Bruin Innovation & Technology - Volume 1, Spring 2011

B I T

VOLUME 1

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SPRING 2011

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B R U I N I N N O VAT I O N & T E C H N O LO GY

SPONSORS Vijay Dhir Dean, Henry Samueli School of Engineering & Applied Science

ENGINEERING GRADUATE STUDENTS ASSOCIATION Asad Madni President, Engineering Alumni Association

SPECIAL THANKS

Frank Chang Chair, Electrical Engineering Department

Jiun-Shyan (JS) Chen Chair, Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Karl Holmes Management Services Officer, Civil & Environmental Engineering Department Richard Korf Vice Chair, Computer Science Department

Adrienne Lavine Chair, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department

Janet Lin Administrative Assistant, Electrical Engineering Department

FIRST PITCH The Technocrat. Our world is becoming more dependent on the impact that their

innovations have on new and emerging technologies. Yet a great paradox has emerged: the

more dependent our world has become on the technocrat’s innovations, the more mysterious the technocrat has become to the masses. Part of that is the inherent complexity of

their creations. Part of that is also the complexity with which they convey how their crea-

tions were actualized. The Bruin campus is a microcosm of this world. Herein lay the need for Bruin Innovation & Technology Magazine.

How do Bruin engineers and technologists think, and what is their workflow? What

are their specific research projects that will have a significant impact on new and emerg-

ing technologies? How can a “non-expert” be able to interact, assist, and collaborate with these technocrats on specific projects, initiatives, and ventures? BIT Magazine serves to

answer all of these questions for each customized member of the Bruin Family. BIT is for you, whether you are in another field, employed at UCLA, considering applying, involved as an alumnus, or looking to invest in new, developing ideas.

BIT personifies the “True Bruin” values and, more specifically, epitomizes the mis-

Harold Monbouquette Chair, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department

sionary pillars of our great university: Access, Affordability, and Opportunity. BIT serves to

STAFF

comprehensible, and jargon-less manner. BIT has no subscription cost, is available online,

Jens Palsberg Chair, Computer Science Department Managing Editors Jamal Madni Neil Tilley

Graphic & Layout Designer Michelle Tu Contributing Writers Jong Hoon Ahnn Navid Amini Rahul Basava Jeff Chang Fang Gong Derek Kulinski Chenni Qian Tanuj Thapliyal Sarah Warren Wenyao Xu Zhenkai Zhu

provide access to the technological developments happening on our campus in a simple,

and is free to any reader. Finally, BIT is a specific mechanism providing opportunity for a student-centric entrepreneurial culture and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

We look forward to BIT being embedded in Bruin culture for many years to come.

Let the dialogue begin.

Sincerely,

Photography Director Peyman Nazarian Special Advisor Stacey Meeker

HTTP://ENGINEER.UCLA.EDU JMADNI@UCLA.EDU TILLEYNS@CS.UCLA.EDU

Jamal A. Madni

Neil Tilley

MS Electrical Engineering, MS Biomedical Engineering Co-Founder & Managing Editor BIT Magazine

MS Computer Science Co-Founder & Managing Editor BIT Magazine

CONTENTS 04

A Brain-Computer Interface to Help the Elderly Reduce the Risk of Falling

BY WENYAO XU AND FANG GONG

10

The Dean’s Corner

WITH VIJAY DHIR

14

Designing Applications Using Named Data Networking

22

Entrepreneurial Opportunities from the Other Side of Campus

BY JEFF CHANG

24

A Wireless Home Automation System for Childhood Obesity Prevention

BY NAVID AMINI

34

TEC: A Training Ground That Brings the Universe to our University

BY TANUJ THAPLIYAL

36

Innovative Design Method Creates New Varieties of Rotary Engines

BY SARAH WARREN

48

The Social Network is Everywhere in Engineering—What to Read?

With Whom to Work? Where to Publish?

BY JONG HOON AHNN

56

BY RAHUL RAO BASAVA, DEREK KULINSKI, CHENNI QIAN, AND ZHENKAI ZHU

Well...

Bruin Innovation & Technology (ISSN [TBA]), Volume 1, Spring 2011, is published two times a year at the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, 7256 Boelter Hall, Box 951600, Los Angeles, California, 90095-1600. Annual subscription $10.00 domestic, $15.00 foreign air mail; single copies $5.00. Send subscriptions to UCLA Engineering, Office of External Affairs, 7256 Boelter Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Third class postage paid at Los Angeles, CA. All rights reserved. No part of BIT may be printed without specific permission. Some parts of this publication are available electronically at http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/visitor-links/current-students/bit-magazine. As a publication of UCLA HSSEAS, BIT carries authorized advertisements about offerings of the school. The school assumes no responsibility for opinions of contributors on other subjects. © 2011, University of California, Los Angeles. Published by UCLA Engineering and the Engineering Alumni Association. Telephone 310-206-0678.

Editorial control is retained by the editorial staff of BIT.

Advertising in BIT does not indicate an endorsement by UCLA HSSEAS.

A BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACE TO HELP THE ELDERLY REDUCE THE RISK OF FALLING Wenyao Xu, Computer Science, and Fang Gong, Electrical Engineering

MANY ELDER PEOPLE OVER 65 ARE AT HIGH RISK OF FALLING BECAUSE OF THEIR GENERAL FRAILTY AND MULTIPLE PATHOLOGIES. Falls are reported by one third of all people

these assistive devices also introduces a negative

death. Recently, the number of elderly people with a

ple who suffer from cognitive disability because of

65 and older and have become a leading cause of

fall-induced injury has increased dramatically. The corresponding health costs for fall-related medical

treatments such as fractures, open wounds, and

head traumas has risen from $20 billion in 2006

to $23 billion in 2010. As such, injuries due to falls also account for large health care costs and have

become one of the most significant concerns in geriatry. Therefore, a smart and low-cost solution of fall prevention for the elderly is urgently sought.

The most promising approach for fall preven-

tion is a wearable assistive system which can detect

tations are being overcome with the advancement of sensing technology, especially with emerging,

wearable sensors. The novel sensing technology can dramatically reduce the footprint of traditional

sensors and thereby integrate them into plastic, paper, and even fabric materials. With wireless communication and computing technology, these wearable assistive systems can be used by individuals comfortably and non-invasively.

