The work described in this thesis began as an inquiry into the nature and use of optimization programs based on "genetic algorithms." That inquiry led, eventually, to three powerful heuristics that are broadly applicable ...

Segmentation of medical imagery is a challenging problem due to the complexity of the images, as well as to the absence of models of the anatomy that fully capture the possible deformations in each structure. Brain ...

This thesis presents a new actuator system consisting of a micro-actuator and a macro-actuator coupled in parallel via a compliant transmission. The system is called the Parallel Coupled Micro-Macro Actuator, or PaCMMA. ...

A new information-theoretic approach is presented for finding the pose of an object in an image. The technique does not require information about the surface properties of the object, besides its shape, and is robust ...

Babies are born with simple manipulation capabilities such as reflexes to perceived stimuli. Initial discoveries by babies are accidental until they become coordinated and curious enough to actively investigate their ...

Scheduling tasks to efficiently use the available processor resources is crucial to minimizing the runtime of applications on shared-memory parallel processors. One factor that contributes to poor processor utilization ...

Enhanced reality visualization is the process of enhancing an image by adding to it information which is not present in the original image. A wide variety of information can be added to an image ranging from hidden ...

This paper describes a new statistical, model-based approach to building a contact state observer. The observer uses measurements of the contact force and position, and prior information about the task encoded in a ...

This report examines how to estimate the parameters of a chaotic system given noisy observations of the state behavior of the system. Investigating parameter estimation for chaotic systems is interesting because of ...

The control of aerial gymnastic maneuvers is challenging because these maneuvers frequently involve complex rotational motion and because the performer has limited control of the maneuver during flight. A performer can ...

The dynamic power requirement of CMOS circuits is rapidly becoming a major concern in the design of personal information systems and large computers. In this work we present a number of new CMOS logic families, Charge ...

Object recognition is complicated by clutter, occlusion, and sensor error. Since pose hypotheses are based on image feature locations, these effects can lead to false negatives and positives. In a typical recognition ...

This report addresses the problem of achieving cooperation within small- to medium- sized teams of heterogeneous mobile robots. I describe a software architecture I have developed, called ALLIANCE, that facilitates ...

This report addresses the problem of acquiring objects using articulated robotic hands. Standard grasps are used to make the problem tractable, and a technique is developed for generalizing these standard grasps to ...

With the development of high-level languages for new computer architectures comes the need for appropriate debugging tools as well. One method for meeting this need would be to develop, from scratch, a symbolic debugger ...

This report introduces TRANSLUCENT PROCEDURES as a new mechanism for implementing behavioral abstractions. Like an ordinary procedure, a translucent procedure can be invoked, and thus provides an obvious way to capture ...

This paper describes a simple method for internal camera calibration for computer vision. This method is based on tracking image features through a sequence of images while the camera undergoes pure rotation. The ...

This report presents a set of representations methodologies and tools for the purpose of visualizing, analyzing and designing functional shapes in terms of constraints on motion. The core of the research is an interactive ...

There has been recent interest in using temporal difference learning methods to attack problems of prediction and control. While these algorithms have been brought to bear on many problems, they remain poorly understood. ...

A key problem in object recognition is selection, namely, the problem of identifying regions in an image within which to start the recognition process, ideally by isolating regions that are likely to come from a single ...