In many motion-vision scenarios, a camera (mounted on a moving vehicle) takes images of an environment to find the "motion'' and shape. We introduce a direct-method called fixation for solving this motion-vision problem ...

Surface (Lambertain) color is a useful visual cue for analyzing material composition of scenes. This thesis adopts a signal processing approach to color vision. It represents color images as fields of 3D vectors, from ...

This report examines why women pursue careers in computer science and related fields far less frequently than men do. In 1990, only 13% of PhDs in computer science went to women, and only 7.8% of computer science ...

In model-based vision, there are a huge number of possible ways to match model features to image features. In addition to model shape constraints, there are important match-independent constraints that can efficiently ...

The central thesis of this report is that human language is NP-complete. That is, the process of comprehending and producing utterances is bounded above by the class NP, and below by NP-hardness. This constructive ...

Fine-grained parallel machines have the potential for very high speed computation. To program massively-concurrent MIMD machines, programmers need tools for managing complexity. These tools should not restrict program ...

This thesis details the development of a model of a seven degree of freedom manipulator for position control. Then, it goes on to discuss the design and construction of a the PHD, a robot built to serve two purposes: ...

This thesis defines Pi, a parallel architecture interface that separates model and machine issues, allowing them to be addressed independently. This provides greater flexibility for both the model and machine builder. ...

This report explores the design and control issues associated with a brushless actuator capable of achieving extremely high torque accuracy. Models of several different motor - sensor configurations were studied to ...

This thesis addresses the problem of developing automatic grasping capabilities for robotic hands. Using a 2-jointed and a 4-jointed nmodel of the hand, we establish the geometric conditions necessary for achieving ...

This report presents a design of a new type of robot end-effector with inherent mechanical grasping capabilities. Concentrating on designing an end-effector to grasp a simple class of objects, cylindrical, allowed a ...

A serial-link manipulator may form a mobile closed kinematic chain when interacting with the environment, if it is redundant with respect to the task degrees of freedom (DOFs) at the endpoint. If the mobile closed chain ...

The dataflow model of computation exposes and exploits parallelism in programs without requiring programmer annotation; however, instruction- level dataflow is too fine-grained to be efficient on general-purpose ...

Signalling off-chip requires significant current. As a result, a chip's power-supply current changes drastically during certain output-bus transitions. These current fluctuations cause a voltage drop between the chip ...

To use a world model, a mobile robot must be able to determine its own position in the world. To support truly autonomous navigation, I present MARVEL, a system that builds and maintains its own models of world locations ...

A distributed method for mobile robot navigation, spatial learning, and path planning is presented. It is implemented on a sonar-based physical robot, Toto, consisting of three competence layers: 1) Low-level navigation: ...

The Transit network provides high-speed, low-latency, fault-tolerant interconnect for high-performance, multiprocessor computers. The basic connection scheme for Transit uses bidelta style, multistage networks to ...

KAM is a computer program that can automatically plan, monitor, and interpret numerical experiments with Hamiltonian systems with two degrees of freedom. The program has recently helped solve an open problem in ...

A new formulation for recovering the structure and motion parameters of a moving patch using both motion and shading information is presented. It is based on a new differential constraint equation (FICE) that links the ...

A modeling study of hippocampal pyramidal neurons is described. This study is based on simulations using HIPPO, a program which simulates the somatic electrical activity of these cells. HIPPO is based on a) descriptions ...