Moreover, recent studies empirically prove

that many mental and physiological signals such as

for health care support with such wearable assis-

covered surprisingly that brain waves, or brain sig-

tive devices in their daily lives. However, the use of VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

age or due to other causes. Fortunately, these limi-

and forecast the risk of falling, given the fact that over 4 million individuals in the United States pay

4

influence of an additional cognitive burden for peo-

brain waves are also related to falls. They have disnals, can offer a better solution for forecasting falls

in terms of promptness and accuracy. As shown

in Figure 1, there is a significant anomaly in EEG signals about 3 seconds prior to the fall [1]. Therefore, it is possible to assess “fall risk” and activate

fall prevention measures through pre-warning patterns from EEG signals.

Three UCLA graduate students, Wenyao Xu,

Fang Gong, and Ju-Yueh Lee, led by Professor Majid Sarrafzadeh from the Wireless Health Institute and Professor Lei He from the Electrical Engineering Department, have invented a low-cost, lightweight,

wearable device to record the brain waves (socalled “brain computer interface” or BCI) and further interpret them for fall-prevention purposes.

THEREFORE, IT IS POSSIBLE TO ASSESS “FALL RISK” AND ACTIVATE FALL PREVENTION MEASURES THROUGH PRE-WARNING PATTERNS FROM EEG SIGNALS. have been built to capture brain waves and interpret them to meaningful thoughts.

In more recent decades, scientists have tried

OVERVIEW OF BRAIN COMPUTER

various methods to decode these mysterious brain

in 1912 through the use of Electroencephalograms,

parts: a signal acquisition module and a data min-

INTERFACE SYSTEM

Brain waves were first scientifically observed

or EEGs, as a kind of bioelectric potential related to the thoughts of a human. In the 1970s, scientists at UCLA began their research on a brain computer interface (BCI). This project received a grant from

the National Science Foundation (NSF) and DARPA. Through this grant program, several BCI systems

signals. This is known to be a complicated and expensive task. Traditional BCI systems include two

ing module. Conventional scalp BCI systems are

cumbersome and uncomfortable. Dozens of elec-

trodes corresponding to different channels need to be deployed on the scalp with a conductive gel

or paste. Moreover, the scalp area needs to be prepared ahead of time to remove dead skin cells, all of

FIGURE 1 BRAIN SIGNAL, INCLUDING: ORIGINAL OUTPUT MEASUREMENTS IN A FALL OCCURRENCE (TOP), EVOLUTION OF MEAN VALUES (MIDDLE), TIME-FREQUENCY PLOT SHOWING THE POWER CHANGES DURING A TRANSITIONTO-FALL STAGE (COLORED).

(COURTESY S. SLOBOUNOV [1])

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

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plications for this device.

The smart headset can be worn on the head

but does not restrict a user’s activity because it uses wireless communication. After a user puts a

headset on, it acquires the user’s brain waves via

a sensor on the forehead, passing the captured signals to a data analysis module where the brain

waves can be deciphered for the detection of meaningful signals.

Most importantly, the headset is very light-

weight, weighing in at a mere ten grams. Additionally, it is affordable, costing about $19. By contrast,

a conventional BCI system costs thousands of dol-

lars and weighs hundreds of kilograms. Therefore, the new BCI device, properly marketed, will be

FIGURE 2

more accessible and affordable to more people.

ENGAGED WEARABLE BCI SYSTEM

which is obtrusive and inapplicable for daily use in fall prevention. Furthermore, for the sake of signal

integrity, sampling rates of conventional scalp BCI

systems can be up to 20 kHz in research applications, and the recorded EEG signal data can be as

large as 1 gigabyte per day. As such, it is highly challenging to process an EEG data stream for fall prevention in real-time applications, and efficient signal processing algorithms are critical. Additionally, conventional BCI systems are obtrusive and not

suitable for daily use, especially considering their unaffordability for most people.

two parts, a client end and a server end. The client end goes with the user for bio-signal sensing, computing, and transmitting. The server end is for min-

ing the received data. Figure 3 shows the stackedlayer architecture of client and server, where Figure 3(a) is the structure of the client, and Figure 3(b) is the structure of the server.

Client The client part consists of four layers: the

sensing layer, actuating layer, middleware layer,

ers have developed a new, wearable BCI system

layers are at the bottom level to interact with us-

(also called a “smart headset”) as shown in Figure 2 that addresses the risks associated with falling.

This new system looks like a normal Bluetooth headset, but it can detect human brain waves and function as well as a traditional BCI system.

Professor Majid Sarrafzadeh believes that the

new BCI system is easy to use and will not require a complicated interface that would affect a user’s normal daily life. Moreover its low cost can make it

accessible to more people, thus yielding many apVOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

In general, the new BCI system is comprised of

Fortunately, there has been good progress in

EEG signal acquisition methods. At UCLA, research-

6

SYSTEM FRAMEWORK

and communication layer. Sensing and actuating

MOREOVER, ITS LOW COST CAN MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE TO MORE PEOPLE, THUS YIELDING MANY APPLICATIONS FOR THIS DEVICE.

COMMUNICATION LAYER MIDDLEWARE LAYER ACTUATING LAYER

COMMUNICATION LAYER

SENSING LAYER

SIGNAL PROCESSING LAYER

FIGURE 3 (A) CLIENT STRUCTURE (B) SERVER STRUCTURE

CLIENT

SERVER

ers directly. Some sensors are included in the sens-

and who serves as the architect designer, “We inte-

With the sensed data, middleware implemented

system-on-chips technology, the headset acquires

ing layer to acquire miscellaneous user bio-signals.

on a microcontroller will perform preliminary processing such as signal filtering, sorting, com-

pression, and lightweight data analysis for feature extraction. Some of the expected results are urgent

WE INTEGRATED BCI INTO A BLUETOOTH HEADSET. LEVERAGING THE SYSTEMON-CHIPS TECHNOLOGY, THE HEADSET ACQUIRES THE BRAIN WAVE VIA A SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE WAY. to report, and they are sent to the actuating layer

to notify users of a risk of falling. Otherwise, the

grated BCI into a Bluetooth headset. Leveraging the the brain wave via a simple but effective way. It is

complementary to existing assistive technologies in terms of mental control.”

Server For the server part, there are two layers. The

first layer is the communication layer for receiving

data from the client device, and the second layer

is the signal processing layer. A data mining algorithm is implemented in the signal processing layer

to analyze the user’s risk of falling. After the calculation, the server end will send feedback to the client side for actuating.

It is important to note that the data mining

procedure on the server is time-consuming, and

the response time is critical for fall prevention. To mitigate this problem, researchers have invented an innovative method for data processing and have

developed an efficient signal processing algorithm

based on a recently established theory of Compressed Sensing (CS) [2][3].

