CS388 – Week 8 – Update

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I met with Charlie for the weekly meeting. We discussed different designs for my simulation model. I will first create some input data, which includes creating dummy values for the base map instead of using a real map. The main program will contain simple transition functions. This is to make sure that I can produce a simple version of a simulation model. I will also have to look more into NetLogo, especially into its fire model libraries.

Week 9

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During my weakly meeting with Igor, he brought to my attention a better way to increment the ranking algorithm. In the first round, a certain number of image processing techniques will be applied to the original image and the top 10 or so images will be passed on to the next round. For each round after, permutations of the image processing techniques will be applied to the images, and the next 10 winners will be promoted to the next round. This way, we can keep applying several techniques on the images, and find the best combination. The process would go on until either the machine has a confidence interval beyond a certain threshold, or a certain number of rounds have passed. The latter is important so the machine does not keep going for ever (or for too long) if the image is simply to bad be made decent. This brings me to the question of what to do if no food is found in the image. Should it return an error, or maybe apply the process to the image and see how it turns out? It is possible that the user submitted an image that contains an unusually morphed food, which the AI might not recognize as food, but still be able to make look good.

I also have heard about genetic algorithms, and will look into those as a safety net/supplement.

CS 388 – Week 9 – Update

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I met with Xunfei to improve my design outline for the proposal outline. I completed the outline on the box site. I am trying to find more ways to improve the existing system and see if there is anything else I can add. I found additional papers on QR code security, so I am learning how to avoid thefts with QR codes.

CS388 – Week 8 – Updates

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  • I wrote my project proposal this week and I already had most of the info ready.
  • The sections that I didn’t feel really prepared for were the design and what software/hardware do you need sections.
    • I didn’t have a good idea of what should go into my design and what counts as a component
    • I’m also not sure what kind of software/hardware I need because I’m not completely sure what my own unique approach will be so I don’t know which software/hardware is the best for my approach yet

CS388 – Week 7 – Updates

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  • After reading articles for my literature review, I see that there are a lot of different ways to identify and classify media with misinformation.
    • I will need to do a bit of work to be able to combine all the methods in a way that it will be able to identify and classify media of all different topics and types
  • I’ve also split up my project into smaller more manageable goals to accomplish
    • First Level Basic Goals:
      • Find a large enough dataset that is properly vetted as credible and one that is properly vetted as not credible
        • I want this dataset to be on a variety of topics
      • Find an algorithm/classifier that is accurate 80%-100% of the time on the dataset with a variety of topics
      • Find the key features that are the most reliable for classifying
    • Second Level Goals:
      • Expand the dataset to include pictures where the text was extracted from it
      • Re-test the algorithm/classifier to make sure a drop in accuracy hasn’t occurred
      • Re-test that the key features for articles can apply to the text within a picture
    • Third Level Goals:
      • Expand the dataset to include videos where they are transcribed as accurately as possible.
      • Re-test the algorithm/classifier to make sure a drop in accuracy hasn’t occurred
      • Re-test that the key features for articles can apply to the transcriptions
    • Fourth Level Goals:
      • Create an app/website where you can upload a piece of media and the app will use the algorithm/classifier and tell you if it is credible or not
    • Fifth Level Goal:
      • The app/website will keep a record of things that have been deemed credible or not 
      • Create a browser extension that will take the media from the current tab and check if it is credible
    • Sixth Level Goal:
      • The app/website and browser extension will scan and search for certain keywords set by the user and check new content that’s been uploaded

CS 388 – Week 6 – Updates

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  • I’ve chosen Charlie as my adviser for my project
  • The idea that I picked for my Capstone is my Fake News Detection Idea
    • The basic idea is that I would create a website/application and a website extension that takes mediums as input and will tell the user if it is factual or not

Week 8

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In the past few weeks I have settled on my topic being exploring gender bias on a website using a combination of computational linguistics and quantitative analysis. After writing my literature review on work that explored a variety of sites, I decided this week to focus on a social media site for my project. My next step is to explore more papers focused on analyzing social media and the APIs available for different sites in order to choose which site I want to focus on.

CS 388 – Week 8 – Updates

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I read over 20 papers in the last two weeks to work on my literature review. I met with my advisor and talked to him about my proposal and what could be improved in my literature review. I have found some projects/papers that touch upon what my project aims to be. This will help me find and establish a starting point once I start working on my project. One of the challenges that I am currently facing is finding a dataset. I have come across a few datasets that I can use from kaagle.com.

This is what my initial model looks like (This does not delve deeper into how the neural networks are configured.)

Week 8

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While preparing my diagram for the quiz, I got a much better conceptual understanding of what I want my project to look like. I have also found nice papers this week. I started thinking of a few different image processing techniques that might help with making the image, and picked a computer vision algorithm for my AI (AlexNet) . I also decided on an image ranking algorithm to decide which image to return, a binary comparison. I feel significantly more comfortable about my project now that I have a more concrete idea for my software architecture, even though I am still fuzzy on the implementation details/

CS388 – Week 7 – Update

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This week, I wrapped up my first draft of the literature review. I’ll be meeting with the writing center as I embark on my final draft. I’ve continued working on nailing down my exact idea that I’ll be proposing, as well as looking into the available resources found throughout the papers I’ve read, from algorithms to source codes. I’ve done some basic work on a prototype game, but have been too busy to make much progress yet. I think a good portion of my project may include comparisons between different methods and combinations of methods between the PCG-G (different algorithms, mostly) and music generation (mostly grammar-based versus machine learning).

CS388-Week8-Update

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This week I worked on improving my understanding of the Parks Puzzle and exploring possible proof techniques to show that it is NP complete from two directions. I continued working on the Time Complexity chapters of “Introduction to The Theory of Computation” by Michael Sipser to round out my theoretical understanding, while also solving many instances of the puzzle using an app on my phone. I came onto one general idea for the proof involving only ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ gadgets that I discussed with my advisor, who made some suggestions involving an ‘IFF’ gadget, which I am going to continue working on. I also received feedback on my literature review, which showed some significant problems that I corrected according to the grading rubric.

CS388 – Week 7 – Update

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I’ve finished writing the Literature Review for my idea “Fire Spread Simulation Using Cellular Automata.” After reading the papers for my research, I found a recent paper on this topic which used Machine Learning to solve the drawbacks of previous research. However, I could only find one paper using this technique so I will have to dig deeper to find more related materials. Charlie has suggested that I should categorize the papers based on the input data (terrain, weather condition, etc).

CS388 – Week 6 – Update

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I’ve chosen “Fire Simulation Using Cellular Automata” as my final idea. I have also met with Charlie and decided to meet every week on Monday. I will also meet with Xunfei regularly for my research. Xunfei has suggested that I should look into ArcGIS for the simulation part of the research and also suggested me to talk to Jose as ArcGIS would require funding.

CS388 – Week 7 – Update

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I finalized my proposal to “Applying Voiceprint Recognition Technology to Identity Verification”. The keywords are voice recognition, voiceprint, feature extraction, voice detection, voice verification. The difficulty I might encounter is that there may be background noise in the voice input. If the noise is loud, it may affect the feature extraction and voice recognition. I probably need to explore methods for removing noise. 

CS388 – Week 7 – Update

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I did not add an update to week 6 due to the long weekend but had been working on my literature review, which I finished today. It was very useful to read and re-read certain articles and realise some are useful and some are not. I now have further inspiration with where I can take my idea and am happy with its process. I will be looking in the next week or two to start looking into potential technologies to use for my project, which currently seems to be leaning on public Python libraries.

CS 388 – Week 6 Updates

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I have decided on the project I will be working on as my senior project. I have talked to Charlie about it, discuss my ideas regarding this project. He will be my advisor for the project. I have found 10 more papers and a couple of technologies I might be using. I have also found the datasets of food and recipes I will be using for my project.

My final idea is nutrition management and recipe recommendation system. Users will be able to scan the ingredients they have using the app and the app will recommend recipes using the user input they have put before such as any allergies, or food they don’t want to or cannot consume. The next step of my project will be the calorie estimation of food the user will consume. For this part, I plan to use a texture mapping and scanning for the optimum estimation of calories, and ingredients. For the privacy issues, I plan to have users scan their face on the first use of the app and have an API that will determine whether the current user is the user of this account. I am still thinking about possible ways to detect liquid ingredients and seasonings of the food.

CS 388 – Week 7 – Updates

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I now know what idea I am going to go with, it’s a new idea and is not related to any of my old ideas. My new idea is about using neural networks and natural language processing to predict a better way to write emails or other forms of text in order to better engage the reader. This will be focused on business emails and other forms of business-related texts. I have read a lot of papers on neural networks in the past week and have spent most of my time writing my literature review on it.

CS 388 – Week 6 – Updates

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I’ve finalized the base project idea – I’m going with the one involving music generating AI. Additionally, I’ve officially gotten a proposal adviser, Xunfei, who I’ll be meeting with every Wednesday morning. I’m having some issues in limiting the scope and application of my project, which I’ll be focusing on while I finish up my literature review. In terms of the review, I’ve read 9 of the 10 papers, so I only need to read the last one and put the notes I have into the literature review format.

CS 388 – Week 5 – Updates

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  • The First Responders Tech idea is not panning out in terms of finding any relevant research articles so that may be way to difficult for me to achieve in this time frame
  • The Secure Paperless Voting Machine is working out in terms of finding research articles but upon reading a couple of the them, I’ve realized how complex the issues are. Both the hardware itself and the software need to be more secure. This might be too big of a project.
  • There are a lot of articles and info about my Fake News Detector idea and my Ancient Sites in VR idea so that bodes really well for the feasibility of those two ideas as my official capstone idea

CS 388 – Week 4 – Update

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Updates in Ideas

  • My first “Fake News Detector” idea has remained mostly the same
  • I still have not come up with a more doable idea for the secure paperless voting machines because there’s so much oversight with voting regulations and laws and because there’s an added obstacle of different voting systems/mechanisms.
  • My “911 Tech” has hit a wall in terms of find research articles on it

Updates in Process

  • I talked to Charlie about my three ideas and he suggested a change from 911 specific tech to First Responders/Disaster Relief tech because they actually use open source technology and it might be more feasible to create something and find research on it.
  • I also created a fourth idea in case the First Responders idea doesn’t pan out. My idea was creating very realistic recreations of ancient archaeological sites that you can interact with in VR.

CS388 – Week 6 – Update

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My project is using  Voice Print Recognition technology to check if the voiceprint of the input match the corresponding one in the database. This technology can be used in many identity verification scenes like customer services for bank, door lock, business transaction. The main steps approximately will be: take voice input -> (remove noise -> ) extract voice features -> building models with selected algorithms -> compare voice features -> check if voiceprint match. The possible algorithms might be: VQ, MFCC, DTW. 

CS 388 – Week 7 – Update

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This week I mainly finished my LR and spoke in detail regarding the project idea with Xunfei. It seems I like I know which technology to progress with and eliminate the two I was debating before. I also worked on my basic design outline.

