University of Houston-Downtown
Houston, Texas

• 1. Annual Report: University of Houston-Downtown
  • 1.1 Accomplishments
  • 1.2 Research
  • 1.3 Publication and Presentations
  • 1.4 Planned and Ongoing Activities Data Distribution Management in HLA

    1.1 Accomplishments

    
    A. Training/Meetings:

     

    • Mohsen Beheshti and Ongard Siriseangtaksin with students, Sean McRae, and Henry Segura, attended a two-week ModSAF/DIS training and workshop at Loral in Orlando.
      
      
    • Richard A. Aló, Mohsen Beheshti, Chenyi Hu, and Ongard Sirisaengtaksin attended the 13th DIS Workshop in September 1995 in Orlando.
      
      
    • Richard A. Aló and Sean McRae attended the 14th DIS Workshop in March 1996 in Orlando.
      
    • All PI and CoPI's with 2 students, Sean McRae and Pedro Supulveda attended the GSU kick-off event in October 1995.
      
      
    • Ongard Sirisaengtaksin attended the Sixth Conference on Computer Generated Forces and Behavioral Representation, July 23-25, 1996, Orlando, Florida.
      
      
    • Mohsen Beheshti, Ali Berrached, Chenyi Hu, and Ongard Sirisaengtaksin attended the DIS, HLA and ModSAF training at IST, July 29-31 1996, in Orlando.
      
      
    • Weekly meeting for research problem discussions on developing modeling tools for systems under uncertainty using Petri nets, fuzzy logic, and Markov chains; and computer security.
      
      
    • ADSRC weekly seminar was organized in Fall 1995 and Spring 1996 to promote ADSRC activities and research results.
      
    
    B. Conferences / Results of Research:
    
    
    • Chenyi Hu presented a paper entitled: Undergraduate Research Projects on Computational Sciences, at NAM-ECSU 1996 Summer Institute in Computational Science, July 1, 1996, Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
      
      
    • Mohsen Beheshti presented a paper entitled: A Navigational Language for an Object-Oriented DBMS, at the Arkansas Computer Conference, ACC '96, March 1996, Searcy Arkansas.
      
      
    • Chenyi Hu was involved in a mini-symposium, in which he presented a paper entitled: Reliable Approximations with Interval Computing, at SIAM 1996 Annual Meeting, July 25, 1996, Kansas City, Missouri.
      
      
    • Chenyi Hu presented a paper entitled: Some Undergraduate Research Projects on High Performance Computing at the University of Houston-Downtown, 1996 Computing Research Conference, April 18, 1996, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, pp. 32-33.
      
      
    • Chenyi Hu presented a paper entitled: A Study on Interval Lagrange Interpolation: Numerical Experiments, 1996 Computing Research Conference, April 18, 1996, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, pp. 13-15.
      
      
    • Ongard Sirisaengtaksin presented a paper entitled: An Adaptive Environment Modeling Method Under Certainty, at the Sixth Conference on Computer Generated Forces and Behavioral Representation, July 23-25, 1996, Orlando, Florida.
      
    
    C. Research assistant program
    

    The following undergraduate students were appointed as research assistants in Fall 1995 and Spring 1996:
    

     

    • Ms. Julie Bibb (female)
    • Mr. Richard Hawley
    • Ms. Stephanie Hoogendoorn (female)
    • Mr. Georgie Kutiev
    • Mr. To-Kwok Lau
    • Mr. Sean McRae
    • Mr. Juan Posadas-Ruiz (Hispanic)
    • Mr. Ruben Prado (Hispanic)
    • Mr. Henry Segura (Hispanic)
    • Mr. Pedro Sepulveda (Hispanic)

    The following undergraduate students were appointed as research assistants in Summer 1996:
    

     

    • Mr. Zhihui Hu
    • Mr. Derek Smith (African-American)
    • Mr. Georgie Kutiev

    D. Special programs

    The following special programs have been developed to attract more students especially underrepresented minority and women.
    

    • A CS Academy has been established for talented upper level high school students.
    • The Houston PREP program for middle school students completed its seventh year in the summer of 1996.
    • A course (five credit hours) which combines college algebra and pre calculus has been created. Through taking this course, students can get into CS curriculum earlier than it used to be.
    • Internships and co-op programs have been further developed. In the summer of 1996, some of our students worked at Los Alamos National Laboratories, IBM Research Triangle, Lockheed-Martin, STRICOM Research Laboratory (US Army) and Aberdeen Proving Grounds. These are new alliances developed as a result of this past year's grant awards.
    
