Michael Grauer - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Michael Grauer

Volume 2: 27th Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Parts A and B, 2007

ABSTRACT There has been a great deal of interest recently in the problem of long term archiving o... more ABSTRACT There has been a great deal of interest recently in the problem of long term archiving of digital data. This is especially so in engineering design, where the CAD software tools evolve rapidly but the manufactured products themselves have much longer lifetimes whose support requires archived design data in a usable form. The ISO Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model is a widely used standard for digital archiving, with an essential piece of this model being a file format registry. A file format registry is a system for housing information about file formats that allows for correct interpretation, rendering, storage, and translation of digital files. Currently there exists no file format registry specifically for CAD file formats. This paper explains the purpose of a file format registry for CAD in the greater context of digital archiving, and then presents our approach to creating a CAD file format registry using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) language of the Semantic Web. By creating our file format registry in RDF, we allow archival systems to perform automated reasoning on the stored files. We hope that this paper will increase awareness of this element of engineering design repositories in the research community of this conference.

2009 SIAM/ACM Joint Conference on Geometric and Physical Modeling on - SPM '09, 2009

ABSTRACT Digital preservation is the mitigation of the deleterious effects of technology obsolesc... more ABSTRACT Digital preservation is the mitigation of the deleterious effects of technology obsolescence, media degradation, and fading human memory. For engineering, design, manufacturing, and physics-based simulation data this requires formats that are semantically accessible for 30-to-50 year lifespans. One of the fundamental challenges is the development of digital geometry-centric engineering representations that are self describing and assured to be interpretable over the long lifespans required by archival applications. This paper introduces the challenge of long-term preservation of digital geometric models. We describe a digital preservation case study for an engineering model which required, for just a single part, over 3.5 GB of data, including 39 file formats and over 750 distinct model and shape files. Based on lessons learned in this case study, we present a framework for enhancing the preservation of geometry-centric engineering knowledge. This framework is currently being used on a number of projects in engineering education.

Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 2013

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of rodent brains enables study of the development and the integr... more Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of rodent brains enables study of the development and the integrity of the brain under certain conditions (alcohol, drugs etc.). However, these images are difficult to analyze for biomedical researchers with limited image processing experience. In this paper we present an image processing pipeline running on a Midas server, a web-based data storage system. It is composed of the following steps: rigid registration, skull-stripping, average computation, average parcellation, parcellation propagation to individual subjects, and computation of region-based statistics on each image. The pipeline is easy to configure and requires very little image processing knowledge. We present results obtained by processing a data set using this pipeline and demonstrate how this pipeline can be used to find differences between populations.

Computer-Aided Design, 2011

... For example, in Architecture,Engineering and Construction(AEC) domains, the generative de-scr... more ... For example, in Architecture,Engineering and Construction(AEC) domains, the generative de-scriptions in ... and the Core Plan Representation(CPR)9. In the design and manufacturing ... copied and some of the packaging information can be changed; and transformation, where an ...

This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and... more This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and manufacturing and presents a methodology to apply knowledge representation and semantic techniques to develop Digital Engineering Archives. This work is part of an ongoing, multiuniversity, effort to create Cyber-Infrastructure-Based Engineering Repositories for Undergraduates (CIBER-U) to support engineering design education. The technical approach is to use knowledge representation techniques to create formal models of engineering data elements, workflows and processes. With these formal engineering knowledge and processes can be captured and preserved with some guarantee of long-term interpretability. The paper presents examples of how the techniques can be used to encode specific engineering information packages and workflows. These techniques are being integrated into a semantic Wiki that supports the CIBER-U engineering education activities across nine universities and involving over 3,500 students since 2006.