CS388 – Week 6 – Update

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I read more papers on my ideas, met with my advisor to schedule a weekly meeting and discussed a new idea proposed by the company I interned with this summer.

The new idea is a Neural Network driven A.I. that can learn and predict better ways to write emails, marketing campaigns and other forms of communication with the customer.

CS388 – Week 6 – Update

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This week, I finalized who my advisor will be (Charlie). I also decided that I will be working on my security testing idea as my main project. To start this, I spoke with Brendan Post (IT) to discuss my ideas. He was happy to help me and I will be in further discussion with him as I move forward with my proposal.

I also found a couple other papers related to my idea. There was one that had much more lower level detail and actuially described the implementation of their testing. The researchers used Kali Linux to hack into a router through different ways such as SSH, Telnet, and SNMP. There were images that showed the commands they used. It was the first article I found to have a lot of low-level detail.

CS388-Week6-Update

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This week I spent some time finalizing my proposal idea. I discussed the Parks Puzzle with Igor and come to the conclusion that I should work on proving its NP-Completeness for my final project. I had to discuss this idea with my advisor Igor, as well as Charlie and Xunfei before I could finalize this plan. Once I had this confirmed by Xunfei, I put aside my work on the other ideas and started to solely focus on NP-Completeness. My first task is to go through the relevant chapters of “Introduction to The Theory of Computation” by Michael Sipser nad working through problems to clear up my understanding of the problem, which I have started to work on.

Week 6

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I am going with the auto-image processing for food. I have been looking more into the literature, and there is limited literature that deals with making food look better, and they are all relatively recent publications. However, there is literature about how to train machines to assess how aesthetically pleasing images of food are, and also on how to make regular images more aesthetically pleasing.

I will start experimenting with different machine learning algorithms, and also image processing techniques.

CS 388 – Week 6 – Update

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In the past week, I have found papers for the literature review, started working on the paper. I have to talk with my advisor regarding the papers. I also found that the QR code would be a viable option rather than a barcode. QR code can store data horizontally and vertically whereas only vertically in the barcode.

388 – Week 5 – Update

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Most of the articles I have read this week have been quite informative and take the time to explain even the most basic things. However, this has not been true for all the articles that I have read. Some of these articles assume that the reader is already familiar with the terminologies and technologies used in their research or study. Although this helps the reader dig deeper into the topic and come out with a better understanding of the study or research, it also means that doing a 1 or 2 par reading often does not suffice in these cases. Along with reading research papers this week, I also worked on some technical diagrams for my projects this week.

CS388 – Week 5 – Update

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In the past week, I explored different ideas, talked to the faculty, and found more papers to read. I found lots of interesting paper related to my personalized skin care product recommendation idea. I found out that using content-based filtering to recommend products might be helpful, and I could modify the algorithm to have better performance.

Some papers I found useful include:
[1] Recommender System By Grasping Individual Preference and Influence from other users
[2] Recommendations System for Purchase of Cosmetics Using Content- Based Filtering
[3] Item Clustering as An Input for Skin Care Product Recommended System using Content Based Filtering

These papers gave me an idea for what algorithm to use for the recommendation system and how to modify it according to my need. Some of the research was done using five skin types, but I’m thinking to increase it to 16 or more.

Week 5

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I am pretty certain at this point that I want to do something food and image processing related. This evolved out of my first idea (MyOrder), but is not quite the same.

I want to do some sort of auto image processing to make food look better, and provide an interface/API to use the service. I have found a very large dataset that could help with that, albeit unlabeled. There also is research done on labeling food images as good-loking/not-good-lookingm, which I could use to label the food.

I have two other ideas I will consider (as long as I am still allowed to consider). The first is an app that can tell the ingredients of food and/or some kind of shazaam for food that tells what dish a certain dish is. The other is an app that counts calories by looking at pictures of the food you eat.

CS388 – Week 5 – Update

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I haven’t decide my topic yet, but I was reading papers related to my three ideas to gain a deeper understanding on these ideas.

My first idea is an AI tech for voice print recognition. It can be used for avoiding voice spoofing attacks on business, banks (like mobile phone customer service), etc. The main steps for voice recognition is: take vocal input -> identity-feature analysis -> deviating feature selection -> deviating feature comparison -> distance to reference pattern estimate -> check if voice match. The main algorithms for feature extractions are: GMM, JFA, GMM-SVM, etc. On the paper “Vulnerability of speaker verification systems against voice conversion spoofing attacks: The case of telephone speech”, the authors experimented several algorithms and concluded that although JFA has a high inaccuracy but the converted samples with JFA sounds very mechanical so human can easily distinguish. The authors of paper “Voice command recognition system based on MFCC and VQ algorithms” discuss and examine two significant modules: MFCC and DTW. Their results were good. So I will consider use these two modules.

For my second idea which is creating an AI tool for safety driving, the key tech is 3D dynamic facial recognition. I learned that the most Facial recognition tech can be decided into two main parts: facial detection and facial recognition. I can use open sources like opencv and dlib to do facial detection. There are 3 factors i need to care about: detection rate, misdetection rate,  false alarm rate. The authors of the paper “BP4D-Spontaneous: A high-resolution spontaneous 3D dynamic facial expression database” reported a newly developed spontaneous 3D dynamic facial expression database in their paper. I am not sure if I can or should use their new database. Although the paper “Real time facial expression recognition in video using support vector machines” primary discuss detecting emotion from facial expression, it provides some facial recognition tech info for me.

My third idea is creating a smart tool to grade algebra on handwritten homework. The APP takes a photo of the handwritten homework and using OCR tech to extract the texts and grade them. The main tech is just OCR. Although the two papers I read both talk about their own APP and OCR system, I can refer some technologies they used, like matrix matching, fuzzy logic for facial extraction.

CS388 – Week 5 – Update

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This week I researched deeper into my three ideas, and now have developed preferences and better understandings of them. Specifically, I believe the natural language processing idea where I will create summaries of subjects in PDF’s seems to not only be the most interesting to me, but the most achievable and most understandable of the ideas. It requires a lot more CS than the other two, which I like. The others, especially the math proof assistant idea, seem like they will contain much more design choices and therefore will distract from the CS side of it. I did make more progress though on finding approaches to the math notes to LaTeX idea, as there is a decent amount of research in symbol recognition, however handwritten was harder to find as opposed to digitally drawn with electric pens. The proof assistant idea is the hardest to research but I am making slow steady progress in this field.

CSS388 – Week 5 – Sources

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In the past two weeks, I’ve read through a total of 12 sources, four for each idea, and created annotated bibliographies based on them. While some of these papers are more useful than others, each has been helpful in one way or another – and, indeed, I’ve been able to find more papers to look into further as I modify my ideas based off of both peer feedback and my own research. Some papers have given me actual algorithms to either implement or look at as a building block for my own- others have shown me, for example, how much one of my ideas (copyright detection) is already extensively researched, and pointed me towards new directions in which I could modify the project to make it something original.

CS388 – Week 5 – Update

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I spoke with Charlie this past week and we both decided that my first idea is my best one. So, I decided this was the one I was going to pursue my penetration testing idea and found 6 more articles for this.

A couple of the articles I found were about professors having/teaching a first-time hacking course. It was really cool to see the different designs of the classes. There was a general theme of keeping a subset of computers in a controlled environment and then allowing the students to work from there. One article included a complete description of their syllabus and the assignments of the course. This was helpful as it gave me an idea as to what software was being used in these courses.

CS388 – Week 5 – Update

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For my first idea, I have been researching methods and corner and shape detection that I might be able to apply to my implementation. I found a very relevant paper about shape detection using VLI and NIR imagery from drones, which, while new and not especially well cited, is very closely related to what I want to do, and I think it will provide a good base for my project.

For my second idea, I have been researching different classification methods for audio. Both of the papers I found this week use a metric called Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients, in both KNN and DNN algorithms. I think, having read over these papers, I will continue to search more specifically for research related to this concept.

For my final idea, I have found two papers that discuss the obfuscation and user controls necessary to make geo-location safe, while still preserving its usefulness. One of these papers also discusses a relevance based weighting system which I think will be a good resource for my project.

CS388-Week5-Update

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I found a very promising paper called “an introduction to the conjugate gradient method without the agonizing pain” and started working through it. I have only gotten through the first 10 pages or so, but it is helping me think of narrower research questions. I have also skimmed through a fair number of NP-completeness reductions, and have a much better idea about the background work I will need to do to be able to work on the Parks Puzzle problem. Some especially strange and interesting reductions I have come across are a reduction of SAT to minesweeper and a reduction of the Hamiltonian cycle problem for cubic graphs to the zen garden puzzle, which use boolean ‘gadgets’ and nodes and edges that can be combined to create instances of the game.

CS388-Week5-Update

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Here are my comments for the papers I read this week.

[1] Forest fires spread modeling using cellular automata approach.

They described a method using cellular automata to simulate how fire spread over an area of island Brac in Croatia. The paper had a great overview of Classification of forest fire models, explanation of cellular automata, well-known Neighborhood Templates, and how Landscapes can be represented as cellular automata. They mentioned that only vegetation characteristics and wind conditions were taken into account as input parameters. I might include more input data if I use this model.

[2] Computer vision system for fire detection and report using UAVs Special Issue for Submission.

The main concerns of the paper was how to detect fire using computer vision techniques as well as hardware systems. The paper serves as an explanation to their system rather than how their system is compared to other fire detection models. I might use this pa- per for my research if I want to establish a communication system later on.

[3] Using cellular automata to simulate wildfire propagation and to assist in fire management.

Unlike the cellular automaton mentioned in the other two papers, this one did not take into consideration the state of stress of vegetation and the meteorological condition. If it possible, I would like to develop a system that can output different simulations based on different cellular automata models based the ones in this paper and in the other two mentioned above.

[4]  An FPGA processor for modeling wildfire spreading.

The model was designed to not require too much computational resources and computational power so that it could describe fire behavior in real time. I might use this model if I want to design my simulation model in real time.

[5]  A Cellular Automata model for fire spreading prediction.

The result was a model of cells that evolve with given transition rules. This model forms the basic foundation my research. I can implement a similar model with these transition rules.

[6] Forest fire spread simulating model using cellular automaton with extreme learning machine Extracting Traffic Events and Human Mobility Patterns in Geosocial Media Data for Assessing Real-time Road Traffic View project Understanding human activity pattern.

They mentioned that the accuracy of this model was between 58.45 and 82.08%. I do not think a simulation accuracy of 58.45% is a reliable. This research also used cellular automaton to pre- dict fire propagation, which is similar to the paper ”Forest fire spread simulation algorithm based on cellular automata.”

CS 388 – Week 4 – Update

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For this week I tried to narrow down my research scope; I talked with Dave about my ideas, and where I might begin with researching each of them. I got some good ideas about previous work and what might work well to back up my project ideas, and then used that information to pick what I think were the six more relevant papers.

