We believe concreteness, direct manipulation and responsiveness in a visual programming language increase its usefulness. However, these characteristics present a challenge in generalizing programs for reuse, especially when concrete examples are used as one way of achieving concreteness. In this paper, we present a technique to solve this problem by...
Software Configuration Management (SCM) is a concept of trying to group the changing artifacts of software development to try to manage the complexity of modern day software. This paper provides a roadmap for improving the SCM support process based on a meta-model. I developed a model that defines key practice...
Watering a lawn involves several factors such as laying out the sprinklers and valves, trenching, laying pipes, cables, etc. The primary goal is to ensure uniform watering subject to various constraints. We present some abstract problems involving sprinkler layout and some solutions with theoretical worst case bounds on their performance....
The Sacagawea testbed has been designed to support testing and development of decision making models, and associated uncertainty management techniques, that are appropriate under real-time problem solving constraints. Conceptually, it provides a simulated temporal and spatial environment, the latter consisting of a terrain grid of elevation and tree cover data,...
Performance of a reliable storage subsystem for a centralized database system was studied by simulation. The reliable storage subsystem studied consists of three redundant disk units that are updated one at a time from a consistent database state to another consistent database state, Thus, even if a central processor and/or...
This paper presents the initial results from an empirical study of mechanical design engineers. In this study, six engineers were video-taped solving real mechanical design problems. Preliminary analysis of this protocol data has yielded several important findings, including (a) mechanical designers progress from systematic to opportunistic behavior as the design...
Acoustic position estimation is used where high accuracy navigation is required over a small area, such as for searching or for collecting gravitational or geomagnetic data. In this position estimation method, a surface ship or submersible periodically sends out a high-frequency acoustic 'ping' at a prearranged frequency. This ping is...