39945679
Iconic Language Design for People with Significant Speech and Multiple Impairments
6609571
Efficient Techniques for Feature-Based Image/Video Access and Manipulation
Efficient, effective methods for indexing, searching, and retrieving images and videos from large archives are critical techniques required in visual information systems (VIS) applications. Users need a more powerful method for searching images than just traditional text-based query (e.g., keywords). Manual creation of keywords is too time-consuming for many practical applications. Subjective descriptions based on users’ input will be neither consistent nor complete. Also, the vocabulary used in describing visual contents is usually domain specific.
17298481
Iconic language design for people with significant speech and multiple impairments
We present an approach of iconic language design for people with significant speech and multiple impairments (SSMI), based upon the theory of Icon Algebra and the theory of Conceptual Dependency (CD) to derive the meaning of iconic sentences. An interactive design environment based upon this methodology is described.
35519508
Extending Visual Languages for Multimedia
Visual languages, which let users customize iconic sentences, can be extended to accommodate multimedia objects, letting users access media dynamically. Teleaction objects, or multimedia objects with knowledge structures, can be designed using visual languages to automatically respond to events and perform tasks like "find related books" in a virtual library.
15816324
Multi-level specification and protocol design for distributed multimedia communication
The major challenge in the design of an efficient distributed multimedia system is the integration and support of a wide variety of applications. Investigating the basic issues involved in the design and specification of distributed muttimcdia systems is the focus of this paper. A basic layered network architecture is proposed as the uniform framework for the investigation of different levels of functionality typically associated with the communication network that supports multimedia communication. Within this framework, we propose to identify the communication requirements for multimedia applications and characterize a set of communication primitives which specify different qualities of scrvicc to reflect different real-time rcquircmcnts. ‘Ilis investigation is guided by an efficient and flexible multi-level specification model. We will characterize this model and show that the model can be amenable to the construction of a set of communication primitives that support synchronization and communication of multimedia applications.
1382308
Towards a theory of normalization for multimedia databases
We present a theory of normalization for multimedia databases. We introduce new types of functional dependencies between different types of media data. Thus, the definition of functional dependency is based upon a specific technology used to detect semantic relationships between complex data types, which need to be compared through approximate matching paradigms.
18938523
A two-dimensional vector packing model for the efficient use of coil cassettes
We consider the problem of efficiently packing steel products, known as coils, into special containers, called cassettes for shipping. The objective is to minimize the number of cassettes used for packing all the given coils where each cassette has capacity limits on both total payload weight and size. We model this problem as a two-dimensional vector packing problem and propose a heuristic. We also analyze the worst-case performance of the proposed algorithm under a special condition which, in fact, holds for the particular real-world case that we handled. Our computational experiment with real production data shows that the proposed algorithm performs quite satisfactorily in practice.
613728
Dynamic scheduling rule selection for semiconductor wafer fabrication
We exploit the speed of an ordinal optimization (OO)-based simulation tool designed by Hsieh et al. (1999) to investigate dynamic selection of scheduling rules for semiconductor wafer fabrication (FAB). Although a scheduling rule is a combination of loading wafer release and dispatching rules, this paper specifically focuses on dispatching when significant amount of wafers-in-process are held due to engineering causes and when major machine failures occur. Four prominent dispatching rules combined with the wafer release policy of workload regulation constitute a basic set of rule options. The dispatching rule may be weekly selected based on FAB states over a four-week horizon. A total of 756 rule options are then evaluated and ranked by the OO-based simulation tool under the performance index of mean cycle time and throughput rate. Results demonstrate the value of dynamic rule selection for uncertainty handling, the insightful selection of good rules and the needs for further research.
27879646
Location-Based Services for Tourism Industry: An Empirical Study
To cope with the fact of high competitiveness in tourism industry, some travel agencies are adopting the strategy of providing relatively more abundant and higher quality services to their clients. Since prior research has found that lack of information is one of the main barriers for people to travel, provide location-based information to people visiting and staying at a new location should be useful and valuable. This research attempts to find out travelers’ attitude toward location-based service (LBS). “What factors will affect the travelers’ willingness to adopt this new service” is what we tried to find out in this research. Our findings shows that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and security & privacy are associated with travelers’ attitude toward using LBS, but location information, context awareness, and device functions are not. Our findings can be referenced by tourism industry for the purpose of the design and development of successful business applications to catch the revolutionary opportunity and benefit of LBS.
28693312
A new architecture for motion-compensated image coding
Abstract In motion-compensated image coding (MCIC), the block matching algorithm requires a very complex computational procedure. To overcome this problem, several fast search procedures have been proposed. However, the resultant errors for these procedures may be too large unless small displacement is assumed. In order to reduce the computational complexity and preserve the quality of the original image, a new architecture for MCIC without the small displacement assumption is proposed in this paper. Based on a so-called characteristic mapping, certain important features of the block will be extracted and matched in the space of features. Hence, the procedure of matching any two blocks is very much simplified and the time required is drastically reduced. Moreover, the simulation results indicate that its performance is superior to those fast search procedures based on the error between the reconstructed image and the original one. This property will result in low bit rates for transmitting the error frame.
16514620
SIMD architecture for job shop scheduling problem solving
Job shop is a typical environment for manufacturing high-variety and low-volume discrete parts. Good scheduling is critical and challenging to the competitiveness of job shops. The Lagrangian relaxation neural network (LRNN) provides an approach of quantifiable quality and successful industrial applications. To further speed up scheduling for large-scale problems, in this paper, the parallelism of the LRNN approach is exploited for hardware implementation. New designs include a SIMD architecture, its associated instruction set and detailed circuits. Logic level simulation of the circuit design shows consistent schedules with those obtained by a software implementation. The hardware implementation is expected to have a one to two orders speed-up over the software one.