CS 388 – Week 4 – Update

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(I was attending a CS conference in California this week so my post is late.) I have read some papers related to my 3 topics. I gained a clear understanding of the technologies I need for my three topics. I also explored the new ideas from Xunfei’s feedback. There are already available APPs that can scan printed music sheet and play the music. Most of them are not free. I only found two free APPs called PlayScore2 and iSeeNotes. PlayScore2 works much better than iSeeNotes. I tested the APP with my printed music sheet, and the result was not as good as I thought. It couldn’t read all the music notes. If I am going on this topic, my goal will be enhancing the accuracy. But scanning and reading hand written music sheet would be very challenging. Even I cannot read those old music sheets very well.

CS 388 – Week 5 – Update

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In the past week, I read 3 more papers for each idea. I spoke to the faculty regarding the 3 ideas to decide which one is feasible for the final project. Some papers I found are listed below. I will work on the bib assign 2 based on the feedback on assign 1.

News Idea

  • A. S. Das, M. Datar, A. Garg, and S. Rajaram, “Google news personalization:scalable online collaborative filtering,” in Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web. ACM, 2007, pp.271–280.
  • M. Tavakolifard, J. A. Gulla, K. C. Almeroth, J. E. Ingvaldesn, G. Nygreen, and E. Berg, “Tailored news in the palm of your hand: a multiperspective transparent approach to news recommendation,” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on World Wide Web. ACM, 2013, pp. 305–308.

NBA Idea

  • J. Kahn, “Neural network prediction of nfl football games,” May 2003,
  • J. Shin and R. Gasparyan, “A novel way to soccer match prediction, May 2014.

Library Idea

  • R. Dinesh, S. A. Pravin, M. Aravindhan, and D. Rajeswari, “Library access system smartphone application using android,” International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 142–149, 2015.
  • G. McCarthy and S. Wilson, “Isbn and qr barcode scanning mobile app or libraries,” Code4Lib Journal, no. 13, 2011.

CS 388 – Week 4 – Update

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I did a 2 pass reading of all the sources that I had collected over the last two weeks. I realized that some of the things I had in mind already exist. I’m still researching about pre-existing technologies/frameworks that could help me set up a reference point to build upon as I work on my project.

Week 4

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After talking to Igor, I realized I could incorporate a food recommendation system to my food ordering app. After thinking some more, I realized the food recommender might actually be more interesting than the food ordering system.

488 week 4

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Started the draft of my outline and abstract. Continued working with the “jigsaw” idea/method ran into a hiccup with placing content while moving left and up, this will require a code segment to further regulate the placement based on there the anchor point is.

CS388 – Week 4 – Update

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For this week, I started reading more into the papers that I found initially interesting for my ideas. I found some to be less relevant than others, but still drew some nice views that may be helpful later to shape my ideas. I want to perhaps find some replacement papers, and also talk to a CS professor this week about idea refinement.

CS388- Week4- Update

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For this week, I created my annotated bibliographies for 2 papers of each of my 3 ideas. I also spoke with Charlie and refined 2 of 3 ideas. For my penetration testing idea, instead of making the project solely on the technical side, I want to basically have three phases of this project- technical, social, and physical. I plan to speak w/ Brendan Post in ITS and see how I could implement this at Earlham. I’d plan to publish the results of this testing to where other schools could do something similar.

In regards to the bibliography, one of my ideas is tracking Digital Footprints of users and I found a paper where the researchers created their own piece of software that was a blend of a password manager and an auditing service. I thought of being able to do something similar and create my own piece of software but with additional features.

CS 388 – Week 4 – Update

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This week, I did a first pass reading for a total of 6 papers and visited the writing center for the annotated bibliography. Some of them turned out to be less relevant to the topic than they had appeared, but they were mostly useful and interesting. For one of my journals, the authors introduced the eigen-values and associated them with our facial features which I thought was fascinating. A lot of the methods that I thought were either subjective or determined by consensus actually involved detailed algorithms and logical processes. I look forward to reading them more in depth.

CS 388 – Week 4 – Update

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Below are the papers I read for each idea this week. I also read more papers for my third idea, “Fire Spread Simulation” and found the cellular automata algorithm mentioned in one of the papers quite interesting. The basic idea behind the model is to break down the images of the forest fire into different cells and apply the same algorithms onto each cell, similar to divide and conquer. The authors have also developed an improved algorithm based on this model to not only predict how fire spreads but also trace the source of fire.

Improve Fire Identification Mapping and Monitoring Algorithm (FIMMA) 
[1]  Z. Li, W. Jiang, F. Wang, Q. Meng, X. Zheng, and B. Liu, “GIS based dynamic modeling of fire spread with heterogeneous cellular automation model and standardized emergency management protocol,” Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on the Use of GIS in Emergency Management, EM-GIS 2017, 2017.
[2]  X. Xie, J. Wang, H. Qin, and X. Cheng, “The simulation and research of fire spread situation based on osg,” ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, pp. 156–159, 2019.

Fire Detection Using A Combination of Different Image Analysis Techniques

[1]  L. Giglio, W. Schroeder, and C. O. Justice, “The collection 6 MODIS active fire detection algorithm and fire products,” Remote Sensing of Environment, vol. 178, pp. 31–41, jun 2016.
[2]  Y. Long and X. Hu, “Spatial partition-based particle filtering for data assimilation inwildfire spread simulation,” ACM Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems, vol. 3, no. 2, aug 2017.

Fire Spread Simulation 
[1]  X. Rui, S. Hui, X. Yu, B. Wu, and G. Zhang, “Forest fire spread simulation algorithm based on cellular automata,” Natural Hazards, vol. 91, no. 1, pp. 309–319, 2018. 
[2]  S. K. Singh and S. Kanga, “Forest Fire Simulation Modeling using Remote Sensing & GIS,” International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, vol. 8, no. 5. [Online]. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325848449 

CS388 – Week 4 – Update

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This week, I created annotated bibliographies for papers pertaining to each of my three ideas. I also further considered the possibilities for updating my project ideas – I’m likely to not go with the copyright detection idea. If I go with the visualization of music idea, I’m likely to turn it on its head and deal with the audiation of visual art. I’m still fairly content with the rhythm game idea as it is in its current state.

CSS 388 – Week 3 – Updates

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This week, I browsed through chiefly ACM and Google Scholar to find five papers on each of my topics. I additionally met with Charlie to go through my three ideas, getting some helpful insights about my projects and what is being looked for in the capstone project, as well as generating some ideas based off of the original three. The Copyright Detection idea in particular is likely to be cut – it’s a field already rich with research and work done, making it harder to come up with something better or wholly original.

CS 388 – Week 3 – Update

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I researched and made a list of papers that I will read in the upcoming week. Here is the list of papers, that I plan to read:

Topic 1 Name: 3d Printer – A new Technique

Paper List:

(1)  Innovations in 3D printing: a 3D overview from optics to organs (2013) - Journal: British Journal of Ophthalmology - 

Journal: British Journal of Ophthalmology – 

Authors: Carl Schubert, Mark C van Langeveld, Larry A Donoso

(2) Development of a 3D printer using scanning projection stereolithography (2015) - 

Publication: Scientific Reports 2015

Authors: Michael P. Lee, Geoffrey J. T. Cooper, Trevor Hinkley, Graham M. Gibson, Miles J. Padgett & Leroy Cronin

(3) Printing 3D microfluidic chips with a 3D sugar printer (2015) - 

Publication: Microfluidics and Nanofluidics 

Authors: Yong He, Jing Jiang, Qiu Jian, Zhong Fu

(4) A Layered Fabric 3D Printer for Soft Interactive Objects (2015) - 

Conference: 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 

Authors: Huaishu Peng, Jennifer Mankoff, Scott E. Hudson, James McCann

(5) Recent advances in 3D printing of biomaterials (2015) - 

Journal: Journal of Biological Engineering

Authors: Helena N Chia, Benjamin M Wu 


Topic 2 Name: 3d – Drone Mapping

Paper List:

(1) Automatic wireless drone charging station creating essential environment for continuous drone operation (2016) - 

Conference: International Conference on Control, Automation and Information Sciences (ICCAIS) 

Authors: Chung Hoon Choi, Hyeon Jun Jang, Seong Gyu Lim, Hyun Chul Lim, Sung Ho Cho, Igor Gaponov

(2) INTEGRATED THREE-DIMENSIONAL LASER SCANNING AND AUTONOMOUS DRONE SURFACE (2013) - 

Conference: 2013 ICS Proceedings 

Authors: D. A. McFarlane, M. Buchroithner, J. Lundberg, C. Petters, W. Roberts, G. Van Rentergen

(3) Submodular Trajectory Optimization for Aerial 3D Scanning (2017) - 

Conference: The IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) 

Authors: Mike Roberts, Debadeepta Dey, Anh Truong, Sudipta Sinha, Shital Shah, Ashish Kapoor, Pat Hanrahan, Neel Joshi

(4) Google Street View: Capturing the World at Street Level (2010) - 

Journal:  Computer ( Volume: 43 , Issue: 6 , June 2010 )

Authors: Dragomir Anguelov, Carole Dulong, Daniel Filip, Christian Frueh, Stéphane Lafon, Richard Lyon 

(5) Integrating Sensor and Motion Models to Localize an Autonomous AR.Drone (2011) - 

Journal: International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles 

Authors: Nick Dijkshoorn, Arnoud Visser


Topic 3 Name: AI-NLP multi platform application builder 

Paper List:

(1) A Primer on Neural Network Modelsfor Natural Language Processing (2016) - 

Journal: Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research

Authors: Yoav Goldberg

(2) Natural Language Assistant: A Dialog System for Online Product Recommendation (2015) - 

Publication: AI Magazine

Authors: Joyce Chai, Veronika Horvath, Nicolas Nicolov, Margo Stys, Nanda Kambhatla, Wlodek Zadrozny, Prem Melville

(3) Web-based models for natural language processing (2005) - 

Journal: ACM Transactions on Speech and Language Processing (TSLP) 

Authors: Mirella Lapata, Frank Keller

(4) Web 2.0-Based Crowdsourcing for High-Quality Gold Standard Development in Clinical Natural Language Processing (2013) - 

Publication: J Med Internet Res

Authors: Haijun Zhai, Todd Lingren, Louise Deleger, Qi Li, Megan Kaiser, Laura Stoutenborough, Imre Solti 

(5) The impact of cross-platform development approaches for mobile applications from the user's perspective (2016) - 

Conference – Proceedings of the International Workshop on App Market Analytics

Authors: Iván Tactuk Mercado, Nuthan Munaiah, Andrew Meneely

CS 388 – Week 3 – Updates

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Summary of Updates:

This week I spent a lot of time trying to refine my last two ideas to make it more suitable for a capstone and tried finding enough research articles about all three ideas. I struggled with finding related articles to my second idea so I came up with a fourth idea that was easy to research. Below I’ll put all four of my ideas that I have right now.

First Idea: Automatically Detecting Fake News

  • Create a database of media of different opinions that are credible with truthful information.
  • Using Machine Learning, find/develop an algorithm that when given a medium could accurately determine whether it is credible and truthful.
  • Create an app/website/browser extension as a user interface where you can manually input the medium you want to check, or follow certain keywords and be alerted when new credible content with those keywords has been created, or tell you when a medium you are currently looking at is not credible and link you to credible sources of both opinions.