“Decoding the brain wave is a difficult job and

data will be sent through the communication layer

very time-consuming. Perceptible delay can dra-

common solution for the communication layer is

control system. To handle this problem, we came

to the server end for further data mining. The most through Zigbee, Bluetooth, or WiFi, the choice of which depends highly on the specific applications.

Commented Wenyao Xu, a third-year Ph.D.

student in UCLA’s Computer Science department

matically degrade the performance of our brain up with some novel algorithms to decode the brain

waves for real-time control purposes,” said Fang

Gong, who is a third-year Ph.D. student in UCLA’s Electrical Engineering department and serves as

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

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the software designer for this project. “These more efficient algorithms maximize computing resources, a chief reason why the unit can be so tiny.”

PROTOTYPE

Figure 4(a) illustrates the acquisition system,

called Smart Headset. There are two main parts: an ADC module (analog-to-digital converter) and a

data processing module. The ADC used in the sys-

tem is a kind of adaptive sampling module from Neurosky Inc [4]. This ADC has a low-sampling

noise, high accuracy, and configurable data rate.

The other part is a data processing module. The key

chip on the module is an ultra low-power micro-

IN ORDER TO PROVE EMPIRICALLY THE FEASIBILITY OF THE DESIGN FRAMEWORK, THE GRADUATE RESEARCHERS AT UCLA CONDUCTED A PILOT STUDY WITH VOLUNTEERS TO TEST THE SYSTEM. FIGURE 4 (A) PROTOTYPE CIRCUIT (B) PACKAGED SMART HEADSET

controller, MSP430 from Texas Instruments (TI).

The proposed computer science-based algorithm is hosted on this module for compressed data analy-

sis. Additionally, Figure 4(b) shows that the whole packaged system is very tiny when compared to the

size of a quarter (shown), yet the signal accuracy is as accurate as those from a conventional scalp BCI system. Figure 5 shows the researchers involved in

the project, analyzing the recorded brain signals in their laboratory.

Currently, in order to prove empirically the

8

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

FIGURE 5 RESEARCHERS ANALYZING DATA

feasibility of the design framework, the graduate

researchers at UCLA conducted a pilot study to test the system using volunteers. The preliminary pilot

experiments show that a CS-based signal process-

REFERENCES

[1] Slobounov S, Cao C, Jaiswal N, Newell KM, “Neural basis of postural instability identified by VTC and EEG”, Exp Brain Res. 2009 Oct;199(1):1–16.

ing strategy could not only preserve the fidelity of

[2] D. Donoho. “Compressed sensing”. IEEE Transactions on Bio-

raw data. In addition, a paper about the BCI sys-

[3] E. Candes, J. Romberg, and T. Tao. “Stable signal recovery from

for publication [5]. Aside from fall prevention, it is

tions on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 59:1207–1223,

the data but also dramatically reduce the size of the

tem has been accepted by HCMDSS/MDPnP 2011 possible to consider a number of other potential

healthcare related applications that can be enhanced by this BCI system, including for example brain-control for the impaired and disabled.

medical Engineering, 52:1289–1306, April 2006.

incomplete and inaccurate measurements”. CommunicaAugust 2006.

[4] Neurosky Inc. http://www.neurosky.com/

[5] Wenyao Xu, Fang Gong, Lei He, Majid Sarrafzadeh, “Wearable Assistive System Design for Fall Prevention”, HCMDSS/ MDPnP 2011, Chicago, US (accepted for publication).

For further reading: http://bit.ly/kDPm8B (published in HCMDSS workshop 2011)

FANG08@EE.UCLA.EDU WENYAO@CS.UCLA.EDU

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

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10

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

THE DEAN’S CORNER BIT CO-FOUNDERS JAMAL MADNI AND NEIL TILLEY SAT DOWN WITH DR. VIJAY DHIR, DEAN OF THE UCLA HENRY SAMUELI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & APPLIED SCIENCE (HSSEAS), WHO CONVEYED A PICTURE OF THE WORKFLOW, RELEVANCE, AND IMPACT OF ENGINEERING RESEARCH AT UCLA, AS WELL AS TO DESCRIBE TODAY’S TYPICAL ENGINEER. BIT: Let’s begin with graduate life. In-between go-

On the other hand, faculty is focused in an in-

ing to classes and having papers to publish, what

dividual discipline or area of expertise. They are

Alone? How many projects are done simultaneous-

what are the “show-stopper” problems in that par-

do engineers do, and how do they work? In groups?

ly? What is the workflow from concept to completion?

Dean Dhir: Most students are taking classes and

working with faculty members in labs by keeping current of the latest published papers as well as

seeking to find out the truly innovative problems,

ticular discipline. They cultivate ideas by writing proposals for federal grants, and if their ideas and

the packaging are superior, then they get funding, in the hopes of taking a project to high social and financial payoffs.

carrying out research to compose their own papers.

BIT: What do engineers do that isn’t so obvious, yet

testing it to get data, then analyzing the data, and

nical reader? What sorts of things involve engineer-

Research involves building an experimental setup,

finally deducting conclusions that advance their

knowledge in a particular area. The above would summarize the activities of the average engineering graduate student. A small, exceptional group of

relevant, important, and interesting for a non-teching from the standpoint of health, entertainment,

scholarship, intellectual development, and social responsibility?

students go beyond that level with more initiative

Dean Dhir: Engineers are problem solvers, crea-

topic, out of curiosity, and to advance knowledge

and concepts and steer those efforts in the direc-

and pursue research unrelated to their graduate within a field. Some of these exceptional students

also find applications that are more entrepreneurial, in that they go one step more and commercialize the idea. In large measure, it depends on the individual.

tors, and master builders. They create new ideas tion of fabricating a device based on those ideas, testing it, troubleshooting it, and adjusting it incrementally toward a novel innovation.

Furthermore, engineers must pay attention to

the consequences on the public of a gadget or de-

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

11

vice of their design. Foremost this speaks of safety.

engineers should go through a formal education—

there is the issue of microwaves from the antenna

perhaps 1% of the people are the exception, and

For example, take the discussion of cell phones: in the phone and their effect on the brain. While not entirely known, there are efforts exploring

whether they pose a tangible, albeit minimal, risk on people. Engineers develop new technologies and systems to the benefit of mankind and derive

a financial reward for these services. At the same time they have a social and ethical responsibility

ples, having an fundamental feel for it already. But

on the whole, good engineering is not limited to the naturally gifted; rather it is much more fundamental than people think, because it is learnable.

GOOD ENGINEERING IS NOT

ple who have made compromises in areas of safety;

LIMITED TO THE NATURALLY

these have come to haunt them. We’ve got to be very careful at all times as to the consequences.

