Generating solutions to Sokoban levels is an NP-hard problem that is difficult for even modern day computers to solve due to its complexity. This project explores the creation of a Sokoban solver by eliminating as many potential moves as possible to greatly limit the overall search space. This reduction is...
Keeping FOSS developers motivated is a challenging problem, and their motivation levels can affect the team's productivity and satisfaction, leading to higher or lower productivity. Using reputation systems as a motivator has become the de-facto standard for many online communities, rewarding user's activity through badges of honor or achievement levels....
The gradient of a velocity vector field is an asymmetric tensor field which can provide critical insight that is difficult to infer from traditional trajectory-based vector field visualization techniques. I describe the structures in the eigenvalue and eigenvector fields of the gradient tensor and how these structures can be used...
This study introduces a layered model for rendering human teeth. Human teeth exhibit complex light interaction due to their layered structure. While the lighting responses of teeth have been studied in the dental industry for the production of realistic looking dentures, to our knowledge this is the first study of...
Since free riders in P2P network reduce the system's performance, how to maintain and encourage the nodes' cooperation is an important aspect of P2P related research. In this thesis, a P2P system is modeled based on two games: stag hunt game and snowdrift game. To relate the model to the...
For building robust software applications, it is important for the software engineer to make efficient use of the available building blocks. Learning the basic language constructs is only the first step in this process. It is becoming increasingly important for software engineers, especially students, to get acquainted with the available...
We present the evolution of a reasoning system for inferring dimension information in
spreadsheets. The three papers included in this thesis show how the initial system can be
used to check the consistency of spreadsheet formulas and thus is able to detect errors in
spreadsheets, and the evolution to a...
Dimensionality reduction (DR) is an efficient approach to reduce the size of
data by capturing the informative intrinsic features and discarding the noise. DR
methods can be grouped through a variety of categories, e.g. supervised/ unsupervised,
linear/non-linear or parametric/non-parametric. Objective function based
methods can be grouped into convex and non...
Parallel processors are classified into two classes: shared-memory multiprocessors and distributed- memory multiprocessors. In the shared-memory system, processors communicate through a common memory unit. However, in the distributed multiprocessor system, each processor has its own memory unit and the communications among the processors are performed through an interconnection network. Thus,...
This dissertation addresses two fundamental problems in computer vision—namely,
multitarget tracking and event recognition in videos. These problems are challenging
because uncertainty may arise from a host of sources, including motion blur,
occlusions, and dynamic cluttered backgrounds. We show that these challenges can be
successfully addressed by using a multiscale,...