Second Idea: First Responder’s Tech

  • Disaster relief first responders, like 911 operators, would benefit from a tech upgrade as well and they actually use open source software.
  • I would like to set up a text system for those responders because you can handle more texts at once than you can calls and sometimes it’s easier to text for help.
    • With texts, it would also be easier to automatically send location data to the responders
  • I would like to create a technology that uses the phone’s barometric pressure sensor and gps location tech to be able to tell first responders exactly where and what floor a person is on.

Third Idea: Secure Paperless Voting Machines

  • The paperless voting machines that we have at this very moment have been proven to have many flaws and vulnerabilities and are easy to hack into. Given the interference of the Russian in the last presidential election, this is extremely concerning.
  • I would like to create a paperless voting method that would allow people unable to securely cast their ballot and have the capabilities to have a secure virtual caucus for those unable to make it to the physical location.
    • I would make sure all data is encrypted to the highest standards we have at the moment and that all vulnerabilities noted in our current methods and efforts are addressed.

Fourth Idea: Virtual Recreation of Ancient Sites

  • world in an immersive environment without having to damage the sites and spend money building on top of the actual ancient stones and what not
  • People should be able to walk into places and into rooms
  • People should be able to hear sounds as well
  • Perhaps incorporate smell???
  • People should be able to walk up stairs!
  • There should be an interactive element that will give you facts and info about a specific thing that you touched or selected
  • This could be used as an educational tool in classes and could be used by museums so that they could give back the original pieces and works to the countries that can safely house them and use the VR with recreations

CS388 – Week 4 – Update

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I visited the writing center for bibliography help and to sort out the papers. I was able to remove some irrelevant papers and finish up my assignment. The library management idea seems to be my project idea and I am exploring similar systems to get some help.

CS388-Week3-Updates

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I am still exploring my new ideas.

Idea 1 Title: AI Assistant for Safety Driving

Description: My idea is to use facial recognition to detect fatigue driving or dangerous driving. A small camera will be placed in front of the driver and the AI Assistant will be a mobile phone APP. For fatigue driving, the camera detects behaviors like closing eyes for long time, yarning, frequently rubbing eyes with hand, etc. For other dangerous driving behaviors, the camera can detect behaviors like playing mobile phone, turning back to chat, smoking, etc. After detecting dangerous driving behaviors, the APP will do a series of operations according to the dangerous behavior: giving an alarm, play refresh songs, report the location of the nearest rest stop. Actually there are already research and real products available now, but most of them are commercialized. They are expensive and big-sized. What makes my idea different is that I am going to develop it as a cheap and handy daily life tool. And I probably can enhance the accuracy of detection under dark light or special environment. The main tech is facial recognition and there are many open sources online. 

Idea 2 Title: Voice Print Recognition Identifier 

Description: Facial recognition is very popular recently, but many people do not notice voice print recognition. VPR is cheaper and more convenient because it only needs one microphone. Voice can tell many information like age, gender, emotion, environment, and etc. Wearing glasses or makeup might affect the performance of facial recognition, but a mature human being’s voice is stable. There are already research and real application on voice print recognition. For example, WeChat user uses voice recognition to log in. But I can innovate my idea on the application, for example, combine it with bank customer service. When a user steals other’s password and calls Chase to do money transaction, the VPR can detect if the voiceprint matches the bank account owner. Or use it to fight crime, home robots, etc. The VPR tech is already exist. I need to innovate from other aspects. But the two primary usages are: speaker identification or speaker verification. Voice print is a spectrogram of voice, forming from wavelength, frequency, intensity and other hundreds of characteristics. I can differentiate people from differences in purity of voice, resonance ways, average pitch characteristic, voice range. 

The popular used spectrogram characteristics are: MFCC, PLP, FBank, D-vector by Google, Deep feature, Bottleneck feature, Tandem feature. Existing models: GMM-UBM, JFA, GMM-UBM i-vector, DNN i-vector, Supervised-UBM i-vector. Scoring algorithm: SVM, PLDA, LDA, Cosine Distance. 

(But i don’t know if the scope is too big)

Idea 3 Title: Using OCR to grade hand-written homework

Description: Take a picture of the hand-written homework and use OCR tech to extract the content. (OCR is a technology converting printed text into editable text.) Then check if the algebra calculation is correct. Mark the correctness in the picture near the problem. There are already APP like that available online. But it only checks for algebra calculation, and it is not that accurate. It requires good hand-writing. I can expand my project to enhance the OCR tech, or make it check for simple English homework as well. Especially some parents in non english speaking countries cannot speak english to help their children. And probably I can expand the idea to a mobile phone APP that can summarize and analyze the grades data: collect incorrect problems, analyze which category did incorrectly the most, and etc. 

488 week 3

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This week I tackled simple branching. I have gotten it to the point where it is fully functional but limited in content. At some point during the process, the algorithm will place a specified branch segment, It will then create the lower branch using only chunks that are specified to be either flat or down. It places a certain number of chunks then a cap chunk to signify that the branch has completed. From here the algorithm works on the top branch, placing only rise and flat chunks, and eventually ending with the portal.  Thought about a “jigsaw” method where the algorithm keeps track of overall outline of placed chunks and after branching occurs checks before the placement of chunks.

Week 3

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I have read some literature on all three of my ideas, and was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a lot of academic research potential in the ideas that I thought were a little dry in research, which was my main concern with my ideas. The most exciting idea I got was adding a food recommendation system for my food ordering app, where the user can get either a healthy or a tasty recommendation depending on their preferences.

For my second idea, I realized I need to research the intersection of human-computer interaction and pedagogy.

For my third idea, there is a lot to research about indexing a large number of text documents, where the corpora grows, and there is a space constraint. I can also look into text summarization techniques and metadata extraction from the documents.

CS388-Week3-Updates

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Idea #1
Name of Your Project Computational complexity of the ‘Park Puzzle’
What research topic/question your project is going to address? The Park Puzzle is a game that involves splitting a n*n grid into different colored continuous ‘parks’. A solution to a park puzzle involves marking the position of a tree in each park such that no two trees share a row or a column. The research topic involves exploring various algorithms for solving the park puzzle, and determining some bounds on the computational complexity of the puzzle. The most involved version of this project could be to prove those bounds. (The initial, intuitive hypothesis is that the park puzzle cannot be solved in polynomial time)
Update: I am looking into the proofs of NP-completeness of other pencil puzzle problems to gain an understanding of the techniques involved in proving such complexity bounds.

Idea #3
Name of Your Project
Fast Integer multiplication
What research topic/question your project is going to address? There have been significant improvements in algorithms for fast multiplication of integers within the last decade (see Fast integer Multiplication by Anandya et al), approaching O(nlogn), which use modular arithmetic and computation on p-adics  The research project would be to explore the theory behind these algorithms and verify their results.
Update: I am looking into the minimal mathematical background required to make sense of how the algorithms work, without necessarily getting into all of the details.

Idea#3 Iterative solvers for systems of Linear Equations
Description Large and sparse systems of linear equations appear in the solution to some partial differential equations by finite difference methods, and in general many day-to-day problem areas such as in engineering and scientific computing. As such the theory of developing methods for solving such large systems, and proving their correctness is an area of active research. in this project I would like to test the effectiveness of various iterative methods at finding solutions to systems linear equations with various characteristics by taking an experimental approach.
Update: no update for this idea

CS388 – Week 3 – Update

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Idea: Breakdown of Mathematical Proofs Using Natural Language Processing

I wish to use natural language processing to break down a bachelor-level mathematical proof into the components that make up a proof (e.g. given knowledge, statements, calculations). This will be shown in a GUI so that the user can clearly see the build-up of their proof. Without constraints of time, some more technologies could be applied (machine learning) to give feedback to the user of the strength of their proof.

Update:

No update to this idea.

Character Description Generation from Novels

I want to use natural language processing to allow a user to enter a character’s name (fictional or non-fictional) in whatever PDF they please, and have the algorithm generate a list of facts/short descriptive paragraph about the character. This could be useful when doing novel summaries, studying history and remembering the roles of persons, etc.

Update:

This idea is new and came after a discussion with Charlie that my previous ideas were not too interesting ideas (ie. not much room for expansion, not much coding).

Photo to LaTex Generation

This idea came while looking over some of my math notes and wanting to digitalize them. After looking online, the technology does not seem to be there, with some very primitive attempts. I would like to attempt myself at allowing someone to digitalize their math notes in LaTex form. It would require symbolic and natural language processing, potentially machine learning upon more investigation.

Update:

This is also a new idea, again discussed with Charlie after doubts about the previous idea.

CS388- Week3- Update

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For this week, I read the papers on Moodle, met with Charlie to discuss my ideas, and read papers related to them. Below are some updates for each topic.

Idea 1 Title: Improve Fire Identification Mapping and Monitoring Algorithm (FIMMA)

Description: Enhance FIMMA to reduce the number of false-positive results and apply the algorithm to detect fire in urban areas.

Update: This algorithm has been developed for the past 20 years by NASA. It has gone through many modifications and enhancements, and is currently producing quite accurate results. The main reason why it cannot detect fire instantly is because of the time the satellites take to circle the Earth.

Idea 2 Title: Fire Detection Using A Combination of Different Image Analysis Techniques.

Description: The research aims to detect fire by analyzing different attributes (heat, temperature of the surrounding area, temperature and color of the smoke) at different ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum (UV, visible, and infrared).

Update: There have been numerous unmanned vehicles being developed to take images of a fire scene at different electromagnetic spectrum. A drawback of detecting fire using image analysis might potentially lie with the hardware rather than the analysis techniques. For example, the resolution of the images and the hardware of the camera are usually affected when the vehicles try to take photos too close to the fire source.

Idea 3 Title: Real-time Fire Tracking System.

Description: The research aims to create a system that can provide current data for active fire as well as calculate the direction it is moving. The system can combine the data from Google Earth and NASA’s Fire Map to provide the current condition of the fire. It will also need real-time data of a given location, particularly weather (wind, humidity) and local condition (population, buildings) in order to make predictions. 

Update: Since last week, I have been focusing on this idea more than the other two. What I am planning to do is to build a system that can produce a simulation of how an active fire spreads in a specific fire situation, particularly in forest fire. Many factors will have to be considered to build this simulation, especially data about the surrounding environment, weather, and terrain, etc. I plan to use archived data so that I can compare my predictive result to the actual fire spread direction.

CS388 – Week 3 – Update

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I further developed my ideas and added more details to each of them. Then I talked to Xunfei about modifications and got more suggestions from her. We looked through the research paper I found on Google Scholars together and searched for related articles. After the meeting, I went back to find some more articles. I think I now know what to choose as my final idea.