From an entertainment standpoint, we can

think of electronic arts: computer-aided design, movie effects, sports arena jumbo screens, video

games—both standalone and within a smart phone,

GIFTED; RATHER IT IS MUCH MORE FUNDAMENTAL THAN PEOPLE THINK, BECAUSE

for example. These are all part of everyday lives,

IT IS LEARNABLE.

BIT: What makes engineers different people, and

BIT: Most of the great engineering pioneers in

a movie about, such as The Social Network? If there

a revolutionary idea in their garage. What ought

yet the underpinnings lie in computer science.

what makes them people you might want to write

is a category called “engineer cool,” what comprises that?

Dean Dhir: I think “engineer cool” is comprised of people who go to an engineering school, acquire

an education in engineering principles, and then

recent memory dropped out of school to invent the school of engineering at UCLA offer (socially,

economically, politically, institutionally) to change

this paradigm and foster a fertile, attractive environment benefiting the growth of the student and school alike?

use these principles to invent something that helps

Dean Dhir: It’s the same thing you can find in ath-

nomical way than they are used to doing. You get so

Magic Johnson—relatively speaking, there are only

the public do something faster and in a more ecomuch information on a cell phone now, for example,

that you can raise your productivity and have more informed discussions.

Are engineers wired in a unique way? No, I

don’t think so. Engineering’s impact tends to be

more diffuse and generally affects many people, more than the work of a medical specialist treating

a specific patient, for example. Broadly speaking, VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

they may not need much formal training in princi-

to be safe—a principle covered in the engineering ethics classes offered in our school. There are peo-

12

this applies to 99% of the people in engineering;

letics—like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, or a few superstars—the outliers, if you will. However,

the majority of people, whether they are athletes or engineers, need to have a good education so they can thrive later in life. For example, the athletes

who aren’t capable of superstardom by skipping college right away and directly going to the pros, they cultivate their athletic skills in college for four years in order to make a decent enough living in the

pros after that. So I don’t think institutionally there needs to be a fundamental change in the paradigm.

However, from a cultural and educational

standpoint, we’ve got to provide our engineering

it, and then this will provide hands-on experience

during the summers, for groups of three to four in order to stir their creative thinking.

students the fertile settings that give an outlet to

BIT: How can our engineering school outreach to

tered within the school. At the student level, for ex-

related problems?

their ideas. If they have ideas, they should be fosample, there is the Technical Entrepreneurs Com-

the rest of the university to have a hand in campus-

munity (TEC), and the organization’s members are

Dean Dhir: It’s a very good question. I’ve been say-

about how to market their technology; but at the

part of: Why don’t we utilize the resources we have

creating an environment where students can learn

same time the university needs to create environ-

ments for students to bring their ideas from their basic research and grow it where it becomes of interest to venture capitalists. The Institute for Technology Advancement (ITA) helps with the matu-

ration process of specific technologies developed in-house at UCLA, where venture capitalists will take an interest to acquire this technology.

Also, we have been trying to raise funds for a

new Creativity Center, slated to be in place by the

end of this summer. The first function would be to let young kids, including our students, build something unique, with their hands. But it is their own imagination they are exercising. It could be junior

high and high school kids who come in summer. We

ing this very thing on the campus committees I’m

in the school? Faculty can be the consultants. At

the moment, we hire from outside, which is so ironic. For example, some of our faculty are the foremost authorities in the field of cyber-security, and

yet, we hire “outside” experts to deal with cybersecurity issues. Students can definitely help in the

area of Information Technology. But this mentality

is not institutionalized. I don’t know the reasons why. I think it should be done, but where possible, we should advertise we have the resources and they should be used.

BIT: Why would I want to hire an engineer for a non-engineering job?

provide them with hardware, software, and techni-

Dean Dhir: Engineers are very good at analyzing.

them loose and have their imagination run wild. If

where the solution may not be unique, but they

cal support, in the form of mentors, and then let

it doesn’t work, they troubleshoot it, fix it, test it, and try again.

It will cost about $1.5 million; we have raised

about half that at this time. It will be down on the interior courtyard level of Boelter Hall, and we

hope to have the rest of the funds available by the

end of summer. To operate and administer the

center, we will look to hire someone part-time and staff graduate students as mentors. This is on the

They know how to solve an open-ended problem come up with an optimal solution. Engineers get training with ill-defined problems and find very

creative, elegant, and efficient solutions to these “asymmetric” problems. This type of thinking is

needed in many functions and industries. But, broadly speaking, this isn’t trained in very many other fields of study. http://bit.ly/mvEBIU

http://bit.ly/kezzdQ

cutting edge of creating an infrastructure for student imagination, and UCLA is the first engineering school in the nation to provide a facility of this type.

During the academic year, student clubs can access

ENGRDEAN@EA.UCLA.EDU

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

13

DESIGNING APPLICATIONS USING NAMED DATA NETWORKING Rahul Rao Basava, Derek Kulinski, Chenni Qian, and Zhenkai Zhu, Computer Science

YOUR FRIEND ACROSS THE ROOM IMs YOU TO WATCH THE NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO THAT WENT VIRAL AN HOUR AGO. You start watching the video. Behind the

scenes, the current Internet creates a link to one

number addresses to identify physical computers

video on this link. This happens with every single

(route) data from one place to another. The vision

of the YouTube servers, and the server streams the

person who watches the same video around the globe, leading to a content distribution problem that is solved today using a patchwork of Content Distribution Networks.

Now suppose the router in your local area

network knew you were asking for the same video your friend had requested a few minutes ago and returned you a cached copy of the video it delivered

to your friend. Wouldn’t that be better? If we im-

of NDN however is a new direction, to give names to the data itself that applications and users care

about instead of addressing the machine where they can be found. This allows applications simply

to ask the network for the data they want instead of specifying where to find the data. It is the network’s

job to locate and deliver data to the requesting application.

So how does NDN work? Applications send an

Interest packet, which carries the name of the de-

tribution problem. This is but one of the major fea-

WidgetA.mpg as shown in Figure 1). The router that

tures of a new Internet architecture called Named Data Networking, or NDN, being developed here at

UCLA in association with PARC (a Xerox company) and other partner institutions including the Univer-

sity of Arizona, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, Colorado State University, the University of Illinois Urbana-

Champaign, the University of Memphis, Washington University, and Yale University.