With the increasing interest in ubiquitous computing and mobile robotics, distributed algorithms ... more With the increasing interest in ubiquitous computing and mobile robotics, distributed algorithms for solving compu- tational geometry problems in a decentralized fashion will grow in importance. This paper describes a mapping of dis- cretized variants of the art gallery problem to a distributed constraint optimization problem. A testbed using several complete, optimal, distributed algorithms is presented for solving the problem in a robust and fault-tolerant manner, and without the need for centralization. Finally, some prun- ing techniques are analyzed for their eect on the size of the problem state space. or cameras that can guard a fixed number of paintings hung on the walls of a polygonal gallery. In the variants considered in this paper, the number of guards is fixed and the goal is to find positions for the guards within the polygon such that the number of guarded paintings is maximized. Specifically, the focus is on coordinating robotic guards that communi- cate with each other to find a globally optimal solution in a decentralized manner. This problem was proposed in (2), however their solution (and the traditional problem) makes assumptions that are not realistic for robotic guards with limited vision and angle of view. A large class of problems that are inherently spa- tially or logically distributed can be modeled naturally as Distributed Constraint OPtimization (DCOP) problems. DCOP is an active area of the constraint programming community and a number of algorithms have been devel- oped to solve DCOP problems (3, 4). Formulating prob- lems as DCOP aords the opportunity to take advantage of the variety of existing algorithms and techniques for reason- ing about and solving DCOP problems. The robots can be placed in an arbitrary gallery and determine where to stand without any human intervention, supervising computing de- vice or central point of failure. Additionally, by solving the problem as a DCOP, robots can dynamically re-solve for the (new) optimal solution if one or more of the robots fails. In the remainder of this paper we first provide a scenario motivating the need to solve computational geometry prob- lems in a robust, fault-tolerant and decentralized fashion. Next, we give background on DCOP and the mapping of the CG problems we examined to DCOP. We then describe a testbed that we created to compare dierent techniques for

Ai Magazine, 2010

This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and... more This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and manufacturing and presents a methodology to apply knowledge representation and semantic techniques to develop Digital Engineering Archives. This work is part of an ongoing, multiuniversity, effort to create Cyber-Infrastructure-Based Engineering Repositories for Undergraduates (CIBER-U) to support engineering design education. The technical approach is to use knowledge representation techniques to create formal models of engineering data elements, workflows and processes. With these formal engineering knowledge and processes can be captured and preserved with some guarantee of long-term interpretability. The paper presents examples of how the techniques can be used to encode specific engineering information packages and workflows. These techniques are being integrated into a semantic Wiki that supports the CIBER-U engineering education activities across nine universities and involving over 3500 students since 2006.

Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 2013

Image processing is an important quantitative technique for neuroscience researchers, but difficu... more Image processing is an important quantitative technique for neuroscience researchers, but difficult for those who lack experience in the field. In this paper we present a web-based platform that allows an expert to create a brain image processing pipeline, enabling execution of that pipeline even by those biomedical researchers with limited image processing knowledge. These tools are implemented as a plugin for Midas, an open-source toolkit for creating web based scientific data storage and processing platforms. Using this plugin, an image processing expert can construct a pipeline, create a web-based User Interface, manage jobs, and visualize intermediate results.

Volume 2: 27th Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Parts A and B, 2007

ABSTRACT There has been a great deal of interest recently in the problem of long term archiving o... more ABSTRACT There has been a great deal of interest recently in the problem of long term archiving of digital data. This is especially so in engineering design, where the CAD software tools evolve rapidly but the manufactured products themselves have much longer lifetimes whose support requires archived design data in a usable form. The ISO Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model is a widely used standard for digital archiving, with an essential piece of this model being a file format registry. A file format registry is a system for housing information about file formats that allows for correct interpretation, rendering, storage, and translation of digital files. Currently there exists no file format registry specifically for CAD file formats. This paper explains the purpose of a file format registry for CAD in the greater context of digital archiving, and then presents our approach to creating a CAD file format registry using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) language of the Semantic Web. By creating our file format registry in RDF, we allow archival systems to perform automated reasoning on the stored files. We hope that this paper will increase awareness of this element of engineering design repositories in the research community of this conference.

2009 SIAM/ACM Joint Conference on Geometric and Physical Modeling on - SPM '09, 2009

ABSTRACT Digital preservation is the mitigation of the deleterious effects of technology obsolesc... more ABSTRACT Digital preservation is the mitigation of the deleterious effects of technology obsolescence, media degradation, and fading human memory. For engineering, design, manufacturing, and physics-based simulation data this requires formats that are semantically accessible for 30-to-50 year lifespans. One of the fundamental challenges is the development of digital geometry-centric engineering representations that are self describing and assured to be interpretable over the long lifespans required by archival applications. This paper introduces the challenge of long-term preservation of digital geometric models. We describe a digital preservation case study for an engineering model which required, for just a single part, over 3.5 GB of data, including 39 file formats and over 750 distinct model and shape files. Based on lessons learned in this case study, we present a framework for enhancing the preservation of geometry-centric engineering knowledge. This framework is currently being used on a number of projects in engineering education.

Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 2013

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of rodent brains enables study of the development and the integr... more Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of rodent brains enables study of the development and the integrity of the brain under certain conditions (alcohol, drugs etc.). However, these images are difficult to analyze for biomedical researchers with limited image processing experience. In this paper we present an image processing pipeline running on a Midas server, a web-based data storage system. It is composed of the following steps: rigid registration, skull-stripping, average computation, average parcellation, parcellation propagation to individual subjects, and computation of region-based statistics on each image. The pipeline is easy to configure and requires very little image processing knowledge. We present results obtained by processing a data set using this pipeline and demonstrate how this pipeline can be used to find differences between populations.

