User interfaces (Computer systems)

This report describes the development of a low cost open source semiautonomous
robotic car and a way to communicate with it. It is a continuation of
prior research done by other students at FAU and published in recent ASEE
conferences.
The objective of this project was the development of a new robotic
platform with improved precision over the original, while still keeping the cost
down. It was developed with the aim to allow a hands-on approach to the
teaching of mathematics topics that are taught in the K-12 syllabus.
Improved robustness and reliability of the robotic platform for visually
solving math problems was achieved using a combination of PID loops to keep
track of distance and rotation. The precision was increased by changing the
position of the encoders to the shafts of each motor. A mobile application was developed to allow the student to draw the
geometric shapes on the screen before the car draws them. The mobile
application consists of two parts, the canvas that the user uses to draw the figure
and the configure section that lets the user change the parameters of the
controller.
Results show that the robot can draw standard geometric and complex
geometric shapes. It has high precision and sufficient accuracy, the accuracy can
be improved with some mechanical adjustments. During testing a Pythagorean
triangle was drawn to show visually the key mathematics concept.
The eventual goal of this project will be a K-12 class room study to obtain
the feedback of the teachers and students on the feasibility of using a robotic car
to teach math. Subsequent to that necessary changes will be made to
manufacture a unit that is easy to assemble by the teacher.

Frameworks for the development of object-oriented, user interactive applications have been examined. Three alternate approaches have been explored; the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach, the MVC++ approach and the Presentation-Abstraction-Control (PAC) approach. For the purpose of assessing the approaches, a simple engineering application was selected for object-oriented analysis using the three techniques. The utility of each technique was compared on the basis of complexity, extensibility and reusability. While the approaches aim to provide reusable user interface components and extensibility through incorporation of an additional class, only MVC++ and PAC truly achieve this goal, although at the expense of introducing additional messaging complexity. It was also noted that, in general, decoupling of the GUI classes, while providing increased extensibility and reusability, increases the inter-object messaging requirement.

Presented here is an object-oriented design for a real-time system used to monitor bus activity on a microcontroller via a PC. This system could prove to be an inexpensive and user-friendly alternative to existing hardware used for this purpose. The use of an object-oriented design methodology and the application of two Model-View-Controller architectures as well as a layered approach aided in producing a system composed of reusable components that is flexible and easily extensible. Additionally, a reusable pattern can be extracted from the architecture presented here that could be utilized in designing similar software applications for communicating with peripheral hardware devices.

A user interface that has objects familiar to the user will be easier to use. In this thesis, a user interface that is customizable to any color bitmap is proposed. The most significant problem with this approach is the problem of finding objects in a color bitmap. A solution to the problem is proposed and evaluated using an analysis tool, developed for this thesis, called Workbench. Current image detection methods are evaluated and compared to the solution proposed using Workbench. The proposed solution is then evaluated for the YIQ and HSI color mappings. The results of this investigation and recommendations for future work is proposed.

When there are a large number and a variety of users in a system, the authorization rules for these users will become too difficult and cumbersome to maintain and the evaluation algorithm would not be efficient. Also, it is hard for security administrators to understand why a specific user is given a set of rights. In this thesis we develop group structures to solve these problems. Groups of users rather than individual users are subjects that receive access rights from the authorization system. We present structurings and primitives for user groups. Although they are presented in the context of an object-oriented database system they are general and could be applied to other data model, and even in operating systems.

While new technologies are often used to facilitate regular people's lives, they often fail to see their potential in helping disabled people. Augmented reality, one of the newest state-of-the-art technologies, offers users the opportunity to add virtual information to their real world surroundings in real time. It also has the potential to not only augment the sense of sight, but also other senses such as hearing. Augmented reality could be used to offer the opportunity to complement users' missing sense. In this thesis, we study augmented reality technologies, systems and applications, and suggest the future of AR applications. We explain how to integrate augmented reality into iOS applications and propose an augmented reality application for hearing augmentation using an iPad2. We believe mobile devices are the best platform for augmented reality as they are widespread and their computational power is rapidly growing to be able to handle true AR applications.

Web services have become increasingly important over the past decades. Versatility and platform independence are just some of their advantages. On the other hand, grid computing enables the efficient distribution of computing resources. Together, they provide a great source of computing power that can be particularly leveraged by mobile devices. Mobile computing enables information creation, processing, storage and communication without location constraints [63], not only improving business' operational efficiency [63] but actually changing a way of life. However, the convenience of anytime and anywhere communication is counterbalanced by small screens, limited computing power and battery life. Despite these limitations, mobile devices can extend grid functionality by bringing to the mix not only mobile access but sensing capabilities as well, gathering information from their surroundings through built in mechanisms, such as microphone, camera, GPS and even accelerometers. Prior work has already demonstrated the possibility of enabling Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) access to grid resources from mobile device clients in the WSRF-ME project [39], where a representative Nokia S60 Smartphone application was created on a framework, which extends the JSR-172 functionality to achieve WSRF compliance. In light of today's mobile phone market diversity, this thesis extends the solution proposed by WSRF-ME to non-Java ME phones and to Android devices in particular. Android-based device numbers have grown considerably over the past couple of years despite its recent creation and reduced availability of mature software tools.

The increasing availability of Web services and grid computing has made easier the access and reuse of different types of services. Web services provide network accessible interfaces to application functionality in a platform-independent manner. Developments in grid computing have led to the efficient distribution of computing resources and power through the use of stateful web services. At the same time, mobile devices as a platform of computing have become a ubiquitous, inexpensive, and powerful computing resource. Concepts such as cloud computing has pushed the trend towards using grid concepts in the internet domain and are ideally suited for internet-supported mobile devices. Currently, there are a few complete implementations that leverage mobile devices as a member of a grid or virtual organization. This thesis presents a framework that enables the use of mobile devices to access stateful Web services on a Globus-based grid. To illustrate the presented framework, a user-friendly mobile application has been created that utilizes the framework libraries do to demonstrate the various functionalities that are accessible from any mobile device that supports Java ME.

With the exponential increase of Internet usage and the embedding of multimedia content on the Web, some of the Internet resources remain inaccessible for people with disabilities. Particularly, people who are deaf or Hard of Hearing (HOH) experience inaccessible Web sites due to a lack of Closed Captioning (CC) for multimedia content on the Web, no sign language equivalents for the content on the Web, and an insufficient evaluation framework for determining if a Web page is accessible to the Hearing Impaired community. Several opportunities for accessing content needed to be rectified in order for the Hearing Impaired community to access the full benefits of the information repository on the Internet. The research contributions of this thesis are to resolve some of the Web accessibility problems being faced by the Hearing Impaired community. These objectives are to create an automated CC for the Web for multimedia content, to embed sign language equivalent for content available on the Web, to create a framework to evaluate Web accessibility for the Hearing Impaired community, and to create a social network for the Deaf community. To demonstrate the feasibility of fulfilling the above listed objectives several prototypes were implemented. These prototypes have been used in real life scenarios in order to have an objective evaluation of the proposed framework. Further, the implemented prototypes have had an impact to both the academic community and to the industry.