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

at which the data can be found, in order to move

plement this router intelligence on a global scale,

it forms an elegant way of solving the content dis-

14

Today’s Internet uses IP addresses, which are

sired content (a name such as /parc.com/videos/ receives the Interest packet remembers the interface from which the request comes in, and forwards

the packet to other nodes (a node is a data source or a router on the path to the data source) by look-

ing up the name in its Forwarding Information Base (FIB). Once the Interest reaches a node that has the

requested data, a Data packet is sent back that carries both the name and content of the data, togeth-

er with a digital signature by the creator of the data.

by the Interest packets at each step along the route.

across the network (the breadcrumb is an entry in

are received, the router forwards only the first In-

The Interest packet leaves a breadcrumb trail

the Pending Interest Table, or PIT, of a router) for the Data packet to retrace the path to the applica-

THE INTEREST PACKET LEAVES A BREADCRUMB FOR THE DATA PACKET TO RETRACE THE PATH TO THE APPLICATION THAT REQUESTED IT.

When multiple Interests requesting the same data

terest packet towards the data source. When the Data packet returns along the path from the source,

the router sends out copies of the packet in all di-

rections from which Interest packets had arrived

earlier. Then the router clears the corresponding PIT entry and caches the data in its Content Store to satisfy future requests for the same data.

Three driver applications are being developed

at UCLA to drive and test the prototype implementation of the NDN architecture. These applications leverage built-in features such as efficient content

distribution and packet authentication. Each of these projects represents a broad area of application design, and each is expected to yield further insight into the requirements of the new architecture.

At the same time they demonstrate performance tion that requested it. Neither Interest nor Data

packets carry IP addresses; Interest packets are routed towards data producers based on the names carried in the Interest packets, and Data packets are returned based on the state information set up

and functional advantages of NDN in key areas and

show how NDN’s embedding of application names in the routing system promotes efficient authoring

of sophisticated distributed applications with reduced complexity. An introduction to each of these applications follows.

FIGURE 1 NAMED DATA NETWORKING - OVERVIEW

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

15

LIGHTING APPLICATION PROJECT

tion of control system commands.

facilities such as lighting, touch-activated displays,

used to illuminate or create lighting in an envi-

Buildings of the future are likely to be con-

structed with digitally controlled and networked

the project. Fixtures are lighting facilities that are

sound systems, and video recording. The current

ronment. They can be a single luminary unit or a

Internet architecture makes it cumbersome to build applications for such systems with heterogeneous components, especially in the area of addressing schemes and security.

The Lighting Application project aims at cre-

ating a control system using NDN that will deal

with physical lights and building facilities. NDN’s intrinsic support for naming data, broadcast, caching, and fine-grained authentication provide obvious advantages in this setting. Exploration of this

area expands on UCLA’s experience building in-

key management; and distribution for authentica-

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

sending and receiving Interest and Data packets from Building Services. From the perspective of

the network, the interfaces and their associated fixtures are indistinguishable. The fixtures used in our test project are Philips ColorBlast 12 LED wall-

washing lights connected to Gumstix - Overo Air COM interfaces.

As shown in the diagram, Building Services

is responsible for assigning the names for fixtures,

tributed, synchronized state management; effective

16

mediary between fixtures and the NDN network,

performances. The project will create an applicaa discovery mechanism for embedded devices; dis-

PROJECT – OVERVIEW

lighting strings. Lighting Interfaces are an inter-

are applications that constitute the building con-

tion library to support naming of various devices;

FIGURE 2

lighting device that has multiple light units such as

teractive spaces of the kinds found in museums, physical simulation spaces, theme parks, and live

LIGHTING APPLICATION

Figure 2 shows the various components of

trol systems. The Configuration Manager Service

maintaining cryptographic certificates and access control lists (ACLs) for other services in the network. Lighting interfaces request this service for names using an Interest packet. The name is

returned as data. Subsequently the service sends

Interest packets to the interfaces for a periodic ‘heartbeat’ message, for checking connectivity and status.

The Architecture Lighting Service is respon-

sible for everyday building lighting control. This service sends control commands as Interest pack-

ets to the Interfaces (for example, UCLA/boel-

PERSONAL DATA CLOUD PROJECT

In a world filled with mobile devices where

activity monitoring sportswear (like the Nike+iPod system*) is becoming more and more common,

personal data is also becoming ever more accessi-

ble. Data collected by applications on such devices include your location, time of events in your day-to-

ter/3551/lights/fixture/*/rgb-8bit-hex/FAF87F,

day life, pictures (geo-tagged and time stamped),

as shown in Figure 3). Here the Interest packet is

ing (ranging from eating habits to daily memos).

used as a signed command, while the returning

and other information that the individual is recordThe Personal Data Cloud (PDC) project aims

data packet carries a simple signed acknowledge-

to build a secure data ecosystem that can be con-

carries the RBG (red-blue-green) color settings for

many entities such as mobile phones and sensing

ment of reception of the command. The command the fixture. This service may be extended to provide

real-time status of the lighting infrastructure. The Fire Life Safety Service includes features like fire

prevention and emergency evacuation. This service has highest priority, and its commands override all

other service commands. Environment Monitoring Service allows building administrators to view fixture status and compute statistics regarding energy consumption of the building.

trolled by a single user. The PDC is composed of devices, cloud-based secure repositories, and personal computers. The concept is illustrated in Figure 4. Creating the PDC will require the implementation of a distributed database on NDN with direct

name-based access of individual records, providing

a widely applicable test case for validating NDNbased systems like data discovery, content distribution, and diverse models for trusted communication among mobile users, PDCs, and applications.

FIGURE 3 COMMAND FLOW IN ARCHITECTURE LIGHTING SERVICE

* see article on page 24

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

17

FIGURE 4 PERSONAL DATA CLOUD PROJECT - OVERVIEW

The major features of the PDC are disruption-toler-

is called a Receiver. An entity can be both a Publish-

internal communication between nodes of the

of many such streams.

ant uploads from sensors to the secure data store; PDC; and filtered, often anonymous data sharing

tion system developed in the Center for Embedded

envisions all entities (mobile devices included) as

collect and analyze data from active/triggered user

data repositories with varying capacities for storage and processing.

A new protocol called the Stream Protocol has

been defined for communication between entities

in a PDC. A stream is an abstraction of a sequential set of data sent from one entity to another. The

Stream Protocol is designed to work over the NDN and in practice replaces the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) modules of the applica-

Network Sensing (CENS). It uses mobile phones to

experience samples and passive logging of onboard environmental sensors, for example the GPS locator

and accelerometer. The system includes an application that runs on Android-based mobile phones, server software that manages deployments and

acts as a central repository for data, and a dash-

board front-end for participants and researchers alike to visualize incoming data in real time.

