5th Annual Texas A&M University System Pathways to the Doctorate Student Research Symposium
November 2-3, 2007
Hosted by Tarleton State University

Abstracts of Student Presentations: Engineering and Computer Systems

STEPHEN COHORN. "Boundary Assertion in Autonomous Mobile Robots."  *First place award - Engineering and Computer Science undergraduate student*
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Mircea Agapie

In developing algorithms and software for controlling the behavior of autonomous mobile robots, boundary assertion is often important: it prevents the robot from entering environments dangerous to itself, or where the robot might endanger other machinery, equipment, or personnel.  In this project we designed and implemented a robotic behavior that restricts the motion of the robot to a configurable bounded area. When this behavior is activated, the robot will stay within that area and, if forced outside, it will attempt to return.
We have validated the correct operation of the boundary assertion behavior in a simulated environment, as well as on a real robot in a real environment. Future work will address the “reusability” of the new behavior, to make it easily integrable in a more general behavior-selection mechanism. It will then be easy to transfer this and other behaviors among robotics projects.


MILES WHITNEY, KEVIN GOFORTH, LEVI BEST and JARED GROVES. "Analysis of Watershed Characteristics Using ArcHydro and HEC-GeoHMS."
Faculty Mentors: Dr. XiXi Wang, Billy Hopson

Watershed characteristics, which are usually described by a number of parameters (e.g., slope and slope length), are important factors controlling precipitation-runoff processes. For this reason, watershed assessment and hydrologic modeling require these parameters be determined with a sufficient accuracy. As a course project of HYDR/ENVE 310 (Basic Hydrology), we intended to conjunctively use ArcHydro and HEC-GeoHMS to estimate parameters required by a HEC-HMS model for the 1178-km2 drainage area upstream of the U.S. Geological Survey’s flow gauging station 08101000 in the Cowhouse Creek watershed located in north central Texas. The basic input was a 30-m digital elevation model (DEM). This poster presents how to:  1) preprocess the DEM data; 2) delineate the drainage area and its associated stream network; 3) estimate the watershed parameters; and 4) transfer the results from HEC-GeoHMS into the HEC-HMS model.