The proper interpretation of measurements from an optical fiber sensor requires a full understanding of its mechanical response to external action and the corresponding change in optical output. To quantify the mechanical behavior it is necessary to know the mechanical…

In recent years, researchers in artificial intelligence have become interested in replicating human physical reasoning talents in computers. One of the most important skills in this area is predicting how physical systems will behave. This thesis discusses an implemented program…

This paper describes a system for the computer understanding of English. The system answers questions, executes commands, and accepts information in normal English dialog. It uses semantic information and context to understand discourse and to disambiguate sentences. It combines a…

All intelligence relies on search --- for example, the search for an intelligent agent's next action. Search is only likely to succeed in resource-bounded agents if they have already been biased towards finding the right answer. In artificial agents, the…

This paper demonstrates that it is possible to generate a reasonably accurate coordinate system on randomly distributed processors, using only local information and local communication. By coordinate systems we imply that each element assigns itself a logical coordinate that maps…

Conversational interfaces have received much attention as a promising natural communication channel between humans and computers. A typical conversational interface consists of three major systems: speech understanding, dialog management and spoken language generation. In such a conversational interface, speech recognition…

This dissertation analyzes the strategic implications of customization policies available to companies that must simultaneously provide service and learn about their customers through automated interfaces. The first part of the dissertation lays out the theoretical framework within which the analysis…

Signature schemes are fundamental cryptographic primitives, useful as a stand-alone application, and as a building block in the design of secure protocols and other cryptographic objects. In this thesis, we study both the uses that signature schemes find in protocols,…

Current methods for bipedal walking control include playback of recorded joint motion and the derivation of dynamic equations to map desired forces at the body to the required torques at the joints. Both methods require a significant amount of up-front…

This thesis proposes a miethodology for the design of man-machine interfaces by combining top-down and bottom-up processes in vision. From a computational perspective, we propose that the scientific-cognitive question of combining top-down and bottom-up knowledge is similar to the engineering…