AndWellness will be the first framework to run

tions on the current Internet (HTTPS being the

over the PDC architecture. The mobile application

any secure communication, for example, purchas-

dependent entity capable of publishing informa-

most common protocol on the Internet used for ing goods online). Figure 5 shows a high-level comparison between the module structure of Stream Protocol and HTTPS. An entity that sends data is called a Publisher and the entity receiving the data VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

AndWellness is one such personal data collec-

with authorized third-party applications providing personal services to the individual. The PDC design

18

er and a Receiver. Every Publisher can be the source

component has been modified to behave as an intion to the user’s data cloud. The data receiver is

a cloud-based, secure repository that is considered as a test destination for the data streams published

by the mobile application. While the mobile appli-

cation does not have the functionality to receive

data and does not have filtering components, the cloud-based repository will have both capabilities.

AUDIO CONFERENCING PROJECT

Current audio conferencing tools rely on a

centralized system to discover ongoing conferences, the speakers participating in each conference

and transmission of voice data from individual speakers. The Audio Conference Tool (ACT) project

explores multi-host real-time media streaming applications designed over NDN. ACT takes a named-

based approach, and the resulting design is completely distributed and robust against component

failures. ACT supports both conference data authentication and participant control. The packets

generated by ACT are digitally signed using the

built-in security primitive in NDN, which guaran-

tees data integrity and provenance. An encryptionbased access control scheme is employed in the private conference mode where a session key is used

to encrypt all data traffic of the conference and is only distributed to legitimate users. ACT will test the effectiveness of NDN in the context of time syn-

namespace, which is a dedicated set of names con-

of control / media streams, routing scalability, and

conference discovery is completed, the speakers of

chronization, quality-of-service selection, security trust model.

Figure 6 shows an overview of the ACT design.

A separate module handles conference discovery—

both scheduled and ongoing—and facilitates the

figured on the routers for network broadcast. Once

for speaker information sent by listeners.

The Interest packets for voice data streams

the flexibility to extend ACT with other features

setup and speaker management; thus broadcast

who initiates a conference creates data that describes the various aspects of the conference, such

as estimated start time, duration, media type, purpose, etc. Conference discovery requires propagation of Interest packets from participants in a given

conference for conference information across the network. This is achieved by choosing the names

for conference information data from a broadcast

HTTPS AND STREAMS

pants in a conference should answer the Interests need to be generated at frequencies orders of mag-

such as video, whiteboard, and text message. A user

COMPARISON BETWEEN

each ongoing conference are discovered. Partici-

task of joining a conference. The decoupling of conference discovery from voice media delivery gives

FIGURE 5

nitude higher than those needed for conference is not used for voice streaming. ACT uses speaker-

specific names for voice data, and this task is del-

egated to the Voice Data Distribution module. Voice data is fetched by sending Interests directly to each participant speaker in a conference. Pipelining of Interests and flow balance are enforced to mitigate

the effects caused by the delay of round trips and loss of packets, thus smoothing out the sound of the voice transmission.

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

19

EXPLORATION OF THIS AREA EXPANDS ON UCLA’S EXPERIENCE BUILDING INTERACTIVE SPACES OF THE KINDS FOUND IN MUSEUMS, PHYSICAL SIMULATION SPACES, THEME PARKS, AND LIVE PERFORMANCES.

20

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

FIGURE 6 CONFERENCING PROJECT - OVERVIEW

Media data processing and user interface de-

rience Sampling. John Hicks, Nithya Ramanathan, Donnie

decoupled from networking specifics. To focus our

borah Estrin. Wireless Health ’10. http://openmhealth.org/

sign are necessary components of ACT but largely

effort on NDN-specific design issues, ACT adopted a client-server based open-source audio application

package. It embeds the modules for speaker discovery and voice data distribution in the original

Kim, Mohamad Monibi, Joshua Selsky, Mark Hansen, Dewp-content/uploads/wireless-health.pdf.

Many thanks to Jeff Burke, Lixia Zhang, Deborah Estrin, and Alessandro Marianantoni at UCLA and to the researchers of UCLA partner institutions for their support.

server code, leaving the client intact. This modified server runs on the same machine as the client and

communicates with the client using the standard IP

protocol stack. At the same time it communicates

with other participants (who may be using the modified server) over NDN.

ZHENKAI@UCLA.EDU BRAHULRAO@UCLA.EDU

REFERENCES

[1] Named Data Networking (NDN) Project. www.named-data.net.

[2] Named Data Networking (NDN) Project. PARC Technical Re-

port NDN-0001. L. Zhang, D. Estrin, J. Burke, V. Jacobson, J. D. Thornton, D. K. Smetters, et al. http://www.named-data. net/ndn-proj.pdf.

[3] AndWellness: An Open Mobile System for Activity and Expe-

TAKEDA@TAKEDA.TK CHENNI@UCLA.EDU

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

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22

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITIES FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF CAMPUS Jeff Chang, UCLA Anderson School of Management

WHAT IF YOU WANT TO BE IN A CREATIVE ROOM THAT SPAWNS MORE IDEAS AND INSPIRES YOU? WHAT IF YOU WANT A CAREER AS A VENTURE CAPITALIST? WHAT IF YOU HAVE AN IDEA AND WANT TO KNOW WHAT TO DO NEXT? Odds are, there is something in North Campus for you.

Enroll in TIP (Technology & Innovation Partners) TIP is a yearlong course for accelerating research commercialization. It brings together students from vari-

TIP http://bit.ly/lScAWQ

ous UCLA graduate schools. TIP classes are taught by strong professors and guest speakers under the leadership of Al Osborne, Jr., Senior Associate Dean and founder of the Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

Become part of the UCLA Entrepreneur Association The Anderson EA organizes nearly 150 events per year. Many of those events are open to all UCLA students.

A few examples are the following:

Entrepreneur Association http://bit.ly/lbjspT

• eLabs – where students pitch their ideas and get feedback and support from the audience.

• Knapp Prep events get you ready to put together a business plan.

• eWeek – a week of seminars and keynotes with successful entrepreneurs.

• The EA Conference in mid-May – an entire day of panels, speakers, the fast-pitch competition, and opportunities to make contacts at breakfast, lunch, and happy hour.

Knapp http://bit.ly/ieDMVN

You can also compete in a business plan competition any time of year. As a UCLA grad student, you are

encouraged to contact any of a hundred Anderson students through the site www.KnappComp.com if you have an idea and need to put together a team. A feature on the site is a list of all one hundred worldwide, openformat business plan competitions for the upcoming year – So stay tuned!

