Susantha Herath

An active learning environment for intermediate computer architecture courses

Most computer science, information systems and engineering programs have two or more computer architecture courses but lack suitable active learning and design experience in the classroom. Computer architecture at the intermediate level should focus on the implementation of basic programming constructs in different instruction set architectures. To accommodate such features we developed an undergraduate computer architecture course with hands-on classroom activities, laboratories and web based assignments. To assess the course we distributed the course modules among 200 computer architecture instructors. This paper describes our experience in developing active learning course modules.

Integration of computer security laboratories into computer architecture courses to enhance undergraduate education

Most computer science and engineering programs have two or more required computer architecture courses but lack suitable interfacing laboratory experience for other upper-level classes. Information assurance and network security tracks have been developed over the recent years without providing necessary and sufficient background knowledge in logic, storages and processor architecture. Integration of real-world applications is always a better approach to not only to excite the passive student body but also to explore the computer architecture subject area. At the intermediate level, architecture knowledge can be extended to provide information and network security experiences to students. Such extensions to the course will provide proper interfacing to networking, operating systems, databases and other senior level security related courses. This paper describes possible integration of security and privacy concepts into computer architecture course sequence with hands-on classroom activities, laboratories and web-based assignments.

The Extraction of Symbolic Postures to Transfer Social Cues into Robot

At present, the inclination of robotic researchers is to develop social robots for a variety of application domains. Socially intelligent robots are capable of having natural interaction with a human by engaging in complex social functions. The challengeable issue is to transfer these social functions into a robot. This requires the development of computation modalities with intelligent and autonomous capabilities for reacting to a human partner within different contexts. More importantly, a robot needs to interact with a human partner through human-trusted social cues which create the interface for natural communication. To execute the above goals, robotic researchers have proposed a variety of concepts that are biologically-inspired and based on other theoretical concepts related to psychology and cognitive science. Recent robotic research has been able to achieve the transference of social behaviors into a robot through imitation-based learning (Ito et al., 2007) (Takano & Nakamura, 2006), and the related learning algorithms have helped in acquiring a variety of natural social cues. The acquired social behaviors have emphasized equipping robots with natural and trusted human interactions, which can be used to develop a wide range of robotic applications (Tapus et al., 2007). The transference of a variety of skills into a robot involves several diminutive and imperative processes: the need for efficient media for gathering human motion precisely, the elicitation of key characteristic of motion, a generic approach to generate robot motion through the key characteristics of motion, and the need for an approach to evaluate generated robot motions or skills. The use of media for amassing human motions has become a crucial factor that is very important for attaining an agents motion within deficit noisy data. Current imitation research has explored ways of simulating accurate human motions for robot imitations through a motion capture system (Calinon & Billard, 2007(a)) or through image processing techniques (Riley et al., 2003). A motion capture system provides accurate data that is quieter than image processing techniques (Calinon & Billard, 2007(b)).

Computer forensics, information security and law: a case study

Providing security and assurance to information systems and communications is one of the highest national priorities. It is our task to prepare computer information system security professionals with current security and assurance information to achieve this objective. To meet this urgent need, the faculty must have the knowledge and skills to be taught in the classroom. For several semesters, we have been developing information system security curriculum with a computer forensics course for the students. Active participation in real life security problems is a great opportunity to learn the subject matter. This paper describes one of our positive experiences.

Unsupervised approach to acquire robot joint attention

Existing approaches to joint attention of robots have considered an objects information (location and visual information) with a head pose of caregiver using data from many subjects to train the robot joint attention model. These approaches have used simulated data (of the object) to train the robot joint attention model, and they are incapable of accurately predicting a caregivers attention when the caregiver has a complex eye gaze pattern. A complex eye gaze pattern can be defined as a caregiver going over the number of objects in the environment and finally attending to the object of interest. At this time it is possible for us to obtain a long sequence of eye gaze data using a combination of different eye gaze patterns. Our approach segments the eye gaze data and applies a Mixture Gaussian-based unsupervised cluster to detect the caregivers intention at each of the time segmentations. Finally, the above attention information is combined with a geometrical model of objects to detect the caregivers object of interest by considering the entire eye gaze segmentations. The novelty of our approach is to detect the caregivers object of interest when the caregiver has a complex eye gaze pattern and does not even use any of the training data. The experimental results revealed that when the objects distance is 20cm, our proposed approach can accurately recognize and impressive 80% of the caregivers interested objects. The contrivance of the time segmentation is manipulated to infer a caregivers attention plans and behaviors in each time interval. It is directed to detect the caregiver interested object for acquiring the skills of joint attention.

Boundary Color Tones between Color Modifiers in Two Languages

This paper suggests a further improvement to ISCC-NBS naming system for determining exact boundary color tone between color modifiers that associated each region on the Munsell color space. Three sequences of color tone stimuli were created for three fundamental hues red, green and blue by varying just two parameters, saturation and value. Two experiments were executed to investigate the consensual use of modifiers in describing perceptual variations of color tones by Japanese and Sinhala (Language of Sri Lanka) naive viewers. One was a triadic comparison method in which the color modifiers meaning - pale, bright, vivid, strong, dull, and dark - were employed. Results revealed that these modifiers were used in a consistent manner for all three hues. Second was a two-alternative forced-choice experiments that was executed to determined the boundary color tone at which modifier labels switch from bright to strong, and from vivid to dull.

Cross-Language Similarity between Perceptual and Semantic Structures of Color Tones

The paper describes a study of how Japanese and Sinhala naive viewers use modifiers to describe differences in color tones. Three sequences of color tone stimuli were created for three hues, red, green and blue by varying just two parameters, saturation and value. Two methods were employed to study how naive viewers use modifiers to describe differences in their perceptions and modifiers of color tones. A preliminary elicitation employed the methods of selection description, in which Japanese and Sinhala modifiers meaning - pale, bright, vivid, strong, dull, dark - constituted a high proportion of responses. These modifiers were employed in a triadic comparison. Dissimilarities of all pair wise comparisons of stimuli were submitted to MDS analysis in order to derive a multidimensional perceptual structure for the stimuli. A semantic differential structure was derived applying PCA for modifier responses provided for the same set of stimuli. The results revealed that Japanese and Sinhala native speakers perceptually discriminate the six color tone stimulus into six categories. Furthermore, the semantic structures for each hue were different from one a another. And it was observed that the semantic structures related differently to the dimensions of the perceptual structures.

Analysis of Sign Languages: A Step Towards Multi-lingual Machine Translation for Sign Languages

Many different sign languages are in use to communicate, especially among the hearing impaired people. Translation of one sign language to another is a diffcult problem that need efficient solution. Processing of signs is different from the processing of words in natural languages. Sign languages use shapes and movements to express meaning. The objective of our research project is to develop a multilingual machine translation system for sign languages. As a first step towards achieving this objective we analyzed three sign languages. This paper outlines the current research results.