Computer-Aided Design, 2011

... For example, in Architecture,Engineering and Construction(AEC) domains, the generative de-scr... more ... For example, in Architecture,Engineering and Construction(AEC) domains, the generative de-scriptions in ... and the Core Plan Representation(CPR)9. In the design and manufacturing ... copied and some of the packaging information can be changed; and transformation, where an ...

This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and... more This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and manufacturing and presents a methodology to apply knowledge representation and semantic techniques to develop Digital Engineering Archives. This work is part of an ongoing, multiuniversity, effort to create Cyber-Infrastructure-Based Engineering Repositories for Undergraduates (CIBER-U) to support engineering design education. The technical approach is to use knowledge representation techniques to create formal models of engineering data elements, workflows and processes. With these formal engineering knowledge and processes can be captured and preserved with some guarantee of long-term interpretability. The paper presents examples of how the techniques can be used to encode specific engineering information packages and workflows. These techniques are being integrated into a semantic Wiki that supports the CIBER-U engineering education activities across nine universities and involving over 3,500 students since 2006.

With the increasing interest in ubiquitous computing and mobile robotics, distributed algorithms ... more With the increasing interest in ubiquitous computing and mobile robotics, distributed algorithms for solving compu- tational geometry problems in a decentralized fashion will grow in importance. This paper describes a mapping of dis- cretized variants of the art gallery problem to a distributed constraint optimization problem. A testbed using several complete, optimal, distributed algorithms is presented for solving the problem in a robust and fault-tolerant manner, and without the need for centralization. Finally, some prun- ing techniques are analyzed for their eect on the size of the problem state space. or cameras that can guard a fixed number of paintings hung on the walls of a polygonal gallery. In the variants considered in this paper, the number of guards is fixed and the goal is to find positions for the guards within the polygon such that the number of guarded paintings is maximized. Specifically, the focus is on coordinating robotic guards that communi- cate with each other to find a globally optimal solution in a decentralized manner. This problem was proposed in (2), however their solution (and the traditional problem) makes assumptions that are not realistic for robotic guards with limited vision and angle of view. A large class of problems that are inherently spa- tially or logically distributed can be modeled naturally as Distributed Constraint OPtimization (DCOP) problems. DCOP is an active area of the constraint programming community and a number of algorithms have been devel- oped to solve DCOP problems (3, 4). Formulating prob- lems as DCOP aords the opportunity to take advantage of the variety of existing algorithms and techniques for reason- ing about and solving DCOP problems. The robots can be placed in an arbitrary gallery and determine where to stand without any human intervention, supervising computing de- vice or central point of failure. Additionally, by solving the problem as a DCOP, robots can dynamically re-solve for the (new) optimal solution if one or more of the robots fails. In the remainder of this paper we first provide a scenario motivating the need to solve computational geometry prob- lems in a robust, fault-tolerant and decentralized fashion. Next, we give background on DCOP and the mapping of the CG problems we examined to DCOP. We then describe a testbed that we created to compare dierent techniques for

Ai Magazine, 2010

This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and... more This paper introduces the challenge of digital preservation in the area of engineering design and manufacturing and presents a methodology to apply knowledge representation and semantic techniques to develop Digital Engineering Archives. This work is part of an ongoing, multiuniversity, effort to create Cyber-Infrastructure-Based Engineering Repositories for Undergraduates (CIBER-U) to support engineering design education. The technical approach is to use knowledge representation techniques to create formal models of engineering data elements, workflows and processes. With these formal engineering knowledge and processes can be captured and preserved with some guarantee of long-term interpretability. The paper presents examples of how the techniques can be used to encode specific engineering information packages and workflows. These techniques are being integrated into a semantic Wiki that supports the CIBER-U engineering education activities across nine universities and involving over 3500 students since 2006.

Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 2013

Image processing is an important quantitative technique for neuroscience researchers, but difficu... more Image processing is an important quantitative technique for neuroscience researchers, but difficult for those who lack experience in the field. In this paper we present a web-based platform that allows an expert to create a brain image processing pipeline, enabling execution of that pipeline even by those biomedical researchers with limited image processing knowledge. These tools are implemented as a plugin for Midas, an open-source toolkit for creating web based scientific data storage and processing platforms. Using this plugin, an image processing expert can construct a pipeline, create a web-based User Interface, manage jobs, and visualize intermediate results.