    E. Student Activities / Training:
    
    
    • Sean McRae and Hery Segura attended an Advanced Distributed Simulation Technology and ModSAF Workshop at Loral, July 24-August 4, 1995, Orlando, Florida.
      
      
    • Attended and presented in ADSRC weekly seminar in Fall 1995 and Spring 1996.
      
      
    • In Spring 1996, all ten ADSRC Research Assistants attended an IITSEC Conference on Simulation Applications and Techniques held in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
      
      
    • Summer 1996 Internships
      
      • Internship at International Business Machines, Research Triangle Park, NC - Ruben Prado
        
      • Internship at Proctor & Gamble; Cincinnati, Ohio - Pedro Sepulveda, Jr.
        
      • Internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Los Alamos, New Mexico - Stephanie Hoogendoorn
        
      • Internship with STRICOM funded by U.S. Army; Project STOW-EX; Orlando, FL; Ft. Leavenworth, KS; Ft. Riley, KS- Sean McRae
        
    • Zhihui Hu worked on a sparse network optimization problem in Summer 1996.
      
    • Georgi Kutiev and Derek Smith carried out a simulation project using FuzzyCLIPS and OpenGL in Summer 1996.
      
    
    F. Visiting Partners Lab/Institutes:
    
    
    • Richard A. Aló and Sean McRae visited Aberdeen Proving Ground Facility in March 1996.
      
      
    • Col. James Wall from Aberdeen Proving Ground Lab came and presented research activities in May 1996.
      
      
    • Mohsen Beheshti, Ali Berrached, and Chenyi Hu visited ADSRC-FAMU to discuss collaboration on potential research problems. They also joined ADSRC-FAMU to visit Ft. Rucker in July 1996.
      

    G. Establishing Research Testbed:
    
    The ADSRC lab was setup with a network of SGI machines in February 1996. OpenGL and FuzzyCLIPS have been implemented on SGI to simulate our prototype on intelligent control systems with fuzzy rule engine. It is expected that this result will be extended to DIS environment using ModSAF and simulations will be experimented on SGI machines.

    1.2 Research

    
    Research Objective and Significance:
    
    The main objective for the first period was to acquire knowledge in advanced distributed simulation through training and workshops, and conduct a weekly research discussion as well as a weekly seminar to give both faculty and students necessary tools for initiating basic research problems in AI reasoning, graphics, and simulation relevant to DIS. Our focuses were on developing a prototype of an intelligent control system using fuzzy logic, rough sets, neural networks, FuzzyCLIPS and OpenGL to automate entities in simulations; and on developing modeling tools for systems under uncertainty using Petri nets, fuzzy logic, and Markov chains. ADSRC laboratory was housed and setup with a network of SGI machines for doing research and training faculty and students in advanced distributed simulation. A course in AI reasoning was developed to provide students with background in rough sets, fuzzy logic, neural networks, parallel computation, and interval computation.

    Army Relevance:
    
    Our initial development is in AI reasoning for intelligent control systems using fuzzy logic and fuzzy-neural networks. Rule language, FuzzyCLIPS, and OpenGL are the tools used in simulation to demonstrate the positive result of a developed intelligent control prototype in route planning. It is expected that this result will be extended to DIS environments such as ModSAF to enhance simulation. This development also gave the opportunity for our students to become familiar with simulation which is one of the ADSRC goals to increase human resources in DIS community.

    Methodology:
    
    To achieve our objectives, we plan 1) train students through ADSRC courses in fuzzy logic, rough sets, neural networks, parallel computation, and interval computation; graphics and simulations; computer networks and distributed systems; 2) faculty training/research enrichment; 3) strengthening ADSRC collaborative efforts; 4) develop algorithms using AI reasoning to improve simulation performance in DIS environment; 5) attend and make presentations at workshops and conferences, and 6) interact with the army linkage partners.

    1.3 Publication and Presentation

    Richard A. Aló, Ali Berrached, Mohsen Beheshti, André de Korvin, Chenyi Hu, and Ongard Sirisaengtaksin, An Adaptive Environment Modeling Method Under Certainty the Proceedings of the Sixth Conference on Computer Generated Forces and Behavioral Representation, July 23-25, 1996, Orlando, Florida, pp. 573-581.
    
    Richard A. Alo´ and Chenyi Hu, Some Undergraduate Research Projects on High Performance Computing at the University of Houston-Downtown, 1996 Computing Research Conference, April 18, 1996, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, pp. 32-33.

    Mohsen Beheshti, Concurrency Control in an Object-Oriented DBMS by Exploiting Navigation at the 7th International Hong Kong Computer Society Database Workshop, May 1996.

