Abstract Privacy has been recognized as a very important issue in electronic commerce. However, m... more Abstract Privacy has been recognized as a very important issue in electronic commerce. However, many privacy techniques were not adopted and many online anonymity services failed. In this paper we propose treating privacy as a" value" that is to be added to other services to avoid the adoption pitfall. We present an architecture that anonymizes online transactions and makes them unlinkable to any customer or to each other.
Abstract The design of industrial parts feeders is a long, trial-and-error process that can take ... more Abstract The design of industrial parts feeders is a long, trial-and-error process that can take months-even for the design of feeders that orient only one type of part. This paper describes the use of dynamic simulation to expedite the design and prototyping of parts feeders. We give probabilistic descriptions of vibratory parts feeding behavior and we present a comparison between simulated design experiments and physical experiments done using a real industrial vibratory bowl feeder.
Abstract We describe an innovative and scalable recommendation system successfully deployed at eB... more Abstract We describe an innovative and scalable recommendation system successfully deployed at eBay. To build recommenders for long-tail marketplaces requires projection of volatile items into a persistent space of latent products. We first present a generative clustering model for collections of unstructured, heterogeneous, and ephemeral item data, under the assumption that items are generated from latent products.
Abstract We present PACT: a visual editor for annotating sequences of learning objects with refer... more Abstract We present PACT: a visual editor for annotating sequences of learning objects with references to pedagogical patterns. Previous efforts to reform pedagogy via design patterns have focused on two approaches, each of which has severe disadvantages: the exchange of pedagogical pattern descriptions and the creation of learning environments informed by them. The key innovation of PACT is its focus on pattern-annotated courses that connect these methods.
Abstract We present several interesting applications for the Pattern-Annotated Course Tool (PACT)... more Abstract We present several interesting applications for the Pattern-Annotated Course Tool (PACT) and pedagogical design patterns in the process of curriculum design. PACT is a visual editor in which content designers can create visual representations of their courses and annotate them with references to educational theory in the form of pedagogical patterns.
Abstract Robots provide us with a means to move around in, visualize, and interact with a remote ... more Abstract Robots provide us with a means to move around in, visualize, and interact with a remote physical world. We have exploited these physical properties coupled with the growing diversity of users on the World Wide Web (WWW) to create a WWW based telerobotic remote environment browser. This browser, called Mechanical Gaze, allows multiple remote WWW users to control a robot arm with an attached camera to explore a real remote environment.
We wish to increase the power of an arbitrary algorithm designed for nondegenerate input by allow... more We wish to increase the power of an arbitrary algorithm designed for nondegenerate input by allowing it to execute on all inputs. We concentrate on infinitesimal symbolic perturbations that do not affect the output for inputs in general position. Otherwise, if the problem mapping is continuous, the input and output space topology are at least as coarse as the real euclidean one, and the output space is connected, then our perturbations make the algorithm produce an output arbitrarily close or identical to the correct one.
Abstract Based on our findings from an ongoing pilot with shared computers in rural primary schoo... more Abstract Based on our findings from an ongoing pilot with shared computers in rural primary schools in Uttar Pradesh, India since 2001 and two follow-up field studies in the same schools in 2004, we propose some principles for designing educational technology for developing countries as hypotheses. They include constructivist, small-group collaborative learning through digital storytelling and integrating paper-with computer-based practices. We also discuss the need to balance pedagogy, usability and mobility.
Abstract Some of the geometric problems of interest to molecular biologists have macroscopic anal... more Abstract Some of the geometric problems of interest to molecular biologists have macroscopic analogues in the field of robotics. Two examples of such analogies are those between protein docking and model-based perception, and between ring closure and inverse kinematics. Molecular dynamics simulation, too, has much in common with the study of robot dynamics. In this paper we give a brief survey of recent work on these and related problems.
Abstract Server-based collaborative filtering systems have been very successful in e-commerce and... more Abstract Server-based collaborative filtering systems have been very successful in e-commerce and in direct recommendation applications. In future, they have many potential applications in ubiquitous computing settings. But today's schemes have problems such as loss of privacy, favoring retail monopolies, and with hampering diffusion of innovations. We propose an alternative model in which users control all of their log data.
