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PROJECTS  Effects of Noise on the Electrosensory System of Mormyrid Electric Fish Todd Leen and Pat Roberts of OHSU's NSI are working on the answer. How the cells in the brain respond to and learn about these electrical signals is being explored by modeling statistical properties of the "noisy" neural system. The impact of this study will extend beyond electrosensory processing and computational neuroscience to studies of learning and of how cerebellar-like brain structures function.  CORIE A pilot Environmental Observation and Forecasting System (EOFS) for the COlumbia RIver Estuary and adjacent coastal waters, is under development at the OGI School of Science & Engineering by an interdisciplinary team under the scientific direction of Prof. António Baptista. A number of CSE research groups are key to the development of this project. Modeling inaccuracies stem from uncertainty in external forcings (such as wind and water release at Bonneville Dam), uncertainty in bottom topography (bathymetry), uncertainty in model parameters, and numerical error. Todd Leen of the Adaptive Systems Lab (AdSyL), Prof. Baptista and their students are conducting research on both model calibration and data assimilation, the use of sensor data to correct model predictions. Biofouling of sensors by growth of barnacles, algae and other sea life inevitably degrades data quality. A human looking at sensor data might not be aware of this degradation until several weeks after the onset. In order to catch the degradation much earlier, and thus avoid loosing large amounts of data, Todd Leen and his students have developed biofouling detectors based on statistical pattern recognition, techniques for on-line model adaptation, and sophisticated clustering algorithms and regime-switching models. Although challenged by the lack of historical data, the high variability of biofouling signatures, and the variation of tidal river dynamics, the detector development has cut data corruption nearly in half.  Processing and Analysis of QCT Prostate Images for Study of Prostate Diseases AdSyL's Asst. Prof. Xubo Song recently initiated a pilot study for the analysis and characterization of prostate Quantitative Computer Tomography (QCT) images. Researchers will develop computer-based image processing techniques to extract the prostate region from QCT scans (``segmentation'') and characterize the prostate digitally. The data from these studies will constitute preliminary data for NIH grant proposals to study important questions related to prostate health as well as biomedical imaging.  Model Relative Control of Autonomous Vehicles AdSyL's Associate. Prof. Eric Wan works on this project to design and implement nonlinear reconfigurable controllers that exploit the coupled dynamics between a vehicle model (e.g., helicopter) and adaptive models of the environment. New model-predictive techniques are developed to perform on-line optimization of vehicle control trajectories under dynamic and situational constraints. This resulting environmentally-informed control approach will enable aircraft operations under all-weather conditions, as well as increased automation for modeless control and extreme maneuvers at levels not realizable with conventional control approaches. To assist in developing real-time semantics for the SEC Open Control Platform (OCP). Outstanding semantics issues include achieving precise bounds on the time taken to react to critical input events, continous operation across mode transitions in a hybrid control architecture, and assured quality of service for critical-rate tasks. Satisfactory resolution of these issues can provide a basis for the design of the OCP to evolve to support higher frequency vehicle control tasks concurrently with avionics control. The capability provided by the OCP will be critical for the development of evolvable, real-time vehicle control systems built from reusable, interchangeable, interoperable software components, and promises to reduce software development and maintenance costs. More project information is available at the faculty homepages. FORMER PROJECTS (Coming soon) |