CS388 – Week 3 – Update

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As suggested by Charlie, I chose a new direction for my third idea:
Name of Your Project? Geosocial Weight Algorithm
What research topic/question your project is going to address? Lots of social networks, including, for example, one that I created with my classmates last year, use geolocation services to sort data. Our social network uses location to not only sort and tag data, but to filter what is available to the user. 
What technology will be used in your project? Location APIs, React Native (assuming that I build on to the pre-existing app we have built), Geosocial algorithms.
What software and hardware will be needed for your project? Requirements might include access to Apple devices for development and testing, such as a mac/macbook (could use one in hopper, or another lab), and some version of iPhone for testing, if making a mobile app is the most effective.
How are you planning to implement?  Assuming I continue to work on the same basic network that we already began to set up, my implementation would continue in react native. We already have the basic framework of a social networking app, but I think it would be a good foundation on which to apply my ideas for geosocial algorithms
How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? My main idea for this is to create an algorithm which can efficiently update the viewable radius of a post based on the feedback from other users in the area. This algorithm would have to take many things into account, such as the population density, user density, post density, and how much positive and negative feedback should affect the geographic radius of each post.
What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? Programming in react-native can be a bit of a challenge. This algorithm could be very complex, so it might get tricky to work with.

After updating my ideas, I picked out 5-7 articles for each of my ideas, quickly finding an abundance of relevant material. I also set up a meeting at the writing center this weekend to discuss how to get started writing, and I will start reading into the articles I found soon. I plan to try and meet with Charlie again soon to discuss my strategy moving forward, and to talk about the quality of the sources I aquired this week.

CS388- Week3- Update

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For this week, I updated my 3 proposal ideas and met with Charlie to review and seek his advice. Prior to this meeting, I found my 5 articles for each and used these discuss potential problems if each idea was used.

Post meeting w/ Charlie, I read a little deeper into the articles and now have a better idea on which proposal I may want to further investigate. Before I ead into the articles, I read the two PDF’s on Moodle about reading research papers and tried to implement this into my first and second pass of each article.

CS388 – Week 3 – Update

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I spoke with Xunfei regarding the three ideas. Currently, I am reading through similar papers and figuring out which idea I will finalize. I have selected the papers for the next assignment and going through the first pass for the bibliography.

CS 388 – Week 2 (3 Ideas)

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  1. My first idea is to create an application that scans the picture of foods and let users know what ingredients are in the dish. I am still deciding whether I want my app to be used as a diet and nutrition guide or aid for visually impaired people. This application will be available in multiple languages (at least 3). Xunfei had provided me more questions to explore as feedback. I will integrate computer vision and natural language processing in this project.
  2. My second idea is a program that detects prank calls made to 911 or other emergency centers. I will focus on details of the caller’s speech such as the urgency, intonations, breathing, etc. as well as background noises like whether the background is too quiet or too loud or is there any footsteps, etc.
  3. My third idea is to generate speech from a user’s hand gestures in several languages. I plan to piggyback an already existing and working program that translates hand gestures to speech. My main focus will be on improving that program and working to the accuracy of language translations.

488 week 2

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Thought a lot about how I am going to handle simple branching, currently looking into a version that would just at some point split the level and after the split, here will be a branch that only goes right and down and one that goes right and up. very rudimentary but it would be a building block.

Week 2

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Idea 1

My first idea stays the same, making an online food ordering system that works over wifi. I need to think about how to differentiate my product, what is new with this, and how to test it.

Idea 2

A web platform aimed at helping people learn/practice math. Using a template, it would generate math questions, and allow people to try to solve them. It would also provide step by step solutions for people. This would be especially applicable to calculus. There are APIs that help with this, at least some open source.

Idea 3

A time tracker app for TAs, who are currently logging in their hours on a Google spreadsheet. This site could allow TAs to clock-in and clock-out, take attendance, and also show them how much they worked in each pay period. The app would also update the currently existing Google sheet with the new logs. This can also be packaged in a way that others can also use it.

CS388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

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Idea 1

  • Name of Your Project? Corner Finder AI
  • What research topic/question your project is going to address? Can deep learning and/or neural networks be used over a set of imagery to identify rectilinear structures which might be undetectable to the human eye (in other words, structures that are buried, or very obfuscated).
  • What technology will be used in your project? Drones and drone imagery, as well as machine learning concepts like deep learning with training data and neural networks.
  • What software and hardware will be needed for your project? I would like to make this project so that it can be used with the data the IFS trip collected from Iceland this summer. This also gives me an advantage with testing/learning data, as we created quite a stockpile of the kind of drone imagery I would like to analyse. 
  • How are you planning to implement? I plan to use python, or another language to create the software for this, possibly with support from some libraries (depending on language).
  • How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? From my first hand experience and preliminary research, it seems that most image analysis like this is done through direct processing of data, rather than by training an AI. The scripts we have used are mostly filtering the data that is there, rather than analyzing patterns. I think that this different approach might help us find things we wouldn’t find otherwise.
  • What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? The main difficulty will likely be the complicated nature of this kind of software. I have a medium level of experience with AI concepts, but something at this level will undoubtedly get murky with details eventually.

Idea 2

  • Name of Your Project? Scatter Box
  • What research topic/question your project is going to address? Is there an analysis based solution for organizing sounds based on their parameters? Can it be applied to music creation / production / organization? Can it be applied to scientific data? Can it be made efficient enough to be practical? Can it be abstracted to be broader; perform the same analysis over images, or text. In many ways, what I want this to be is a user-friendly, abstract K-nearest-neighbor classifier.
  • What technology will be used in your project? Audio Manipulation algorithms, maybe other analysis algorithms for things other than audio (pictures, text), 3D data plotting.
  • What software and hardware will be needed for your project? Libraries that include processing ability like Numpy and Pyaudio, 3d mesh plot output (matplotlib has a simple version of this).
  • How are you planning to implement?  I plan to use python, or another language to create the software for this, possibly with support from some libraries (depending on language).
  • How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? There are many software options for organizing and evaluating sounds. What makes this project stand out is the idea of visualizing the data in terms of the actual parameters of the audio. These parameters could be anything from audio length, to pitch or frequency, and more could be added throughout the course of the project, as testing made it clearer which were the most beneficial to the purpose of the project.
  • What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? There could be problems with processing efficiency, as well as with the actual output of the program. I haven’t worked much with programming visuals, let alone 3d visuals.

Idea 3

  • Name of Your Project? Earlham CS Info Tool / Resource Concatenation Tool
  • What research topic/question your project is going to address? The CS department at Earlham has a huge range of resources available to students through the cs.earlham.edu website. Many of these resources, however, are somewhat buried. Taking myself for example, I didn’t find out about some of the available resources, such as the CS wiki, until after I was a Junior CS major. 
  • What technology will be used in your project? Android Development Environment,Cross-platform Development Environment (Maybe React Native), Web Environment (Javascript, Node, React), Crawl and catalog specific websites for information.
  • What software and hardware will be needed for your project? Requirements might include access to Apple devices for development and testing, such as a mac/MacBook (could use one in hopper, or another lab), and some version of iPhone for testing if making a mobile app is the most effective.
  • How are you planning to implement?  I plan to use a platform-agnostic framework, such as React Native, to provide as broad of support as possible to students. 
  • How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? All the information to provide students with the help they need is there, but it needs to be connected in a simple, front-facing user interface. My project would provide a single, unified way to search the information made available to students in CS. The project would (in theory) be able to search all the resources, including the CS website, as well as the CS wiki, portfolio page, and any other resources. From a single search bar, the app would be able to return a list, sorted by relevance or most recent, of all the matching information from each one of these resources. My side goal for this project is to create a more abstract version of the concept, capable of applying the same combined search to a user-defined set of web pages and resources. 
  • What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? I have little experience with crawling web pages for data, which could be a big part of the implementation of the project.

CS388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

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  1. My first idea stays the same. Some items Xunfei helped me consider is what questions administrators would be prompted to answer, and how to moderate student answers for reliability.
  2. My second idea is to build a simulation of Earlham’s energy usage. I would research energy simulations and if visualizations of energy usage have been created. My visualization would show how adding renewable energy sources would affect the power grid. It may also show how improving the energy efficiency of certain buildings would save energy on campus.
  3. My third idea is to research climate simulations. My research would be focused on how simulations have changed over time, and the ways in which they could be made more accessible to the wider public. Visualizations of climate simulations may be a useful tool for the media and to inform policy makers.

CS388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

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Idea 1: Joseph Moore Museum Guided Tour

This project is an attempt at expanding the accessibility of the Joseph Moore Museum, especially to patrons whose first language is not English. The project is to create an app which will scan QR codes beside a museum exhibit, and provide information on that exhibit in the preferred language of the user. Audio narration for each language would extend accessibility even further. Additionally, exhibit traffic could be obtained by counting the QR scans for each exhibit, allow for a degree of analytics. To make the project fit the bill for a capstone, it would be necessary to plan from the beginning with generalization in mind. Rather than build specifically for JMM, I would build such that any museum could plug in their data and utilize it.

Technology

This project will utilize QR scanning technology, Unity for mobile app development, as well as web hosting to offload the exhibit information and audio files from the mobile device. 

Software

This project will require a mobile development suite, most likely Unity given I have some familiarity with it. I will also need to host a web server for the files related to each exhibit (text description for each language selection, audio files, photos, etc). The app will utilize a modern smartphone with a camera of decent resolution, and internet connectivity.

Implementation

Before I begin, I will begin a conversation with the museum director about the project. Since my project will be associated with an established organization, it is important that the project goals align with the organization’s vision. I will also begin searching for people who would be interested in translating exhibit info from English to various languages such as Hindi, Spanish, and Japanese. Meanwhile, I will begin working on a prototype app with the goal being to successfully scans QR codes and displays different data based on the QR code scanned. After I have a working prototype, I will begin work on setting up a web server to host the exhibit information, and linking that to the app. Towards the end I will polish up the UI experience.

Novelty

My project will be providing new features and technology to the Joseph Moore Museum in order to expand its capacities for language accessibility. 

Potential Issues/Difficulties

One of the most glaring issues with this project is scope. My unfamiliarity with web hosting combined with limited experience with mobile app design means making an accurate timeline will be quite difficult. Building a polished mobile app is time-consuming, and might not fit within the time-frame of the project. 

JMM has a lot of exhibits, which means there is a lot of text to be translated and audio to be recorded. Finding people up to the task of translating and recording could prove to be quite difficult. 

One last issue that has been brought to my attention is accessibility with respect to patrons who aren’t comfortable downloading apps. The most widely accessible version of this project is a website with pages for each exhibit directed to by QR codes. The shift of the project then becomes about managing the collection of translation data, rather than stretching my abilities in computer science.

Idea 2: Long Range RFID Guided JMM Tour

The basic idea here is to implement a multi-lingual app-based automated guided tour of the Joseph Moore Museum using long range RFID tags. While the app is open, it will scan for RFID tags present at each exhibit. When your smartphone is within a couple feet from the exhibit, the audio for that exhibit will play through the user’s headphones or speakers. Since exhibits at JMM are close together, it may be more practical to make the tags closer range, requiring the patron to touch their phone to the RFID tag. This project would require phones equipped with NFC capabilities. An extension to this project would be investigating how well google translate works on the exhibit descriptions. I will send google translate data from English to Russian of a few exhibit signs to Egor for accuracy analysis.

