@phdthesis{Heck2005, author = {Heck, Klaus}, title = {Wireless LAN performance studies in the context of 4G networks}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-14896}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Wireless communication is nothing new. The first data transmissions based on electromagnetic waves have been successfully performed at the end of the 19th century. However, it took almost another century until the technology was ripe for mass market. The first mobile communication systems based on the transmission of digital data were introduced in the late 1980s. Within just a couple of years they have caused a revolution in the way people communicate. The number of cellular phones started to outnumber the fixed telephone lines in many countries and is still rising. New technologies in 3G systems, such as UMTS, allow higher data rates and support various kinds of multimedia services. Nevertheless, the end of the road in wireless communication is far from being reached. In the near future, the Internet and cellular phone systems are expected to be integrated to a new form of wireless system. Bandwidth requirements for a rich set of wireless services, e.g.\ video telephony, video streaming, online gaming, will be easily met. The transmission of voice data will just be another IP based service. On the other hand, building such a system is by far not an easy task. The problems in the development of the UMTS system showed the high complexity of wireless systems with support for bandwidth-hungry, IP-based services. But the technological challenges are just one difficulty. Telecommunication systems are planned on a world-wide basis, such that standard bodies, governments, institutions, hardware vendors, and service providers have to find agreements and compromises on a number of different topics. In this work, we provide the reader with a discussion of many of the topics involved in the planning of a Wireless LAN system that is capable of being integrated into the 4th generation mobile networks (4G) that is being discussed nowadays. Therefore, it has to be able to cope with interactive voice and video traffic while still offering high data rates for best effort traffic. Let us assume a scenario where a huge office complex is completely covered with Wireless LAN access points. Different antenna systems are applied in order to reduce the number of access points that are needed on the one hand, while optimizing the coverage on the other. No additional infrastructure is implemented. Our goal is to evaluate whether the Wireless LAN technology is capable of dealing with the various demands of such a scenario. First, each single access point has to be capable of supporting best-effort and Quality of Service (QoS) demanding applications simultaneously. The IT infrastructure in our scenario consists solely of Wireless LAN, such that it has to allow users surfing the Web, while others are involved in voice calls or video conferences. Then, there is the problem of overlapping cells. Users attached to one access point produce interference for others. However, the QoS support has to be maintained, which is not an easy task. Finally, there are nomadic users, which roam from one Wireless LAN cell to another even during a voice call. There are mechanisms in the standard that allow for mobility, but their capabilities for QoS support are yet to be studied. This shows the large number of unresolved issues when it comes to Wireless LAN in the context of 4G networks. In this work we want to tackle some of the problems.}, subject = {Drahtloses lokales Netz}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Karch2002, author = {Karch, Oliver}, title = {Where am I? - Indoor localization based on range measurements}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-8442}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2002}, abstract = {Nowadays, robotics plays an important role in increasing fields of application. There exist many environments or situations where mobile robots instead of human beings are used, since the tasks are too hazardous, uncomfortable, repetitive, or costly for humans to perform. The autonomy and the mobility of the robot are often essential for a good solution of these problems. Thus, such a robot should at least be able to answer the question "Where am I?". This thesis investigates the problem of self-localizing a robot in an indoor environment using range measurements. That is, a robot equipped with a range sensor wakes up inside a building and has to determine its position using only its sensor data and a map of its environment. We examine this problem from an idealizing point of view (reducing it into a pure geometric one) and further investigate a method of Guibas, Motwani, and Raghavan from the field of computational geometry to solving it. Here, so-called visibility skeletons, which can be seen as coarsened representations of visibility polygons, play a decisive role. In the major part of this thesis we analyze the structures and the occurring complexities in the framework of this scheme. It turns out that the main source of complication are so-called overlapping embeddings of skeletons into the map polygon, for which we derive some restrictive visibility constraints. Based on these results we are able to improve one of the occurring complexity bounds in the sense that we can formulate it with respect to the number of reflex vertices instead of the total number of map vertices. This also affects the worst-case bound on the preprocessing complexity of the method. The second part of this thesis compares the previous idealizing assumptions with the properties of real-world environments and discusses the occurring problems. In order to circumvent these problems, we use the concept of distance functions, which model the resemblance between the sensor data and the map, and appropriately adapt the above method to the needs of realistic scenarios. In particular, we introduce a distance function, namely the polar coordinate metric, which seems to be well suited to the localization problem. Finally, we present the RoLoPro software where most of the discussed algorithms are implemented (including the polar coordinate metric).