http://web.nps.navy.mil/~brutzman/theses.html

Don Brutzman, 831.656.2149 work, 831.656.3679 fax, brutzman@nps.navy.mil
Code UW/Br, Root 200, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California 93943-5000 USA

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Phoenix Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)

• Underwater Virtual World and in-water experimental robot testing
• Three-layer robot software architecture similar to ship's watch party
• The "fourth layer:" human specification of robot missions with expert assistance
• Sonar modeling and visualization using VRML and Recursive Ray Acoustics (RRA) algorithm
• Sonar classification using expert system in real time
• Hydrodynamics modeling: duplicating complex ship and AUV response in real time

Networking: connecting everyone to everything

• Information Infrastructure Research Group (IIRG): Internetworking the Navy
• virtual reality transfer protocol (vrtp) & Cyberspace Backbone (CBone)
• Multicast Backbone: audio and video over the Internet
• Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) and entity behavior dial-a-protocol
• Acoustic local-area networks (ALANs), Internet Protocol over Sea Water (IP/SW) and internetworking SOSUS
• Connecting regional schools to the Internet: I3LA
• ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) high-performance networking
• Large-scale Digital Library for the Navy

Internetworked Interactive 3D Graphics & Large-Scale Virtual Worlds

• Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML): building dynamic worlds
• Realistic physics using multicast/Java attached to any entity
• 3D real-time sonar visualization
• Scaling up without bound to include Navy ships, aircraft, submarines, people - the real world
• Monterey Bay virtual world: terrain, sound speed and sonar, oceanographic datasets, archived multimedia, distributed servers
• Streamed MBone audio/video extensions to virtual worlds
• Building multiple walk-in virtual reality rooms (CAVEs) linked by ATM

My objectives with you

• do "real world" work of value to your career
• provide financial support for conference attendance
• you publish a paper as part of your thesis
• fully document your results with 3D graphics, video, HTML
• your signature is first, so we find a topic area that matches what you want. Short projects are a good way to start.