Idea 3: GPS-based Guided Tour of Earlham + Virtual Tour Using Drone Footage/Imagery

For this capstone idea I would design a guided tour of Earlham which utilizes GPS data to trigger informative audio clips as you pass Earlham’s various buildings. Multilingual accessibility is again crucial to this project. It would allow visitors who may not understand English fluently to take an informative tour of campus on their own time. This project would pair nicely with a virtual component as well. Using drones, I could capture video simulating a walking tour of campus, and stop at each location to play recorded audio describing each building. A simpler alternative would be stitching many still images taken in sequence, similar to Maps Street View; however, live video captures the liveliness of campus better, and would pair nicely with VR. Because high quality video isn’t cheap, a middle-path approach could be using street view style images to navigate from building to building, but have each building be associated with a 360 degree video clip to enjoy while the informative audio is played.

CSS 388 – Week Two – Three Ideas

with No Comments

Project Idea One:

Name of Your Project

Implementing AI into Rhythm-Based Video Games

What research topic/question your project is going to address?

The project is going to attempt to address a common issue with rhythm games – particularly for mobile devices – where, upon finishing a song, the game goes into an ‘Endless Mode’. Currently, ‘Endless Mode’s tend to be the same song repeated, generally increasing in tempo as time goes on, which makes the game more repetitive and boring the better you are/longer you can last.

What technology will be used in your project?

I would use Unity, as well as Melodrive, primarily. Further technology, including alternative music-based AIs, may be explored as needed. A laptop or desktop computer to code on, as well as a mobile device, would be used for testing.

What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

The Unity game engine, Melodrive, a laptop or desktop, and a mobile device.

How are you planning to implement?

I would implement this project by first creating a simple rhythm-based game (one example of such would be the popular Piano Tiles), in Unity, creating a system by which the game can generate a level based on any song uploaded by the user. Once that framework has been created, I would use Melodrive’s Unity API (or create an API using another music-based AI if necessary) to generate infinite new music for a truly ‘Endless’ experience that will never bore the user with repeated music. The implementation would also allow a user to save the songs generated by the AI – each song would be of a similar length to the original song, and after each song, would become more intense/fast-paced/harder.

How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

My project is different from others due to the two fields it delves into – video game design, and AI. The project would be new from its conception; from what I can tell, there are currently no games or apps on the mobile market that can offer a non-repetitive ‘Endless Mode’ upon completion of a song/level. Similar technology could be used in any other video game, as well, instead of a repeating song serving as the background music.

What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

The first difficulty I’ll have with this project is coding the initial game – while manually creating parameters for set songs (i.e. when to make objects for the player to tap, where to place them, and so forth) is easy, albeit time-consuming, making a program to dynamically create the level based on any input sound clip will be considerably more difficult. Additionally, depending on the limitations of Melodrive’s Unity API, it may be a challenge to create infinite music during the play session. If that is the case, I’ll have to jury rig it to do so, or alternatively create an all-new API using one of the other various music-based AIs.

Project Idea Two:

Name of Your Project

Copyright Infringement Detection in Music


What research topic/question your project is going to address?

There have been two major affronts on copyright law in recent times – a surplus of questionable copyright claims by various groups for audio and visual copyright infringement on YouTube, and the Flame v. Katy Perry trial, in which Flame claims Perry infringed on the copyright of his song Joyful Noise in her song Dark Horse. Currently, Flame has won the case, though it is likely to be appealed. While I am skeptical of the legitimacy of his claim, as well as many of those on YouTube, it is important for content creators and musicians to be aware if they are liable to be sued, or said to be infringing on copyright. As such, this project will attempt to create software which compares an input audio file to a library of music, to see if it is at risk.


What technology will be used in your project?

I’m unsure how exactly it would be handled at the moment, but extensive use of databases and database management software would be utilized – likely a database consisting of compressed data about each song, which it would compare to the input file.

What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

A desktop – and, in all likelihood, something holding such a database will need to be hosted on a server, if one is not readily available.

How are you planning to implement?

I would pull from databases of music in order to check them against the input file to check for liability of copyright infringement – potentially including a “how likely” measurement. I would look into Shazam and Google’s “what song is this” to see if I can incorporate any of that software. 


How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

This project differs from others in the particular scope of the problem it is addressing – I’ve yet to see similar projects dealing with music in such a way, particularly in accordance to copyright law. I may be able to use some information found in prior projects having to do with databases of music (such as a music recommendation project I saw last year).

What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

Assuming I’m able to find a database to suit my purposes, the greatest difficulties will likely be time-based: going through a database of ‘every’ song would likely be time-consuming, so I’ll have to find ways with which to quicken the process. If there is no such database available, then I’ll face another problem – I’ll have to make my own database, likely with only a selected number of songs, as a test case for the project, which will turn more into a proof-of-concept than a useful tool.

Project Idea Three:

Name of Your Project

(Visual) Art to Music


What research topic/question your project is going to address?

Music is made with waves of sound; color is made with waves on the electromagnetic spectrum. Given the similarity, and the proximity to each other as art forms, this project seeks to turn a visual art piece into music, or vice-versa, by mapping various colors to different pitches of sound, based on the properties of their respective waves.


What technology will be used in your project?

Depending on which languages’ libraries work best with sound and image reading/manipulation, I’ll base the project around that language – this is something I would ask a professor for help in determining. 


What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

At its core, no special software should be needed besides what I already have on my computer – language interpreters, code editors, etc.


How are you planning to implement?

I’d like to build this project from scratch. There would be a lot of work at the beginning, just trying to map images to sounds in a way that a painting wouldn’t come out to be a completely garbled mess – if I can’t find a way to do so without destroying the integrity of the project, it would mostly be used for turning songs into a visual representation. Currently, the plan would be to map each note to a new pixel, or batch of pixels.


How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

I haven’t seen a similar project like this via a few searches; as far as I can tell, this is more or less an original idea. What’s ‘new’ in this project is the transformation from audio to visual and vice-versa, aiming to result in a generally satisfactory end result.


What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

I believe the most difficult portion of this will be in trying to turn a complicated picture into a satisfying, not convoluted and/or unpleasant, audio file. I do, however, believe the song-to-visual component would be significantly easier, though the resulting images may need to be kept rather vague as a result. The implementation of both sides could change drastically over the course of the project in order to get a pleasant result.

CS388 – Week2 – Three Ideas

with No Comments

1 ) Name of Your Project: Improve Fire Identification Mapping and Monitoring Algorithm (FIMMA).

Enhance FIMMA to reduce the number of false-positive results and apply the algorithm to detect fire in urban areas.

2 ) Name of Your Project: Fire Detection Using A Combination of Different Image Analysis Techniques.

The traditional methods to detect forest fires such as using mechanical devices or humans are not effective on a global scale. With the advancement of technology, detecting forest fire using image analysis has proven to be promising due to its low cost and effectiveness on a global scale. However, these analyses generally focus on only one technique, either analyzing the images in one range of the electromagnetic spectrum or study the heat signature of the fire. The research aims to detect fire by analyzing different attributes (heat, temperature of the surrounding area, temperature and color of the smoke) at different ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum (UV, visible, and infrared).

3) Name of Your Project: Real-time Fire Tracking System.

A wildfire usually spreads rapidly within hours from the start, which means responding quickly to the fire can lead to fewer damages and casualties. The research aims to create a system that can provide current data for active fire as well as calculate the direction it is moving. The system can combine the data from Google Earth and NASA’s Fire Map to provide the current condition of the fire. It will also need real-time data of a given location, particularly weather (wind, humidity) and local condition (population, buildings) in order to make predictions.

CS388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

with No Comments

First Idea: Credibility Analyzer

  • Create a database of media of different opinions that are credible with truthful information.
  • Using Machine Learning, find/develop an algorithm that when given a medium could accurately determine whether it is credible and truthful.
  • Create an app/website/browser extension as a user interface where you can manually input the medium you want to check, or follow certain keywords and be alerted when new credible content with those keywords has been created, or tell you when a medium you are currently looking at is not credible and link you to credible sources of both opinions.

Second Idea: 911 2.0

  • 911 operating centers are underfunded, understaffed, and under-equipped. Uber and Lyft have a better GPS location system than 911 does. 
  • I would like to create a free GPS location service that works 90%-100% of the time (instead of 10%-90%) and can also locate what floor of a building someone is on
  • I would also like to create a way to text 911 and have that text automatically send the coordinates of where your phone is to 911 without the user having to type it themselves
  • I would like to create a system that can screen texts to see if it’s something simple that an AI could handle and get an immediate response or if it’s too complex and needs to be sent to an actual person.

Third Idea: Secure Paperless Voting Machines

  • The paperless voting machines that we have at this very moment have been proven to have many flaws and vulnerabilities and are easy to hack into. Given the interference of the Russian in the last presidential election, this is extremely concerning.
  • I would like to create a paperless voting method that would allow people unable to securely cast their ballot and have the capabilities to have a secure virtual caucus for those unable to make it to the physical location.
    • I would make sure all data is encrypted to the highest standards we have at the moment and that all vulnerabilities noted in our current methods and efforts are addressed.

CS388 – Week2 – Three Ideas

with No Comments

Changes to Idea #1
There were no major changes recommended, except that the scope of the project could be limited to classical iterative solvers of linear systems.

Idea #2
Name of Your Project Computational complexity of the ‘Park Puzzle’
What research topic/question your project is going to address? The Park Puzzle is a game that involves splitting a n*n grid into different colored continuous ‘parks’. A solution to a park puzzle involves marking the position of a tree in each park such that no two trees share a row or a column. The research topic involves exploring various algorithms for solving the park puzzle, and determining some bounds on the computational complexity of the puzzle. The most involved version of this project could be to prove those bounds. (The initial, intuitive hypothesis is that the park puzzle cannot be solved in polynomial time)
What technology will be used in your project?A simple Java program for generating park puzzles coded by Igor (similar apps are also available online). Pen and lots of paper.
What software and hardware will be needed for your project? If computational methods seem like the appropriate way to tackle the problem, then the appropriate software may be written in python for reasonably sized puzzles
How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? The project is more research oriented, and the end result is not a concrete implementation of an idea as a program.
What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? It is quite likely that the problem is very complex, and a more restricted scope in the same direction might have to be chosen.

Idea #3
Name of Your Project
Fast multiplication using p-adics
What research topic/question your project is going to address? There have been significant improvements in algorithms for fast multiplication of integers using p-adic numbers, approaching O(nlogn). The research project would be to explore the theory behind these algorithms and verify their results.
What technology will be used in your project? C++ for writing the algorithms
What software and hardware will be needed for your project? Cluster for testing the algorithms
How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? It is quite similar to the first idea I had proposed, but involves a different area of mathematics.
What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? I expect most of the difficulties to arise with understanding and analysing the algorithms.

