We describe below the five laboratory facilities available in CACS.
1. Automated Reasoning Laboratory
The Automated Reasoning Laboratory was established at CACS through a grant from the Louisiana Education Quality Support Fund. This laboratory is dedicated to providing a state-of-the-art facility to stimulate and carry out fundamental and applied research in the area of artificial intelligence. Through the extensive development of this laboratory, many research projects have been initiated. Major ongoing research projects include: Representation and Reasoning about Design Knowledge, Temporal Reasoning and Problem Solving, Planning and Scheduling, and Specification and Synthesis of Expert Systems
The Automated Reasoning Laboratory has
six SPARC Workstations, a file server with 2 gigabytes of memory, DAT backup
systems, a Symbolics UX1200 co-processor that plugs into the file server,
two IBM 486-series compatible personal computers, an HP-3 laser jet printer
and other peripheral hardware devices. Software generally used in this
laboratory includes CLIPS 5.1, GBB, Net GBB, ReMind, PDC Prolog, Level
5, Designer’s Work Bench, Genera Application Delivery Software, Joshua,
Statice, Otter, ITP, different versions of Lisp, C, C++, several word processors
and utilities. We have also obtained public domain software that enhances
the research and development activities at the laboratory.
2. Intelligent Robotic Systems Laboratory
IRSL has been established as a center for research in the areas of Robotics and Automation, Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM), Apparel-CIM and Intelligent Machines. Its main purpose is to develop the theory and prototypes of intelligent machines and automated manufacturing systems capable of executing various complicated tasks in uncertain environments with minimum supervision and interaction with a human operator. Such intelligent-machines systems have a wide range of applications, from the unstructured environment of space automation to the structured industrial assembly lines of the automated factories of the future. The emphasis is on different areas: visual and non-visual sensors, remote sensing, control theory, computer hardware and neural network and other software, real-time modeling and control of intelligent robotic systems, design of multi-sensory robotic systems, flexible and computer integrated manufacturing systems. Moreover, research is also being conducted in the area of textiles/apparel manufacturing, with emphasis in automating the job floor environment. The research in the IRSL covers a wide range of topics: development of hierarchically intelligent control systems for general and specific purpose robotic systems; development of high-level decision schemata as decision devices for process control oriented computers; design of robust real-time controllers for single and cooperating robot manipulators; development of high-level languages for industrial robotic systems; hierarchically distributed multiprocessors; advanced robotic color vision algorithms for real-time object recognition and tracking; automation techniques for manufacturing processes.
The current list of equipment in IRSL includes:
An AdeptOne SCARA robot with a wrist force sensor, a high accuracy position
system and a two camera gray scale vision system, an AdeptThree SCARA robot,
a PUMA 560C Mark II Series manipulator, two Toshimba robots, two conveyor
belts with variable speeds, several custom made grippers, a JVC color camera,
the SILMA graphic workstation for interactive design, programming and simulation
of robotic and automated manufacturing systems, several Petri Net software
packages and state-of-the-art SUN workstations. IRSL will promote research
in the area of Robotics and Advanced Automation and will provide the fundamentals
for the design of intelligent machines of the future as a service to the
scientific and industrial community. Furthermore, IRSL will be an important
facility within CACS for training graduate students.
3. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Laboratory
The Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Laboratory consist of facilities equipped to support research in visual perception. An information processing task with the complexity of visual perception requires the formulation of a computational theory, the consideration of neural network and other algorithmic development as well as data representation, and implementation issues. The data acquisition as well as early vision processing capabilities of the dedicated image processing hardware supports the experimentation and prototyping of vision algorithms. In addition to the computer vision equipment, the laboratory can provide support in the areas of artificial neural networks and inductive learning research. An extensive software library that supports the development of neural architecture is available on the CACS Sun-3 and Sun-4 network.
The Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Laboratory is presently equipped with six major pieces of hardware/software:
b. A White Scanner, laser-based range imaging system, from Technical Arts Inc., Seattle, WA. The testbed is a X-Y motion controlled platform which can be positioned with an accuracy of 0.001 inches. Any objects of size up to 10" by 10" may be placed on the testbed, and the Z-depth is measured with an accuracy of 0.001 inches.
c. A 32-node, MIMD parallel computer from Cogent Research Inc. Its operating system is QiX. The parallel program development environment is Kernel Linda; and the primary language is C++. This machine is also available on the CACS local area network, and serves as an X-Client.
e. A Sun SPARC station, 10 color workstations with 1 GB of disk space connected to the CACS network. The software support includes: mathematica, MACSYMA, MATLAB.
f. The software environment is based on
UIDAS, USL’s image data analysis software, which is designed to work with
Xwindow, and IBM PC MS-windows. We are constantly expanding and upgrading
UIDAS.
The evolution of Very Large Scale Integration technology has changed the digital and computing systems design process dramatically. The impact of this technology has been significant on all levels of design: algorithmic, functional, structural, logical, circuit, and layout.
VLSI has special and unique features which necessitate a fresh look at the design techniques and methods. New design strategies are required based on the coordination among the functional definition, the architecture, the circuit design and the physical layout implementation. Moreover, the design process of the electronic systems using printed circuit boards has also changed.
The main theme of the new design strategies is integration. A well equipped integrated digital systems laboratory is a vital resource necessary to cope with the new trends for both teaching and research in the Center. Such a laboratory has three major roles: (1) to support research projects in VLSI, testing, and silicon compilers; (2) to support experimentation and prototyping projects such as multiprocessor systems, fault-tolerance design, and applications of parallel/distributed architectures; (3) to develop an integrated design environment for ASICs for image and video processing applications.
The VLSI Laboratory is equipped with a
Sun SPARC fileserver with 3 GB of disk space and 7 Sun SPARC workstations.
In addition, the laboratory operates a Versatec electrostatic color plotter,
an HP pen plotter and a PC.
5. Software Research Laboratory
Business, government, and technical endeavors ranging from financial transactions to space missions increasingly require complex software systems. The complexity of the software arises from stringent requirements, the need to support a range of interactions with the environment in real time, and/or certain structural features. These attributes make software difficult to produce, and they often require large-scale projects involving the efforts of several hundreds -- even a few thousand -- programmers, software engineers, and application experts. At this juncture the Computer Science community is faced with two problems: (1) developing techniques to improve the quality and reliability of software, and (2) increasing the nation’s capacity to produce software so as to meet increasing demand. The two issues are crucial to make high technology businesses in the United States more competitive in the global market place. The SRL at USL provides the infrastructure to address these two problems. The mission of the laboratory is to contribute in the areas of methods and tools used to develop and maintain large software systems, innovative software development paradigm, and quantitative control of software development processes. Over the next five years, the laboratory will focus on the several areas in large software systems (software architectures, reusable components, and measures of software information content) and software development paradigms (interactive systems development paradigm, semantics directed configuration management system, and measures of software development processes in a controlled environment).
The SRL consists of eight DEC RISC/Ultrix 5200 workstations, one 486 PC, two laser printers, and one optical scanner. The workstations are loaded with CASE tools covering the various phases in the waterfall model of the software life cycle. Some of these tools are developed in-house.