    Mohsen Beheshti, A Navigational Transaction Language for an Object-Oriented DBMS, Arkansas Computer Conference, ACC '96, March 1996

    Mohsen Beheshti, Query Optimization in an Object-Oriented Database Management System, The 1996 yearbook to the Handbook of Data Management, Auerbach Publications, August 1996.

    Andre´ de Korvin, Selecting Optimal Hedging Tools, Proc. of the 3rd World Congress On Expert Systems (Seoul, Korea, Feb. 1996) 139-146. Co-authors O. Duangploy and S. Hashemi.

    Andre´ de Korvin, Decision Making On The Basis of Expected Cost Variance: A Fuzzy Set Approach, Managerial Finance, Human Information Processing In Business Decision Making. Vol. 22, No. 11 (1996) 18-29.

    Andre´ de Korvin, Transition Probabilities For Markov Chains Having Fuzzy States, Accepted in the J. of Stochastic Analysis and Applications.

    1.4 Planned and Ongoing Activities

    A. Research Activities
    
    1. Knowledge Acquisition And Machine Learning Using Fuzzy Logic And Fuzzy-Neural Networks (André de Korvin, Ongard Sirisaengatksin, and students, Georgi Kutiev and Derek Smith):
    
    • Developed a method using fuzzy-neural networks to generate fuzzy rules from conflicting, ambiguous, imprecise, and incomplete data
      
    • Developed an intelligent control system for automated moving objects such as vehicles and flying objects with and without obstacles using fuzzy-neural networks
      
    • Using fuzzy logic and FuzzyClips to develop a prototype of an intelligent control system in a simulation environment to automate moving objects under a given terrain scenario. A general set of fuzzy rules is derived according to the parameters of a terrain such elevation, trees, buildings, etc. Then FuzzyClips, a rule-based language, and OpenGL are used to simulate the intelligent control prototype
      
    • Implement a hierarchical structure of sets of fuzzy rules the developed prototype of an intelligent control system with fuzzy rules for command control level of company and brigade in a distributed simulation environment using ModSAF
      
    • Develop a prototype of machine learning system using the established fuzzy-neural networks, with fuzzy rules as input patterns, to automate control moving objects for a given terrain
      
    • Integrate the trained fuzzy-neural networks to automate entities in distributed simulations
      
    • Develop an approach using genetic algorithms to train fuzzy-neural networks with more than one output
      
    
    2. Modeling Tools For Systems Under Uncertainty Using Petri Nets, Fuzzy Logic, And Markov Chains (Richard A. Aló, Mohsen Beheshti, Ali Berrached, André de Korvin, Chenyi Hu, and Ongard Sirisaengtaksin)
    
    • Developed a reasoning method using new types of Petri nets with fuzzy transitions and fuzzy tokens, and Markov chain with fuzzy states to model systems under conditions of uncertain and changing environments
      
    • Develop a fuzzy stochastic Petri net model to decrease the number of states in a distributed network
      
    • Implement intervals / fuzzy sets in the case of imprecise firing rates
      
    • Apply partial firing for a Petri net with infinitesimal generation
      
    • Petri Nets for simulating cooperative behavior in CGF systems
      
    • Develop a model for computer security in distributed system
      
    
    3. Relevance Filtering in DIS/HLA (Richard A. Aló, Mohsen Beheshti, Ali Berrached, André de Korvin, Chenyi Hu, and Ongard Sirisaengtaksin)
    The basic DIS concept is that each simulated entity must inform all other entities of its activities by broadcasting PDUs. Each entity receives more PDUs than it sends out and most of the PDUs received by an entity are irrelevant to its activity. Previous approaches proposed to filter out irrelevant PDUs in the context of DIS. We will develop methods of exploiting the mechanisms provided by the High Level Architecture to perform relevance filtering efficiently.

    4. Parallel and Reliable Computing (Richard A. Aló, Mohsen Beheshti, Ali Berrached, Chenyi Hu, Ongard Sirisaengtaksin, and students, Angelina Cardenas, Stephanie Hoogendoorn, Zhihui Hu, Ruben Prado, Pedro Sepulveda Jr.)
    

    • Develop an interval linear algebra software library
      
    • Solving large-scale nonlinear systems on parallel computers
      
    • Reliable approximation and optimization
      

    B. Student Activities

    1. Develop courses on computer networks and simulation
    2. Update and Modify the course on rough sets, fuzzy logic, neural networks, parallel and interval computations
    3. Organize DIS and ModSAF training
    4. Organize a weekly seminar