CS388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

with No Comments

1. My first idea stays the same, but Xunfei recommended me to enable rating and commenting under each product to make the app a bit more interactive & informative. I will order recommendations for different skin types by star ratings. I am also thinking to include filtering by content, price, etc.

2. My second idea is similar to the first one, and it’s also on personalization with Machine Learning. I will be creating an app that will recommend makeup products such as lipsticks, eyeshadows, blush, etc. as well as their shades depending on the users’ “personal color”. The personal color analysis will be done using a quiz that will have a set of questions and perhaps facial recognition for higher accuracy. Then the app will pick out the best shades of makeup products that will go with your skin tone!

3. My third idea is making an app in which users can check for events happening not only at Earlham but also in nearby cities such as Richmond, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, etc. Students, faculty, and local residents get bored in a small town and are sometimes clueless about fun events happening nearby. I hope this app could get people more involved in the community. I am also thinking to include restaurant/movie deals that might be happening locally.

CS 388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

with No Comments

Breakdown of Mathematical Proofs Using Natural Language Processing

I wish to use natural language processing to break down a bachelor-level mathematical proof into the components that make up a proof (e.g. given knowledge, statements, calculations). This will be shown in a GUI so that the user can clearly see the build-up of their proof. Without constraints of time, some more technologies could be applied (machine learning) to give feedback to the user of the strength of their proof.

WhatsUp! : A Passive Event-Sharing Application for Friends

This application will enable a user to check on friends current/planned activities through a simple feed or calendar. Events will have scheduled times, lists of “agreed” participants, and the location. They can be confirmed events, or requests for an event, such as someone looking to go to Walmart at a certain time. Privacy settings could be configured to those in a Geo-Area, or to a specific list of friends, and notifications could also be customized.

Extensive Music Recommendation Website

This website will allow users to input songs and/or attribute values to return recommendations. Users will be able to view detailed analysis of their input tracks attributes and can search also with track attributes (e.g. acousticness, energy, speechiness). This will be done with the Spotify API.

CS 388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

with No Comments

3d Printer

A new way of 3d printing. The implementation includes a pixel grid that is controlled by a computer, the 3d object is converted into layers, the layer then controls the corresponding pixels the molten plastic flows through. Based on the layer the pixels ‘open’ and ‘close’ to form the 3d object. The pixel grid moves up as it finishes a layer forming the 3d object.


3d – Drone Mapping

A drone that creates a google street view like map. A radius can be set using a mobile interface and the drone will go around using pathfinding algorithms. It will take images that will be stitched together to create a 3d space – google street view like maps. This can be used to map and study deep cave systems.

A new way of 3d printing. The implementation includes a pixel grid that is controlled by a computer, the 3d object is converted into layers, the layer then controls the corresponding pixels the molten plastic flows through. Based on the layer the pixels ‘open’ and ‘close’ to form the 3d object. The pixel grid moves up as it finishes a layer forming the


AI-NLP multi platform application builder:

Based on natural language processing and AI – a program that takes in a description of the application that needs to be built. The AI will then use a natural language processor to convert the description to code. This can be useful for businesses that cannot afford to hire software developers to build their application. 


CS388 – Week 2 – Three Ideas

with No Comments

1st Idea

My 1st idea pretty much stayed the same as it was last week w/ some additional details. Instead of just testing/researching about network security, Charlie advised to look into physical security (open ports on servers, etc) and social security.

2nd Idea

Hacking into an air gapped device. Air gapped means that none of the devices interfaces have connectivity to the internet. Many believe this secures their device. I could look into and possibly use my own devices to test on.

3rd Idea

Today, everyone has some sort of digital footprint. I could envision writing software, that given parameters such as name, DOB, and age, could go on the web and find more information about that person.

Thanks to Charlie for helping guide me to finding these ideas.

CS388 – Week 2 – Other 2 Ideas

with No Comments

Idea 2 – Library Management Mobile Application

The library management system is a tool to organise the library automatically without requiring

human intervention to issue books, track record of books in library, and perform day to day

actions required to maintain and run a library. Our software solution will systematically keep track

of all the books in the library, by storing the section name, rack number, row number, etc that is

the essential data required to locate any book in the library.

It will allow students and other users of the library to issue the book by scanning the barcode on

the book. Our system will send the student a notification to remind them to return back the book

on due date and simultaneously inform the librarian as well.

Students can also search and find the number of available editions of all the books in the library

using a tab application that shall be available at the reception of the library.

The aim of the project is to automate all the processes in the library and reduce the effort of the

library staff and increasing the efficiency of book issuing process in the library

Additionally what can be done is to store the books issued by students and recommend them to

issue similar books based on their selection.

Idea 3 – News Filtering using Web-scrapping

Lot of people avoid news due to the vast topics present in everyday’s news. Young people prefer

news related to sports or technology while old people are more used to the country news and

politics. That is just for an example, anyone can like any kind of news. We develop an app in

which reading news is made easier, faster and enjoyable. An android app which is used to filter

news based on user recommendations using web scrapping or ml algorithms. A user can create

their account on the app and search for any news they want. The app will produce the most

relevant and popular content from the web. If a user types tennis, roger Federer then the top most

viewed articles will show up which contain content related to both the key words. The user’s

history will also be saved and gradually the app will provide recommendations of the certain

category of news. If the user searches for tennis 2-3 times then 4th time they will be given option

of news from tennis and other sports close to tennis or the most popular ones at that time.

CS 388 – Week 1 – First Idea

with No Comments
  • Name of Your Project

A Forum Site to Improve Student Access to Administrative Information

  • What research topic/question your project is going to address?

How do we improve communication between students and Earlham administration? Currently, when students have an administrative question, information is not easily found on Earlham’s website, and it is difficult to find the right person to talk to.

  • What technology will be used in your project?

Open source forum code such as Reddit or Discourse.

  • What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and the dependencies for the forum code I choose.

  • How are you planning to implement?

Using an open source forum code, I will create a site for Earlham student to post questions about certain departments or offices. Members of the Earlham community can post replies, and administrators can moderate the categories of questions that apply to them. There also may be an automatically generated reply found by searching Earlham’s website. When a question has a lot of upvotes, it may generate an email to the relevant administrator.

  • How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

This site would provide a single space for student questions, improving student access to campus information. This would also ease the burden on administrators answering the same questions from many students. While the site is built upon an existing forum model, it would be formalized for usage by Earlham students and administrators.

  • What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

Finding the best existing forum source code to use will take time. Using the chosen forum basis, and being able to build upon it to work for both students and administrators is key. As with any software project, the project could run into problems of feasibility, so planning the minimum and most important features is also important.

CS 388 – Week 1 – First Idea

with No Comments

Name of Your Project

Implementing AI into Rhythm-Based Video Games

What research topic/question your project is going to address?

The project is going to attempt to address a common issue with rhythm games – particularly for mobile devices – where, upon finishing a song, the game goes into an ‘Endless Mode’. Currently, ‘Endless Mode’s tend to be the same song repeated, generally increasing in tempo as time goes on, which makes the game more repetitive and boring the better you are/longer you can last.

What technology will be used in your project?

I would use Unity, as well as Melodrive, primarily. Further technology, including alternative music-based AIs, may be explored as needed. A laptop or desktop computer to code on, as well as a mobile device, would be used for testing.

What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

The Unity game engine, Melodrive, a laptop or desktop, and a mobile device.

How are you planning to implement?

I would implement this project by first creating a simple rhythm-based game (one example of such would be the popular Piano Tiles), in Unity, creating a system by which the game can generate a level based on any song uploaded by the user. Once that framework has been created, I would use Melodrive’s Unity API (or create an API using another music-based AI if necessary) to generate infinite new music for a truly ‘Endless’ experience that will never bore the user with repeated music.

How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

My project is different from others due to the two fields it delves into – video game design, and AI. The project would be new from its conception; from what I can tell, there are currently no games or apps on the mobile market that can offer a non-repetitive ‘Endless Mode’ upon completion of a song/level. Similar technology could be used in any other video game, as well, instead of a repeating song serving as the background music.

What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

The first difficulty I’ll have with this project is coding the initial game – while manually creating parameters for set songs (i.e. when to make objects for the player to tap, where to place them, and so forth) is easy, albeit time-consuming, making a program to dynamically create the level based on any input sound clip will be considerably more difficult. Additionally, depending on the limitations of Melodrive’s Unity API, it may be a challenge to create infinite music during the play session. If that is the case, I’ll have to jury rig it to do so, or alternatively create an all-new API using one of the other various music-based AIs.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

with No Comments
  1. Name of Your Project

Joseph Moore Museum Guided Tour

  1. What research topic/question your project is going to address?

This project is an attempt at expanding the accessibility of the Joseph Moore Museum, especially to patrons whose first language is not English. The project is to create an app which will scan QR codes beside a museum exhibit, and provide information on that exhibit in the preferred language of the user. Audio narration for each language would extend accessibility even further. Additionally, exhibit traffic could be obtained by counting the QR scans for each exhibit, allow for a degree of analytics.

  1. What technology will be used in your project?

My project will utilize QR scanning technology, Unity for mobile app development, as well as web hosting to offload the exhibit information and audio files from the mobile device. 

  1. What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

My project will require a mobile development suite, most likely Unity given I have some familiarity with it. I will also need to host a web server for the files related to each exhibit (text description for each language selection, audio files, photos, etc). The app will utilize a modern smart-phone with a camera of decent resolution, and internet connectivity.

  1. How are you planning to implement?

Before I begin, I will begin a conversation with the museum director about the project. Since my project will be associated with an established organization, it is important that the project goals align with the organization’s vision. I will also begin searching for people who would be interested in translating exhibit info from English to various languages such as Hindi, Spanish, and Japanese. Meanwhile, I will begin working on a prototype app with the goal being to successfully scans QR codes and displays different data based on the QR code scanned. After I have a working prototype, I will begin work on setting up a web server to host the exhibit information, and linking that to the app. Towards the end I will polish up the UI experience.

  1. How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

My project will be providing new features and technology to the Joseph Moore Museum in order to expand its capacities for language accessibility. 

  1. What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

One of the most glaring issues with this project is scope. My unfamiliarity with web hosting combined with limited experience with mobile app design means making an accurate timeline will be quite difficult. Building a polished mobile app is time-consuming, and might not fit within the time-frame of the project. 

JMM has a lot of exhibits, which means there is a lot of text to be translated and audio to be recorded. Finding people up to the task of translating and recording could prove to be quite difficult.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

with No Comments

Name of Your Project? Corner Finder AI

What research topic/question your project is going to address? Can deep learning and/or neural networks be used over a set of imagery to identify rectilinear structures which might be undetectable to the human eye (in other words, structures that are buried, or very obfuscated).

What technology will be used in your project? Drones and drone imagery, as well as machine learning concepts like deep learning with training data and neural networks.

What software and hardware will be needed for your project? I would like to make this project so that it can be used with the data the IFS trip collected from Iceland this summer. This also gives me an advantage with testing/learning data, as we created quite a stockpile of the kind of drone imagery I would like to analyse. 

