Computer Systems Engineering Master's Theses

Reinforcement learning approach for disassembly

Harshawardhan Mukund Kulkarni — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:33:48 PST

Disassembly line is the best way to disassemble products with similar components in large quantity. Similar to an assembly line, a disassembly line consists of a series of workstations. Factors such as multiple demand arrivals, multiple arrivals of EOL products, different state of EOL products, fluctuations in the inventory and levels make a disassembly line very complex and difficult to control. Earlier researchers have proposed a Multi-Kanban mechanism for a disassembly line, which involves dynamic routing of the Kanbans to various workstations. This research focuses on applying reinforcement learning to the disassembly environment.

We have designed the reinforcement learning agent...

Comparison of road scanning patterns of novice and experienced drivers using a driving simulator

Tanvi Vinda Chitnis — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:34:15 PDT

Previous laboratory and simulator research indicate that novice drivers fail to identify all potential hazards along the roadway. A possible reason could be that novice drivers tend to stare at the road directly ahead more often and miss out on possible hazards on the periphery of the road. A potential hazard is defined as something in the driving environment that requires a driver to adjust his or her speed and/or direction. Such hazards include situations like a high hedge covering a part of the sidewalk that opens into a crosswalk, or vehicles changing lanes abruptly, etc. The aim of this...

Investigating a multi-touch user interface for three-dimensional CAD operations

Srinivasan Radhakrishnan — Tue, 24 May 2011 05:39:19 PDT

The area of multitouch interaction research is at its infancy. The commercial sector has seen an exponential growth in this area with ubiquitous products like Apple i-phone and Microsoft surface table. In spite of their popularity, developers are still finding it difficult to extend this novel interface to engineering applications such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), due to insufficient understanding of the factors affecting the multitouch interface when applied to CAD operations. This problem is magnified when it comes to 3D CAD operations. The aim of this research is to (1) study the key elements of the multitouch interface, (2)...

Driver performance on curves using a driving simulator

Sonali Rakesh Kumar Gupta — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:39:00 PST

We investigated drivers' behavior and physiological measures while driving on curves with radii of 250 meters. Our investigation included recording eye movements while driving on curves to determine the gaze patterns when making left and right curves. The Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) was recorded to monitor simulator sickness. Measurement of GSR was also used to reveal the physiological reaction to dangerous events. The experiment focused on driving on roads with left and right curves with and without clothoids. Clothoids are the family of spirals whose curvature is linearly related to its curve length. The car's course consisted of a succession...

Assessment of current health and remaining useful life of hard disk drives

Yogesh G. Bagul — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:16:15 PST

Everything that has a beginning also has an ending and so does a hard disk drive, which is a crucial subunit of a computer. The failure of a hard disk drive may cause serious data loss and inconvenience. In spite of hard disk drive being such a crucial subunit of a computer, limited research has been done on hard disk drive failure mechanisms, diagnostics, and prognostics. By knowing in advance an impending hard disk drive failure, can we not only avoid data loss but also minimize computer down time and wastage of time and money. Through the proposed prognostics technology...