}, subject = {Autonomer Roboter}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Bleier2023, author = {Bleier, Michael}, title = {Underwater Laser Scanning - Refractive Calibration, Self-calibration and Mapping for 3D Reconstruction}, isbn = {978-3-945459-45-4}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-32269}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-322693}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2023}, abstract = {There is great interest in affordable, precise and reliable metrology underwater: Archaeologists want to document artifacts in situ with high detail. In marine research, biologists require the tools to monitor coral growth and geologists need recordings to model sediment transport. Furthermore, for offshore construction projects, maintenance and inspection millimeter-accurate measurements of defects and offshore structures are essential. While the process of digitizing individual objects and complete sites on land is well understood and standard methods, such as Structure from Motion or terrestrial laser scanning, are regularly applied, precise underwater surveying with high resolution is still a complex and difficult task. Applying optical scanning techniques in water is challenging due to reduced visibility caused by turbidity and light absorption. However, optical underwater scanners provide significant advantages in terms of achievable resolution and accuracy compared to acoustic systems. This thesis proposes an underwater laser scanning system and the algorithms for creating dense and accurate 3D scans in water. It is based on laser triangulation and the main optical components are an underwater camera and a cross-line laser projector. The prototype is configured with a motorized yaw axis for capturing scans from a tripod. Alternatively, it is mounted to a moving platform for mobile mapping. The main focus lies on the refractive calibration of the underwater camera and laser projector, the image processing and 3D reconstruction. For highest accuracy, the refraction at the individual media interfaces must be taken into account. This is addressed by an optimization-based calibration framework using a physical-geometric camera model derived from an analytical formulation of a ray-tracing projection model. In addition to scanning underwater structures, this work presents the 3D acquisition of semi-submerged structures and the correction of refraction effects. As in-situ calibration in water is complex and time-consuming, the challenge of transferring an in-air scanner calibration to water without re-calibration is investigated, as well as self-calibration techniques for structured light. The system was successfully deployed in various configurations for both static scanning and mobile mapping. An evaluation of the calibration and 3D reconstruction using reference objects and a comparison of free-form surfaces in clear water demonstrate the high accuracy potential in the range of one millimeter to less than one centimeter, depending on the measurement distance. Mobile underwater mapping and motion compensation based on visual-inertial odometry is demonstrated using a new optical underwater scanner based on fringe projection. Continuous registration of individual scans allows the acquisition of 3D models from an underwater vehicle. RGB images captured in parallel are used to create 3D point clouds of underwater scenes in full color. 3D maps are useful to the operator during the remote control of underwater vehicles and provide the building blocks to enable offshore inspection and surveying tasks. The advancing automation of the measurement technology will allow non-experts to use it, significantly reduce acquisition time and increase accuracy, making underwater metrology more cost-effective.}, subject = {Selbstkalibrierung}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Freiberg2015, author = {Freiberg, Martina}, title = {UI-, User-, \& Usability-Oriented Engineering of Participative Knowledge-Based Systems}, publisher = {W{\"u}rzburg University Press}, isbn = {978-3-95826-012-2 (print)}, doi = {10.25972/WUP-978-3-95826-013-9}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-106072}, school = {W{\"u}rzburg University Press}, pages = {232}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Knowledge-based systems (KBS) face an ever-increasing interest in various disciplines and contexts. Yet, the former aim to construct the 'perfect intelligent software' continuously shifts to user-centered, participative solutions. Such systems enable users to contribute their personal knowledge to the problem solving process for increased efficiency and an ameliorated user experience. More precisely, we define non-functional key requirements of participative KBS as: Transparency (encompassing KBS status mediation), configurability (user adaptability, degree of user control/exploration), quality of the KB and UI, and evolvability (enabling the KBS to grow mature with their users). Many of those requirements depend on the respective target users, thus calling for a more user-centered development. Often, also highly expertise domains are targeted — inducing highly complex KBs — which requires a more careful and considerate UI/interaction design. Still, current KBS engineering (KBSE) approaches mostly focus on knowledge acquisition (KA) This often leads to non-optimal, little reusable, and non/little evaluated KBS front-end solutions. In this thesis we propose a more encompassing KBSE approach. Due to the strong mutual influences between KB and UI, we suggest a novel form of