are consistent with the implications of my assortative logic: it is more likely to be employed by resource-constrained incumbents fighting insurgencies in "illegible" areas - rural, peripheral territories - and it correlates strongly with state efforts to mobilize the population into civilian defense forces. While the cross-national analysis lends indirect support for my arguments, a series of case studies provide direct evidence for the assortative logic. Two in-depth case studies, of civil wars in Uganda and Syria, are based on extensive field research conducted between 2016 and 2019, including hundreds of interviews with perpetrators and victims of displacement. An additional chapter features three shorter case studies of conflicts in Burundi, Vietnam, and Indonesia. As the most comprehensive study of strategic wartime displacement to date, this dissertation challenges some core assumptions about a devastating feature of modern conflict and an increasingly salient issue in world politics. My findings have important implications for research on forced displacement, civil war, and political violence, and can inform policy efforts to prevent, mitigate, and better respond to wartime migrations and their myriad consequences