Abstract Peg-in-hole insertion is not only a longstanding problem in robotics but the most common... more Abstract Peg-in-hole insertion is not only a longstanding problem in robotics but the most common automated mechanical assembly task. In this paper the authors present a high precision, self-calibrating peg-in-hole insertion strategy using several very simple, inexpensive, and accurate optical sensors. The self-calibrating feature allows the authors to achieve successful dead-reckoning insertions with tolerances of 25 microns without any accurate initial position information for the robot, pegs, or holes.
Abstract Probing is a common operation employed to reduce the position uncertainty of objects. Th... more Abstract Probing is a common operation employed to reduce the position uncertainty of objects. This thesis demonstrates a technique for constructing provably near optimal probing strategies for precisely localizing polygonal parts. This problem is shown to be dual to the well studied grasping problem of computing optimal finger placements as defined by Mishra et al.[18] and others [11, 17].
Abstract Part feeders, which separate and orient parts prior to packing and insertion, are critic... more Abstract Part feeders, which separate and orient parts prior to packing and insertion, are critical components of an assembly line. Existing feeders utilize off-plane vibrations of a rigid structure to convey parts along a track. Repeated part hopping/landing phases are concerns if parts are delicate and/or high positioning accuracy is required. Here we consider a simpler feeder design in which parts are in permanent contact with a horizontally-vibrating flat plate.
Abstract We give NC algorithms for determining the number and degrees of the absolute factors (fa... more Abstract We give NC algorithms for determining the number and degrees of the absolute factors (factors irreducible over the complex numbers C) of a multi-variate polynomial with rational coefficients. NC is the class of functions computable by logspace-uniform Boolean circuits of polynomial size and polylogarithmic depth. The measures of size of the input polynomial are its degree d, coefficient length c, number of variables n, and for sparse polynomials, the number of non-zero coefficients s.
Abstract. This article defines input perturbations so that an algorithm designed under certain re... more Abstract. This article defines input perturbations so that an algorithm designed under certain restrictions on the input can execute on arbitrary instances. A syntactic definition of perturbations is proposed and certain properties are specified under which an algorithm executed on perturbed input produces an output from which the exact answer can be recovered. A general framework is adopted for linear perturbations, which are efficient from the point of view of worst-case complexity.
We generalize the notion of characteristic polynomial for a system of linear equations to systems... more We generalize the notion of characteristic polynomial for a system of linear equations to systems of multivariate polynomial equations. The generalization is natural in the sense that it reduces to the usual definition when all the polynomials are linear. Whereas the constant coefficient of the characteristic polynomial of a linear system is the determinant, the constant coefficient of the general characteristic polynomial is the resultant of the system.
Abstract We implemented a localization method which partially solves the problems of placement an... more Abstract We implemented a localization method which partially solves the problems of placement and assembly. The idea was to localize objects precisely (1 mil) so that uncertainty was negligible and dead reckoned positions were sufficient. The method was g eared towards industry by using reliable accurate, robust, inexpensive, sensors; light beam sensors have already been used in manufacturing environments.
Abstract In this paper, we present LiQuID, a tool for seeing lighting quality in design. Photogra... more Abstract In this paper, we present LiQuID, a tool for seeing lighting quality in design. Photographs are useful vehicles for both describing and making assessments of architectural lighting systems. A significant barrier to using photographs during the design process relates to the sheer volume of renderings that needs to be analyzed.
Abstract This paper reports on the development of a visualization system for architectural lighti... more Abstract This paper reports on the development of a visualization system for architectural lighting designers. It starts by motivating the problem as both complex in its physics and social organization. Three iterations of prototypes for displaying time and space varying phenomena are discussed. Fieldwork is presented to identify where in practice they will be most effective. A set of user studies, one of which is analyzed in fine-grained detail, show how building designers incorporate visualization on hypothetical design problems.
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Papers by John Canny