Factory automation and robotics
Selected from papers presented at the Symposium on Factory Automation and Robotics held September 9-11, 1985, at New York University
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
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Impact of the technological environment on programmer/analyst job outcomes
Recent research has shown that key DP/IS personnel job outcomes (e.g., turnover, organizational commitment, job satisfaction) are affected by job design, leadership characteristics, and role variables. This study investigates another class of variables, the technological environment faced by DP/IS personnel, that might impact these job outcomes. The technological environment includes (1) development methodologies employed, (2) project teams and reporting relationships, and (3) work characteristics. Variables from all classes were found to impact DP/IS job outcomes. Over 11 percent of the variance in DP/IS job satisfaction is explained by these variables.
Research on legged machines can lead to the construction of useful legged vehicles and help us to understand legged locomotion in animals.
The impact of robotics on computer science
The rapid development of robotics and the resulting need for computer scientists to be better trained in traditional mathematics necessitate changes in computer science curricula.
Opportunities for research on numerical control machining
Numerical control (NC) machining could be reinvigorated by adapting robotic software technology. Regrettably, pressures are mounting in industry to constrain robots to NC standards, and the academic community views NC as an obsolete, solved problem, with little remaining scholarly challenge. Grossman examines the current status of APT, an NC language, and proposes the merging of APT with a modern robotics language.
A music-description language designed to facilitate both electronic communication and publication-quality printing of musical scores incorporates a syntax for expressing concurrency and two-dimensionality and places new demands on text formatters.
Abstraction-based software development
A five-year experience with abstraction-based software-development techniques in the university environment indicates that the investment required to support the paradigm in practice is returned in terms of greater ability to control complexity in large projects—provided there exists a set of software tools sufficient to support the approach.
TID—a translation invariant data structure for storing images
There are a number of techniques for representing pictorial information, among them are borders, arrays, and skeletons. Quadtrees are often used to store black and white picture information. A variety of techniques have been suggested for improving quadtrees, including linear quadtrees, QMATs (quadtree medial axis transform), forests of quadtrees, etc. The major purpose of these improvements is to reduce the storage required without greatly increasing the processing costs. All of these methods suffer from the fact that the structure of the underlying quadtree can be very sensitive to the placement of the origin.
In this paper we discuss a translation invariant data structure (which we name TID) for storing and processing images based on the medial axis transform of the image that consists of all the maximal black squares contained in the image. We also discuss the performance of TID with other existing structures such as QMATs, forests of quadtrees, and normalized quadtrees. Some discussion on the union and intersection of images using TID is included.
The British Nationality Act as a logic program
The formalization of legislation and the development of computer systems to assist with legal problem solving provide a rich domain for developing and testing artificial-intelligence technology.
An empirical comparison of priority-queue and event-set implementations
Execution times for a variety of priority-queue implementations are compared under the hold model, showing many to be faster than implicit heaps.
Embedded menus: selecting items in context
In many situations, embedded menus represent an attractive alternative to the more traditional explicit menus, particularly in touchtext, spelling checkers, language-based program editors, and graphics-based systems.
Computers, complexity, and the Statue of Liberty restoration
Twentieth-century techniques such as computer-aided engineering and finite-element analysis were used to restore the nineteenth-century monument.
The structure of microcomputer file systems
With an understanding of the structure of microcomputer file systems and what causes incompatibilities between them, it is possible to write software that will enable one system to read files written by another—provided they have physically compatible hardware.
Andrew: a distributed personal computing environment
The Information Technology Center (ITC), a collaborative effort between IBM and Carnegie-Mellon University, is in the process of creating Andrew, a prototype computing and communication system for universities. This article traces the origins of Andrew, discusses its goals and strategies, and gives an overview of the current status of its implementation and usage.
The relationship between benchmark tests and microcomputer price
A highly accurate model predicts microcomputer price based on benchmark performance by analyzing the impact on predicted price of fluctuations in system configuration and benchmark results.
A comment on “a fast parallel algorithm for thinning digital patterns”
A fast parallel thinning algorithm for digital patterns is presented. This algorithm is an improved version of the algorithms introduced by Zhang and Suen [5] and Stefanelli and Rosenfeld [3]. An experiment using an Apple II and an Epson printer was conducted. The results show that the improved algorithm overcomes some of the disadvantages found in [5] by preserving necessary and essential structures for certain patterns which should not be deleted and maintains very fast speed, from about 1.5 to 2.3 times faster than the four-step and two-step methods described in [3] although the resulting skeletons look basically the same.
Program style analysis: a natural by-product of program compilation
Analyzing program style may be properly considered an integral part of program compilation—as successfully implemented in two style-analysis tools for Fortran 77: AUTOMARK and ASSESS. The authors look forward to the day when all major language compilers routinely provide a standard style-analysis vector for users to interpret as they see fit.
Organizational power and the information services department: a reexamination
In a recent application of the theory of strategic contingencies in three large multinational firms, Lucas found that information services departments were perceived by others as having low levels of power and influence and suggested a variety of reasons for the results. This note continues the application of the theory of strategic contingencies to the information services department by describing a study of intraorganizational power that uses basically the same procedures as the Lucas study and obtains similar results. In an effort to stimulate future power-related research in the information systems area, this note concludes by suggesting several reasons, beyond those given by Lucas, for the levels of power attributed to information services departments.
Combinatorics, complexity, and randomness
The 1985 Turing Award winner presents his perspective on the development of the field that has come to be called theoretical computer science.
A workstation model for an interactive graphics system
By introducing the concept of an abstract graphics device called the workstation, an existing graphics system is generalized to support multiple devices in applications software.
Structured tools and conditional logic: an empirical investigation
Prior research has identified two psychological processes that appear to be used by programmers when they perform design and coding tasks: (a) taxonomizing—identifying the conditions that evoke particular actions; and (b) sequencing—converting the taxa into a linear sequence of program code. Three structured tools—structured English, decision tables, and decision trees—were investigated in a laboratory experiment to determine how they facilitated these two processes. When taxonomizing had to be undertaken, structured English outperformed decision tables, and decision trees outperformed structured English. When sequencing had to be undertaken, decision trees and structured English outperformed decision tables, but decision trees and structured English evoked the same level of performance.
A total of 840 junior and senior-level undergraduate business students particpated in three experiments that compared computer-generated graphical forms of data presentation to traditional tabular reports. The first experiment compared tables and bar charts for their effects on readability, interpretation accuracy, and decision making. No differences in interpretation accuracy or decision quality were observed for the two groups, although tabular reports were rated as "easier to read and understand" than graphical reports. The second experiment compared line plots to tables for their effects on interpretation accuracy and decision quality. Subjects with graphical reports outperformed those with tables. There were no meaningful differences in interpretation accuracy across treatment groups. The third experiment compared graphical and tabular reports for their ability to convey a "message" to the reader. Only in situations in which a vast amount of information was presented and relatively simple impressions were to be made, did subjects given graphs outperform those using tables.
This program of cumulative experiments indicates that generalized claims of superiority of graphic presentation are unsupported, at least for decision-related activities. In fact, the experiments suggest that the effectiveness of the data display format is largely a function of the characteristics of the task at hand, and that impressions gleaned from "one shot" studies of the effectiveness of the use of graphs may be nothing more than situationally dependent artifacts.
In the fall of 1981, a Japanese report officially initiated the quest for fifth-generation computers that would encompass the functions of knowledge processing and artificial intelligence. The conceptual underpinnings behind Prolog—Japan's language of choice for these activities—are presented here in a way that suggests why Prolog or a similar language might be considered a model for designing the computers of the future.
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