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

23

A WIRELESS HOME AUTOMATION SYSTEM FOR CHILDHOOD OBESITY PREVENTION Navid Amini, Computer Science

PEOPLE ARE BECOMING MORE CONCERNED WITH THE PROBLEM OF CHILDHOOD OBESITY, WHEN EXCESS BODY FAT NEGATIVELY AFFECTS A CHILD’S HEALTH.

Childhood obesity is recognized as a seri-

tioned facts, it is widely recommended that one

lence of obesity in children (Troiano 1995). In the

five times a week (Sallis 1994, Pate 1998, Corbin

ous public health concern due to the rising prevaUnited States, direct measurements of body mass

and height obtained by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicate that about

15% of 6–19 year olds are classified as overweight

(Ogden 2002). As the children spend a significant

amount of their time at home, a sedentary lifestyle accounts for the leading cause of childhood obes-

ity (Walker 1998). Many children fail to exercise because they spend time doing stationary activities such as playing video games or watching TV. Certain reports provide evidence that television viewing is a reason for increased body fatness and that

reducing television viewing is a promising strategy for preventing childhood obesity (Andersen 1998, Robinson 1998).

On the other hand, exercise would help chil-

dren control their weight. It also helps to reduce the risk of some illnesses such as high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep problems, and other similar disorders (Freedman 1993). Based on the men24

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

should moderately exercise for at least 30 minutes 1994). Furthermore, it is reported that standards for recommended pedometer-determined steps per day for 6–12 year olds are 12,000 for girls and

15,000 for boys (Tudor-Locke 2004). This highlights the importance of physical activity for children. Accordingly, many control units have been

implemented in games and appliances by parents in an effort to encourage children to perform physical exercise. Using these units, parents can limit the

time that their children can spend playing computer or TV games by manually controlling the corresponding appliances using the GUI provided by

these units (Thompson 2006, Coshott 2007). However, the units are not capable of preventing children from watching another channel or playing another game that is not equipped with the parental control option.

In this paper, the system proposed can miti-

gate the previously mentioned problems by controlling power outlets instead of controlling certain

TV channels or particular games. It has been sev-

to act as an intelligent agent (Cook 2003). In the

such homes, RF (radio frequency) signals from spe-

light, humidity, temperature, smoke, gas, motion,

eral years since the introduction of smart homes. In

cial controllers are exploited to activate or deacti-

vate power outlets. In some cases, the controller is

able to regulate the intensity of room light as well.

A number of research projects have been carried

out based on these or similar controllers to build

MavHome system, a sensor network including

infrared, and switches is developed to keep track of the home environment. Based on the data collected

from the sensor network, a server makes a decision

smart homes (Cook 2003, Jiang 2000, Cole 2002).

THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

used in this project in order to acquire complete

CONTROLS POWER OUTLETS

a wireless sensor is utilized that can calculate the

INSTEAD OF CONTROLLING

Likewise, a certain type of RF power controller is control over the home’s power outlets. In addition,

travelled distance and average pace for a walk (or a run) so as to monitor the daily activity level of

children. The recorded data can later be uploaded to any computer via the USB interface. The goal of

the proposed system is to make a virtual connection between power outlets and a wireless activity

CERTAIN TV CHANNELS OR PARTICULAR GAMES.

monitor sensor. This way, the children could be en-

for resource management and executes the decision

time of home entertainment (e.g., watching TV).

Kit) with which the appliances in the home are

couraged to do more exercise in exchange for more

The more exercise children perform, the more time

they secure to do stationary activities. The pro-

posed system, called No Pain No Game, is intended to prevent childhood obesity disease and thus improve childhood fitness levels.

The remainder of the paper is organized as

follows. Section 2 provides a brief overview of related work in the context of home automation and

childhood obesity prevention. Preliminary notions

followed by the structure of the No Pain No Game system are covered in Section 3. The important features of the system are summarized in Section 4. Fi-

nally, Section 5 concludes this study and highlights future research directions.

RELATED WORK

There are several research projects based

on home automation systems. As an example,

MavHome smart home architecture developed at

the University of Texas at Arlington allows a home

through the smart actuators (e.g., X10 ActiveHome equipped. Generally, the MavHome aims at maximizing the inhabitant’s comfort and productivity

and minimizing costs. For elderly and disabled people, the system can provide a fine health care and a

higher level of security. As another example, to help

people with disabilities, Jiang et al. has designed a voice-activated environmental control system which consists of a universal remote control with

X10 home automation capability, a Motorola 6811 microprocessor, and an off-the-shelf voice recognition circuit (Jiang 2000).

In the context of activity monitoring, in a

number of projects X10 components are integrated into a toolkit which is intended to monitor the daily

activity of an individual (Cole 2002). In addition to the home automation systems, certain appliances

are developed to encourage children to exercise.

For example, an interrupter system can be added to

an existing connection between a game console and

its controller (Coshott, 2007). The interrupter sysBRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

25

FIGURE 1 A TYPICAL CONFIGURATION FOR X10 CONTROLLED APPLIANCES.

tem is used selectively to enable and interrupt the

version of the system exploits Nike + iPod Sport Kit

and the game console, dependent on the detected

uses X10-based devices in the shape of controlla-

modified connection between the game controller operation of the exercise machine. Accordingly, the

parents can arrange it in such a way to block normal playing on the game console unless the child performs an adequate amount of exercise on the exercise machine.

In (Annavaram 2008), a wireless body area

network is developed for wearable monitoring ap-

control over different entertainment appliances.

Microsoft Access databases are utilized to store the relevant exercise data. The software that connects

these three parts is written in Visual Basic and C Sharp and runs on a Windows platform.

X10 Standards

of heterogeneous sensors (e.g., heart-rate sensor

standard for communication among electronic de-

ognize, predict, and reason automatically about

power line wiring for signaling and control, where

and accelerometer sensor), and the goal is to rec-

human physical activity and behavior states by the evaluation of multimodal sensing and interpretation.

THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

No Pain No Game is a home automation sys-

tem that encourages children’s daily exercise by rewarding them with more home entertainment

time. In other words, the time children spend doing stationary activities should be proportional to the time they spend doing physical exercise. Aside from

X10 is an international and open industry

vices used for home automation. It primarily uses the signals involve brief radio frequency bursts

representing digital information. A wireless radio

protocol is also defined, where the data packets are very similar to those used for power line wires.

The operating frequency of the wireless protocol is 433 MHz and 310 MHz in the European systems

and U.S. systems, respectively. It should be noted that the wireless protocol allows the operation of keypad remote controllers on top of the underlying wired X10 modules.