intertwined UI and KB development. We base the approach on three core components for encompassing KBSE: (1) Extensible prototyping, a tailored form of evolutionary prototyping; this builds on mature UI prototypes and offers two extension steps for the anytime creation of core KBS prototypes (KB + core UI) and fully productive KBS (core KBS prototype + common framing functionality). (2) KBS UI patterns, that define reusable solutions for the core KBS UI/interaction; we provide a basic collection of such patterns in this work. (3) Suitable usability instruments for the assessment of the KBS artifacts. Therewith, we do not strive for 'yet another' self-contained KBS engineering methodology. Rather, we motivate to extend existing approaches by the proposed key components. We demonstrate this based on an agile KBSE model. For practical support, we introduce the tailored KBSE tool ProKEt. ProKEt offers a basic selection of KBS core UI patterns and corresponding configuration options out of the box; their further adaption/extension is possible on various levels of expertise. For practical usability support, ProKEt offers facilities for quantitative and qualitative data collection. ProKEt explicitly fosters the suggested, intertwined development of UI and KB. For seamlessly integrating KA activities, it provides extension points for two selected external KA tools: For KnowOF, a standard office based KA environment. And for KnowWE, a semantic wiki for collaborative KA. Therewith, ProKEt offers powerful support for encompassing, user-centered KBSE. Finally, based on the approach and the tool, we also developed a novel KBS type: Clarification KBS as a mashup of consultation and justification KBS modules. Those denote a specifically suitable realization for participative KBS in highly expertise contexts and consequently require a specific design. In this thesis, apart from more common UI solutions, we particularly also introduce KBS UI patterns especially tailored towards Clarification KBS.}, subject = {Wissensbasiertes System}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Saska2009, author = {Saska, Martin}, title = {Trajectory planning and optimal control for formations of autonomous robots}, isbn = {978-3-923959-56-3}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-4622}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-53175}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2009}, abstract = {In this thesis, we present novel approaches for formation driving of nonholonomic robots and optimal trajectory planning to reach a target region. The methods consider a static known map of the environment as well as unknown and dynamic obstacles detected by sensors of the formation. The algorithms are based on leader following techniques, where the formation of car-like robots is maintained in a shape determined by curvilinear coordinates. Beyond this, the general methods of formation driving are specialized and extended for an application of airport snow shoveling. Detailed descriptions of the algorithms complemented by relevant stability and convergence studies will be provided in the following chapters. Furthermore, discussions of the applicability will be verified by various simulations in existing robotic environments and also by a hardware experiment.}, subject = {Autonomer Roboter}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Tischler2008, author = {Tischler, German}, title = {Theory and Applications of Parametric Weighted Finite Automata}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-28145}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2008}, abstract = {Parametric weighted finite automata (PWFA) are a multi-dimensional generalization of weighted finite automata. The expressiveness of PWFA contains the expressiveness of weighted finite automata as well as the expressiveness of affine iterated function system. The thesis discusses theory and applications of PWFA. The properties of PWFA definable sets are studied and it is shown that some fractal generator systems can be simulated using PWFA and that various real and complex functions can be represented by PWFA. Furthermore, the decoding of PWFA and the interpretation of PWFA definable sets is discussed.}, subject = {Automat }, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schmitz2000, author = {Schmitz, Heinz}, title = {The Forbidden Pattern Approach to Concatenation Hierarchies}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-2832}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2000}, abstract = {The thesis looks at the question asking for the computability of the dot-depth of star-free regular languages. Here one has to determine for a given star-free regular language the minimal number of alternations between concatenation on one hand, and intersection, union, complement on the other hand. This question was first raised in 1971 (Brzozowski/Cohen) and besides the extended star-heights problem usually refered to as one of the most difficult open questions on regular languages. The dot-depth problem can be captured formally by hierarchies of classes of star-free regular languages B(0), B(1/2), B(1), B(3/2),... and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2),.... which are defined via alternating the closure under concatenation and Boolean operations, beginning with single alphabet letters. Now the question of dot-depth is the question whether these hierarchy classes have decidable membership problems. The thesis makes progress on this question using the so-called forbidden pattern approach: Classes of regular languages are characterized in terms of patterns in finite automata (subgraphs in the transition graph) that are not allowed. Such a characterization immediately implies the decidability of the respective class, since the absence of a certain pattern in a given automaton can be effectively verified. Before this work, the decidability of B(0), B(1/2), B(1) and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2) were known. Here a detailed study of these classes with help of forbidden patterns is given which leads to new insights into their inner structure. Furthermore, the decidability of B(3/2) is proven. Based on these results a theory of pattern iteration is developed which leads to the introduction of two new hierarchies of star-free regular languages. These hierarchies are decidable on one hand, on the other hand they are in close connection to the classes B(n) and L(n). It remains an open question here whether they may in fact coincide. Some evidence is given in favour of this conjecture which opens a new way to attack the dot-depth problem. Moreover, it is shown that the class L(5/2) is decidable in the restricted case of a two-letter alphabet.