Organizational Unit:

College of Computing

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70629

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Organizational Unit

Constellations Center for Equity in Computing

Organizational Unit

Contextual Computing Group

Organizational Unit

Division of Computing Instruction

Organizational Unit

Mobile Robot Laboratory

Organizational Unit

School of Computational Science and Engineering

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https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/102

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 2894

Formal semantics and the logical structure of programming languages

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1972) DeMillo, Richard A. ; Chiaraviglio, Lucio ; Information Science
Buffer management, adaptive flow control, and automatic incremental state saving in time warp systems

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1996) Panesar, Kiran S. ; Fujimoto, Richard M. ; Computer Science
Contech: A Tool for Analyzing Parallel Programs

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013) Railing, Brian P. ; Hein, Eric R. ; Vassenko, Phillip ; Conte, Thomas M. ; Georgia Institute of Technology. College of Computing ; Georgia Institute of Technology. School of Computer Science

The behavior and structure of a shared-memory parallel program can be characterized by a task graph that encodes the instructions, memory accesses, and dependencies of each piece of parallel work. Task graphs are not specific to one threading library or target architecture. The Contech analysis framework provides the means for generating and analyzing task graphs that enable computer architects and programmers to gain a deeper understanding of parallel programs.
Empirical studies of the value of algorithm animation in algorithm understanding

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1993) Badre, Albert N. ; Lawrence, Andrea Williams ; Georgia Institute of Technology. Office of Sponsored Programs ; Georgia Institute of Technology. College of Computing ; Georgia Institute of Technology. Office of Sponsored Programs
Generic models for performance evaluation of computer networking protocols

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1992) Liu, Wei ; Akyildiz, Ian F. ; Computing
Automatic dynamic decomposition of programs on distributed memory machines

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 1997) Doddapaneni, Srinivas P. ; Appelbe, William F. ; Computer Science
Robot Manipulation Alongside and in Collaboration with People

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-01-22) Kent, David ; Chernova, Sonia ; Gombolay, Matthew ; Kemp, Charlie ; Shah, Julie ; Fong, Terry ; Interactive Computing

Autonomous robot manipulation in unstructured environments is a required behavior for many robotics applications, from day-to-day household tasks to remote exploration of dangerous environments. To effectively deploy such systems to solve real-world problems requires approaches and representations that are compatible with people, who can be direct collaborators, subjects of assistance, or independent agents sharing the robot’s environment. The objective of this work is to improve the autonomy of robot manipulators in unstructured environments while addressing the unique challenges of working with and around humans. To address such challenges, we posit that autonomous manipulators must be both easily adjustable by system designers, and adaptive to humans in the environment, which we achieve through the use of transparent representations, human-in-the-loop systems, and learning from demonstration, across both skill- and task-level manipulation. This thesis seeks to investigate the hypothesis that improved autonomy, adjustability of behavior, and adaptiveness to people lead to greater robot efficiency and effectiveness in manipulation tasks when operating alongside and in collaboration with people. To support this claim, this thesis contributes: (1) novel approaches for human-in-the-loop grasp pose specification for teleoperation that leverage depth data and robot autonomy to balance responsibilities between the operator and the robot; (2) efficient skill-level learning by means of a pairwise ranking formulation of autonomous grasp calculation that enables robust mobile manipulation and supports interaction-efficient training and adaptability; (3) efficient task-level learning by means of a novel unsupervised learning approach for hierarchical task models with action execution preferences that enable human-robot collaboration; (4) a novel algorithm for adaptive and collaborative task planning that builds on our learned hierarchical task representation; and (5) a formulation and exploration of autonomous human observation that utilizes manipulation-enabled free-flying robots to unobtrusively support humans during non-collaborative tasks in remote environments.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND CIVIL CONFLICT: LEVERAGING ECONOMIC SECTORS FOR PEACE

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12-13) Shabb, Rana Olivia ; Rubin, Lawrence ; Kosal, Margaret ; Thomas, Anjali ; Woodall, Brian ; Diwan, Ishac ; International Affairs