How are you planning to implement? I plan to use python, or another language to create the software for this, possibly with support from some libraries (depending on language).

How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? From my first hand experience and preliminary research, it seems that most image analysis like this is done through direct processing of data, rather than by training an AI. The scripts we have used are mostly filtering the data that is there, rather than analyzing patterns. I think that this different approach might help us find things we wouldn’t find otherwise.

What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? The main difficulty will likely be the complicated nature of this kind of software. I have a medium level of experience with AI concepts, but something at this level will undoubtedly get murky with details eventually.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

with No Comments
  1. Name of Your Project Skip&Skin
  2. What research topic/question your project is going to address? One product can’t fit all. From beauty to skin care, people are thrown a bunch of products that are said to be popular or effective in enhancing complexion. However, each individual is so different from another that they need to do more research to figure out which products will fit them better than others. Using the concept of personalization with Machine Learning, I will be focusing on categorizing different skin types of users and matching skin care products that could best serve their needs.
  3. What technology will be used in your project? I will need XCode and Swift to build the IOS application. I might be using Python to manipulate the dataset.
  4. What software and hardware will be needed for your project? Since I will be making an IOS application, I will need a MacBook to use XCode. 
  5. How are you planning to implement? I am planning to create a skin type test for users with approximately 10 problems to determine their skin type. I might also ask them to identify their concerns. I will select products to recommend by comparing the content of their ingredients (glycerin, hyaluronic acid, etc.). I might also want to make options for filtering by price, brand, etc.  
  6. How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? As a person with dry skin (due to lack of moisture), I always look for products that are a bit more oily than what others might prefer. I try to stay away from products that dry up fast and leaves my skin smooth. But most products that are highly rated don’t necessarily reflect this, and I have to either go through individual comments or search online to see if it will be effective for dry skin. I thought it would be comfortable for people to just see filtered results for their own skin type. 
  7. What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? Finding a database of skin care products with ingredients, building an app by myself, learning Swift, coming up with a criteria for selecting products

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

with No Comments
  • Name of My Project

Managing Fire From Space

Improve Fire Identification Mapping and Monitoring Algorithm (FIMMA).

  • What research topic/question is my project going to address?

Space technology has been used to improve life on Earth through many applications. One of them is to use Earth observation satellites to detect forest fires and alert local authorities in real time.

NASA has been developing FIMMA algorithm that analyzes data taken from Earth observation satellites to detect possible forest fires.

The FIMMA algorithm has several limitations, which often leads to false-positive results. The research aims to address and find possible solutions to the current limitations and produce a better algorithm.

  • What technology will be used in your project?

Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS).

  • What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

Data manipulation and graphing tools.

  • How are you planning to implement?

Compare the current implementation of FIMMA algorithm with other fire detection algorithms and fire products.

  • How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? 

The algorithm is currently only accurate over forested regions. The algorithm may miss real fires over urban areas, as well as many agricultural burns. A focus of the research is to improve the fire detection accuracy of these regions.

  • What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

The research requires a deep understanding of the algorithm, geology, satellite technology, and data science.

It can be challenging to obtain the most updated progress of the algorithm.



CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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Compile Python code into byte code.

To enable JVM to run python code. Since JVM executes bytecode, I want to find a way to automatically compile python code to byte code.

Software involved: JVM, javac, python interpreter

The difficulties come from the large scope of the language.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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Name of My Project

Who’s Running?: In depth look at who’s running for what, when, and info about them.

What research topic/question is my project going to address?

  • How to reduce number of uniformed voters?
  • How to dynamically update a website when something with certain keywords is uploaded on the web?
    • How to do that accurately without mistaking an article for something else?
  • How to make sure sources being provided are credible?
    • How to make sure that sources from both sides are presented and credible?
  • How to make the registration process easier and encourage people to vote?

What technology will be used in your project?

  • Website: HTML, CSS, Javascript
  • Content Change Detection and Notification Service
  • CRON job with scripting?
  • FeedWelder?
  • Scripting
  • MDM Notifications API

What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

  • Laptop
  • Possibly access to CRON and FeedWelder

How are you planning to implement?

  • The implementation would be deploying a live website that updates automatically and alerts users of important dates and info and if new info is on the site.

How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

  • It’s a one stop shop and automatically updates with more detailed info on how candidates stand on certain issues, their track record, and articles pro and against them.
  • This also makes sure the sources about each candidate is actually credible and not peddling false info
  • This will also alert people when new information is out there and important election/registration dates

What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

  • Making it update automatically reliably
  • Making sure it successfully finds only credible sources
  • Making sure my script parses the info correctly onto the website
  • Making sure the new info it finds is accurate and about the right people

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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  1. Name of Your Project Iterative solvers for systems of Linear Equations
  2. What research topic/question your project is going to address? The effectiveness of various iterative methods at finding solutions to systems linear equations with various characteristics. Taking experimental / numerical analysis perspectives.
  3. What technology will be used in your project? C++ for implementing the solvers.
  4. What software and hardware will be needed for your project? Cluster, or some other computer with sufficient memory for the testing.
  5. How are you planning to implement? Choose a class of iterative solvers and test them against various types of matrices.
  6. How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project? It is closer to some of the more theory oriented projects, but leans heavily towards applied mathematics.
  7. What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project? The theory of iterative solvers is quite heavy on numerical analysis, which might limit the scope of the project to a a further restricted class of solvers.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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Buying tickets of popular concerts: the application imitates real users to buy concert tickets on the website. Users can set it up before the tickets opening date. As long as the tickets are open to sell, the application will immediately buy them. If the tickets are sold out, it keeps reloading the webpage until there are new tickets available.

One time I wanted to buy a concert ticket, but that concert was very popular, and tickets were sold out immediately. Then I kept reloading the website, hoping other people would cancel their orders. But I couldn’t keep reloading the page every second for the whole day. Then I thought if I can have software to do that for me. I did research and found that some web browser automation tools, for example, Selenium, can imitate operation like real users on a web browser. I searched online and found that most of this kind of software buy train tickets instead of concert tickets. The primary technology I will use is Selenium. And I will also need to learn how to read page source code. I will primary write a python script with Selenium to imitate real users buying a ticket online. Selenium can provide a web driver on Google Chrome to go to the target website. And the driver will locate element by tag names, element ID, XPath, class names and etc., and it can do automatic click and input.

But there are several difficulties in my project. The first one is money security. Some ticket websites require payment immediately while making the order. Therefore, users need to provide their website account and bank card information beforehand. I need to be careful about bank card security. The second problem is that this software is website-specific. Different websites require different processes to buy tickets. I need to write different codes to deal with different sites.
The third problem is that some websites require complicated verification on user login. I don’t know if web browser automation can deal with a very complicated verification. The last issue is that I don’t know if the scope of this project is big enough. I can have my software operates for several famous ticket websites and probably can have the mobile APP version. 

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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  1. Name of Your Project

Penetration testing to show the weaknesses of businesses

  • What research topic/question your project is going to address?

What results can be gained from businesses investing in someone do penetration  

  • What technology will be used in your project

Personal computer & Network Adapter

  • What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

Kali Linux OS, Virtual Box

  • How are you planning to implement?

Using the Network Adapter and Kali Linux’s built in features, access to a specific network becomes easier. Goals are described at the beginning and the attack is centered around those goals.

  • How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

Other than Byron Roosa who graduated a few years ago, I am the only student who has had a security interest so this makes my project unique from others. My project is centered around helping the community. A penetration tests sole purpose is to help a business detect security flaws.

  • What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

An obvious difficulty with my project is the legality associated with hacking. Getting a business to allow me to do this would take some convincing. Learning to navigate Kali Linux correctly would also be a difficulty.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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Name of Your Project?

Pixel Printer


What research topic/question your project is going to address?

My project aims to improve the current process of 3d printing that is used for mainstream industrial 3d printing.


What technology will be used in your project?

  • 3D-Printing
  • A small computer (Raspberry Pi)

What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

  • A plastic pixel grid made of either wood or metal.
  • Raspberry Pi or  similar small computer to control the opening and closing of the pixel grid. 
  • Plastic to print the 3d object out of.
  • Motors that will control the vertical movement of the pixel grid.

How are you planning to implement?

My implementation includes a pixel grid that is controlled by a computer, the 3d object is converted into layers, the layer then controls the corresponding pixels the molten plastic flows through,. Based on the layer the pixels ‘open’ and ‘close’ to form the 3d object. The pixel grid moves up as it finishes a layer.


How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

My project is an entirely new concept. This process of 3D-printing does not exist. The current 3d printers consist of a nozzle through which the molten plastic flows, the nozzle then moves around forming the object which is very time consuming. My process uses a pixel grid that allows molten plastic to flow through the pixels forming the object.


What’s the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

  • Since this is an entirely new process of 3d printing, I will not be able to use pre-existing online resources.
  • I have no experience working with a raspberry pi and I’m not familiar with hardware programming.
  • My process relies on the density of the grid. The more ‘’pixels’’ my grid contains the more detailed the 3d object will be. 
  • Creating an extremely dense grid could be expensive and not viable in an academic setting.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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  1. Name of Your Project

Breakdown of Mathematical Proofs Using Natural Language Processing

  • What research topic/question your project is going to address?

How available and useful current technology is to address completeness of mathematical proofs in intro/bachelor level mathematics courses.

  • What technology will be used in your project?

Python Natural Language Processing libraries, and SwiftUI for the GUI.

  • What software and hardware will be needed for your project?

Languages: Python, Swift

Development: XCode

  • How are you planning to implement?

The end goal would be to assist students taking undergraduate classes.

  • How is your project different from others? What’s new in your project?

I have not seen/be able to find applications of natural language processing towards the field of algebra and mathematical proofs.

  • What’re the difficulties of your project? What problems you might encounter during your project?

Finding a large enough dataset to work with, that is consistent. Creating a strict enough rule set to classify proof components by.

CS388 – Week 1 – First Idea

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Predicting the winner of a NBA match

Usage of technology to help in the correct outcome of sports. The goal is to predict the winner of an NBA game using machine learning techniques. This is done on the based of the factors that have influence on the match and which ones are useful for the team in winning the match.

Machine Learning, Python

DDR4 8gb ram, 700 mb space for spider ide and project files, intel i3 7th gen processor an above.

No hardware required.

We will use this dataset to find out the entropy, which is nothing but a reward system that shall be used to calculate the probability of winning of the two teams playing the current match.

We will use various factors to calculate the entropy, for example, affect of injury of players in the outcome of a match, past performance of players in the season, home court or away court, past record and scores of players against the opposition team, grudges in between two players of opposition team, record of the coach, etc.

The project brings a unique way to predict the winner which can be helpful to lot of betting agencies, match analysers. We shall use our algorithm while the match is being played to dynamically take into effect of any possible injuries or fouls that the players may commit during the match. This will give a better number to calculate the probability of winning of both the teams.

The difficulties encountered would be getting the right accuracy level, trying different algorithms for the correct score, large quantity of data to access. 

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