}, subject = {Sternfreie Sprache}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Driewer2008, author = {Driewer, Frauke}, title = {Teleoperation Interfaces in Human-Robot Teams}, isbn = {978-3-923959-57-0}, doi = {10.25972/OPUS-2955}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-36351}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2008}, abstract = {Diese Arbeit besch{\"a}ftigt sich mit der Verbesserung von Mensch-Roboter Interaktion in Mensch-Roboter Teams f{\"u}r Teleoperation Szenarien, wie z.B. robotergest{\"u}tzte Feuerwehreins{\"a}tze. Hierbei wird ein Konzept und eine Architektur f{\"u}r ein System zur Unterst{\"u}tzung von Teleoperation von Mensch-Roboter Teams vorgestellt. Die Anforderungen an Informationsaustausch und -verarbeitung, insbesondere f{\"u}r die Anwendung Rettungseinsatz, werden ausgearbeitet. Weiterhin wird das Design der Benutzerschnittstellen f{\"u}r Mensch-Roboter Teams dargestellt und Prinzipien f{\"u}r Teleoperation-Systeme und Benutzerschnittstellen erarbeitet. Alle Studien und Ans{\"a}tze werden in einem Prototypen-System implementiert und in verschiedenen Benutzertests abgesichert. Erweiterungsm{\"o}glichkeiten zum Einbinden von 3D Sensordaten und die Darstellung auf Stereovisualisierungssystemen werden gezeigt.}, subject = {Robotik}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Travers2007, author = {Travers, Stephen}, title = {Structural Properties of NP-Hard Sets and Uniform Characterisations of Complexity Classes}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-27124}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2007}, abstract = {This thesis is devoted to the study of computational complexity theory, a branch of theoretical computer science. Computational complexity theory investigates the inherent difficulty in designing efficient algorithms for computational problems. By doing so, it analyses the scalability of computational problems and algorithms and places practical limits on what computers can actually accomplish. Computational problems are categorised into complexity classes. Among the most important complexity classes are the class NP and the subclass of NP-complete problems, which comprises many important optimisation problems in the field of operations research. Moreover, with the P-NP-problem, the class NP represents the most important unsolved question in computer science. The first part of this thesis is devoted to the study of NP-complete-, and more generally, NP-hard problems. It aims at improving our understanding of this important complexity class by systematically studying how altering NP-hard sets affects their NP-hardness. This research is related to longstanding open questions concerning the complexity of unions of disjoint NP-complete sets, and the existence of sparse NP-hard sets. The second part of the thesis is also dedicated to complexity classes but takes a different perspective: In a sense, after investigating the interior of complexity classes in the first part, the focus shifts to the description of complexity classes and thereby to the exterior in the second part. It deals with the description of complexity classes through leaf languages, a uniform framework which allows us to characterise a great variety of important complexity classes. The known concepts are complemented by a new leaf-language model. To a certain extent, this new approach combines the advantages of the known models. The presented results give evidence that the connection between the theory of formal languages and computational complexity theory might be closer than formerly known.}, subject = {Berechnungskomplexit{\"a}t}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Hopfner2008, author = {Hopfner, Marbod}, title = {Source Code Analysis, Management, and Visualization for PROLOG}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-36300}, school = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg}, year = {2008}, abstract = {This thesis deals with the management and analysis of source code, which is represented in XML. Using the elementary methods of the XML repository, the XML source code representation is accessed, changed, updated, and saved. We reason about the source code, refactor source code and we visualize dependency graphs for call analysis. The visualized dependencies between files, modules, or packages are used to structure the source code in order to get a system, which is easily to comprehend, to modify and to complete. Sophisticated methods have been developed to slice the source code in order to obtain a working package of a large system, containing only a specific functionality. The basic methods, on which the visualizations and analyses are built on can be changed like changing a plug-in. The visualization methods can be reused in order to handle arbitrary source code representations, e.g., JAML, PHPML, PROLOGML. Dependencies of other context can be visualized, too, e.g., ER diagrams, or website references. The tool SCAV supports source code visualization and analyzing methods.}, subject = {Refactoring}, language = {en} }