My dissertation, The Private Sector and Civil Conflict: Leveraging Economic Sectors for Peace, aims to better understand the relationship between the private sector and peace, filling an academic gap and addressing a policy need. To this end, I undertake three interrelated research projects. The inquiries put forth and their findings seek to leverage existing policy tools to help strengthen peacebuilding and conflict prevention interventions in countries affected by conflict. To frame the questions undertaken in this dissertation, I provide a quick overview in Chapter 1 covering the main bodies of literature that seek to understand peace and prosperity in developing countries. While metatheories of modernization, liberalism, and intuitionalism have sought grand-scale explanations, they tend to assume that capitalism is part and parcel of peaceful and prosperous societies. The private sector is treated as a black box. At a more granular level, this dissertation seeks to understand how capitalism and the private sector affect the civil conflict-peace dynamic. Further, more targeted civil conflict academic work – which is more positivist and exhaustive in nature – tends to highlight economic factors (economic growth, poverty, price shocks) as drivers for conflict. Nevertheless, there is significantly less examination or theorization of how the private sector and firms can contribute to these factors. Previous approaches treat the private sector as a consumer of its environment (in terms of property rights, labor, prices, privileges). As such, this dissertation fills an analytical and theoretical gap and shifts the level of analysis to the private sector and firm-level. From this perspective, the private sector engages with labor (would-be-rebels and those with possible grievances) and governments to advance their material interest. Better understanding the private sector- civil conflict nexus sheds light on previously unexamined areas and can help inform peacebuilding interventions in developing countries. Notwithstanding academic work, conventional wisdom in the practitioner community states that a vibrant private sector is necessary to help secure peace in conflict-affected countries. International development agencies, for instance, have adopted private sector development as a strategy to promote peace. Despite this conviction, there is little to no evidence in the academic literature to support this claim. In chapter 2, I draw on the business and peace, and civil conflict literatures, to argue that a strong private sector through job creation and growth decreases prospective rebels’ incentives to join a rebellion and eventually reduces the likelihood of civil conflict. The argument is tested by examining the effects of private sector strength, as measured by domestic credit granted to the private sector and investment climate, on the probability of civil conflict occurrence from 1995 through 2018. Statistical analysis shows that a strong private sector has a pacifying effect on civil conflict. Specifically, findings demonstrate that access to credit, rather than investment climate, is more effective at sustaining peace. I illustrate the quantitative findings with the comparative cases of Egypt and Tunisia to show the mechanism by which access to credit has higher peace dividends. These findings fill an academic gap and equip policymakers to make more effective peacebuilding interventions. Further, the civil conflict literature tends to compare conflict nationally and does not differentiate between economic sectors, with the exception of the extractive industries. In chapter 3, I address the question of whether some economic sectors are better than others at sustaining peace. To examine firms’ subnational contributions to peace or civil conflict, I build a theoretical framework to predict economic sectors’ propensity for peace. Based on the supply of factors of production in civil conflict, I deduce that economic sectors that rely on skilled labor, mobile, and high-tech equipment are more vulnerable than those that rely on unskilled, fixed, and low-tech equipment. Subsequently, I argue that firms operating in sectors vested in peace (for their bottom line) engage in peace-promoting activities. To test for differentiated effects, I conduct a focused and structured within case analysis in Lebanon examining two sectors: one vested in peace and the other peace-neutral (financial vs. quarrying sector). Analysis of fieldwork data, collected through semi-structured interviews and local news reports reveals that firms vested in peace support national policies to that effect, whereas peace-neutral business can engage in inflammatory tactics, which have occasionally led to violent conflict. Given that knowledge and high-tech intensive economic sectors are more vested in peace than others, can existing foreign policy tools be leveraged to promote innovation in recipient economies? Chapter 4 examines the conditions under which military aid to developing countries triggers innovation. This question emanates from a puzzle in the innovation literature. Studies focused on military expenditure in the developed world show a positive relationship between military expenditure and innovation. Conversely, studies centered on military expenditure in developing countries often note the unintended, negative consequences of such expenditure (autocracy, increased coups, and the undermining of human rights). Borrowing from current literature on innovation that examines diffusion channels from the military to the national economy, this research seeks to identify a similar process in developing countries. Using a congruence test on a least-likely case, this study finds that military aid – effectively a military expenditure subsidy – can indeed trigger the emergence of new high-tech knowledge intensive sector in a recipient economy. In Jordan, this is reflected as the emergence of an innovative domestic arms industry after its peace agreement with Israel and a major influx of U.S. military aid. Further, by dividing military aid into different sub-types and tracing and comparing their different effects, this study finds that with conducive industrial and S&T domestic policy, military aid can have secondhand virtuous effects and lead to innovation in the recipient economy. Finally, Chapter 5 concludes by highlighting the main findings from the project, policy recommendations, and avenues for future research. Overall, this dissertation sheds light on how the private sector can help sustain peace, and how military aid – already dispatched in the billions – can be leveraged to magnify virtuous second-hand effects that work to support peace and prosperity in the long run.
Distributive lattices, stable matchings, and robust solutions

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-05-18) Mai, Tung ; Vazirani, Vijay V. ; Garg, Jugal ; Mihail, Milena ; Singh, Mohit ; Thomas, Robin ; Computer Science

The stable matching problem, first presented by mathematical economists Gale and Shapley, has been studied extensively since its introduction. As a result, a remarkably rich literature on the problem has accumulated in both theory and practice. In this thesis we further extend our understanding on several algorithmic and structural aspects of stable matching. We summarize the main contributions of the thesis as follows: generalizing stable matching to maximum weight stable matching; finding stable matchings that are robust to shifts; generalizing Birkhoff's Theorem, and providing an application to robust stable matching.
Multimodal Analogies in Modelling and Design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005) Yaner, Patrick W.

Drawings, on the one hand, and teleological models, on the other, are two ways of understanding and communicating design information. Drawing on previous work, Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) theory claims that teleological knowledge is comprised of three basic kinds of knowledge: structural knowledge, behavioral knowledge, and functional knowledge. However, the design task, in practice, revolves around draw- ings. For example, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software manipulates and produces drawings, and to produce a design is to produce a set of documents that primarily consists of drawings of that design. And yet, drawings can, at best, represent only structural knowledge, and even that incompletely, as components' roles in the design are not and cannot be determined solely by the drawing. Two questions motivate this research: (1) what role, precisely, do drawings place in the design process? and (2) how can we enhance CAD tools to make more direct use of teleological knowledge? This work explores two problems: model construction and design generation. The problem of constructing an SBF model of a mechanical device from a drawing can be solved in a robust and tractable way using analogical reasoning, by reasoning from visual and topological differences to structural, causal, and functional differences in models. Patterns of adaptation and transfer can be captured by Generic Visual Teleological Mechanisms (GVTMs), generic patterns of adaptation that capture particular abstractions. Likewise, the problem of design generation, proceeding from a functional specification to a drawing associated with a complete SBF model, can be solved in a robust and tractable manner using analogical reasoning from functional differences to structural and behavioral differences in models, and ultimately to visual differences in drawings. Patterns of adaptation, here, can be effectively solved by Generic Teleological Drawing Mechanisms (GTDMs), capturing similar patterns to GVTMs, but proceeding from function to drawing instead of the reverse. Both are essentially constructive, and together help to elucidate the nature and interplay between visual structure and topology, on the one hand, and causality and teleology, on the other hand, in modelling and design.