The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the medical data management expert system at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Montreal Children's Hospital. The objective of this study is to provide a systematic method to evaluate and, progressively…

In this thesis, the concept of an intelligent system for the design and planning of electric power systems is developed. Such a system serves to preserve the vast body of power system design knowledge by identifying, structuring and consolidating it…

The structural design of power transmission lines requires knowledge from a variety of widely-dispersed expert sources. This thesis demonstrates how an expert system can be efficiently used to assemble and organize this knowledge in order to design a wide range…

In the context of teleoperated mobile robotics, the use of video data is one of the most desirable sensing modalities for vehicle guidance. Unfortunately, maintaining reliable noise-free video transmission, especially in cost sensitive teleoperation applications is a frequent problem., We…

Autonomous robotic operation in an unstructured or partially known environment requires sensing and sensor-based control. To overcome the problems with current "eye-in-hand" systems, miniature amplitude-based, infra-red proximity sensors are being studied. Obtaining position and velocity estimates of a rigid body…

A prototype electrostatic imager has been developed for megavoltage portal imaging in radiation therapy. The imager utilizes amorphous selenium (a-Se) with a front metal plate as the imager receptor and a high resolution voltmeter probe for image readout. Imaging characteristics…

Passively accepting measurements of the world is not enough, as the data obtained is always incomplete, and the inferences made from it uncertain to a degree which is often unacceptable. Machines that operate autonomously will always be faced with this…

This thesis describes an algorithm for detecting moving objects in images taken from a moving robot. The algorithm distinguishes itself from other similar, existing solutions in that it lends itself to a fast implementation, yet provides results which are reliable…

An object recognition system called ORB1 is proposed and implemented for use on a mobile robot. ORB utilizes the QUADRIS sensor platform developed at the Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM) at McGill University, which is composed of two BIRIS2 laser…