X10 is popular in the home environment, with

the interface software, the system is composed of

millions of units in use worldwide and new compo-

records, a controller that commands the power

typical configuration for an X10 network.

three parts: a sport kit that monitors the exercise

outlets, and a database that stores the health statistics and exercise records of children. The current VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

ble power outlet modules in order to acquire full

plications, and the intended use of the system is to

avoid pediatric obesity. The network is composed

26

as a means to monitor the physical exercise. It also

nents inexpensively available. Figure 1 illustrates a

By using The ActiveHome Pro Scripting In-

terface provided by X10, one can create software,

THE SENSOR FITS INSIDE SPECIAL NIKE SHOES AND A WIRELESS RECEIVER IS CONNECTED TO AN IPOD.

with XML format. The proposed system will upload

those files to the server and extract the useful data

from the files. Therefore, the data can be analyzed

to decide how much entertainment time the child has earned.

The Proposed No Pain No Game System In the proposed system, a server is main-

tained by parents while children will use remote web pages, and other tools that use the USB In-

terface to control and interact with X10 modules,

controls sending matching signals to trigger the

appliances. A child must register his or her sports

sensors, and remote controls (The ActiveHome Pro

SDK from X10). The address of each module is set by the dials located on it. Accordingly, one can command the interface to turn on the intended module

by providing a valid address corresponding to the module. Upon receiving a command (e.g., from a remote control), the interface reports the action of

receiving the command which enables the user to

benefit from certain options. For the sake of more reliability, each packet is sequentially sent twice to make sure the receivers understand it even in the presence of power line noise.

Nike + iPod Sport Kit The Nike + iPod Sport Kit (Figure 2) consists

of a wireless sensor and a small wireless receiver

that plugs into an iPod. The sensor is a piezoelectric accelerometer pedometer that fits inside special Nike shoes and a wireless receiver that is con-

nected to an iPod. Each sensor has its unique serial

number that is used as an identification number for each child in the proposed system. The personal training application on the iPod can provide information on distance and speed while a user is listening to music. By considering the number of steps taken and the elapsed time, users (children) can

schedule their desired workout in the form a speci-

FIGURE 2 APPLE NIKE + IPOD SPORT KIT.

kit on the server, given that every sensor has a particular identification number. The proposed sys-

tem simultaneously analyzes the current exercise records when children update the database with new exercise records merely by plugging their iPod into the client computer. This means that the server

automatically calculates the total time budget that

a child is allowed to use his/her intended appliances (e.g., TV). A formula is applied to derive the time budget based on the calories burned by the child:

Calories =

METs × 3.5 × w ×T 200

fied distance or a certain time period that can fit a

where MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) is a

formance. The exercise records are stored in files

exercise is (Dr Gily’s Health Portal), w is the child’s

plan based on their goals and their previous per-

(1)

physiological concept that shows how intense the

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

27

The total time budget for each child is stored

IN THE PROPOSED SYSTEM,

in a database by Microsoft Access. The time budget

A SERVER IS MAINTAINED BY

to activate an appliance. Moreover, after the time

PARENTS WHILE CHILDREN WILL USE REMOTE CONTROLS SENDING MATCHING SIGNALS TO TRIGGER THE APPLIANCES.

gets verified and consumed every time a child tries budget is depleted, the server will automatically

power off the related appliance (e.g., TV). A child

has to perform more exercise and then plug in his/ her iPod into the client computer in order to in-

crease the time budget again. Figure 3 illustrates the structure of the No Pain No Game system.

The implementation of the system is con-

structed with two ends, the client and the server

(Figure 3). On one end, the program on client comweight in kilograms, and T represents the total duration of exercise (e.g., running or walking) in minutes.

MET expresses the energy cost of physical ac-

tivities as multiplies of the Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) and is defined as the ratio of metabolic rate

(and therefore, the rate of energy consumption) during a certain physical activity to one’s metabolic

rate at rest (quiet sitting), set by convention to 3.5 .

ml O2 kg

-1

.

.

min or equivalently 1 kcal kg -1

-1

.

hr . By -1

convention 1 MET is considered the resting metabolic rate obtained during quiet sitting. MET values

of physical activities range from 0.9 (sleeping) to 18 (running at 17.5 km/h). It should be noted that

After validation, the files will be sent to the server unless they are expired. On the other end, the server will increase the corresponding time budget by an appropriate formula based on children’s

BMI and exercise records. The server also verifies whether the sensor identification number of the

record is valid, and it makes sure that the record

is not outdated. Meanwhile, if one wants to register more children (through Account Management) or verify the status of all children, the server can update or retrieve the data as required (see system block diagram illustrated in Figure 4).

Moreover, the server handles the events when

the Power Control Module (ActiveHome Automa-

bolic Equivalent 2009).

controls. Each received signal will be mapped to

After the burned calories are derived, a ba-

sic requirement for this value is enforced. If the

amount of burned calories is less than a certain quantity (called the basic requirement), no time budget will be granted. However, if it exceeds the

basic requirement, the basic amount of time will be

given, plus extra time depending on the bonus rate and the overhead. The required amount of calories, the amounts of the basic time budget and extra

time can all be adjusted by the Account Management Interface.

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

XML readers supported by the .NET Framework.

the MET value for watching television is 1 and for walking at a speed of 3.2 km/h is about 2 (Meta-

28

puters will parse iPod exercise records by creating

tion System interface) receives signals from remote

a particular child and the module he/she has requested. Therefore, the server can retrieve the corresponding data and determine if it should send a command (sendrf in this case) to the automation

system in order to trigger the requested module.

In addition, for each appliance, there is a timer in the server to update and monitor the available

time budget and, correspondingly, to turn off the appliance when the time budget has exhausted. A detailed block diagram of the server is depicted in Figure 5.

FIGURE 3 STRUCTURE AND APPLICATIONS OF NO PAIN NO GAME.

SYSTEM FEATURES

tivity level of their children and the status of the

ferent children by evaluating their identification

and observe the progress of their child’s fitness

Since each child has his/her own iPod + Nike

Sport Kit, the system can distinguish between difnumbers. Furthermore, the system takes into ac-

count the date of exercise records to avoid copies of previous exercise records from being taken into consideration. This validation process prevents

children from cheating to some extent. For example, a child will not gain any extra time budget by

plugging in the iPod twice with the same exercise record.

As can be seen in Figure 6, a user-friendly GUI

on client computers is provided for children to use

so that they can easily learn how to update the ex-

ercise records without any difficulty. Furthermore, the system allows children to watch TV or use other entertainment appliances only if they have performed an adequate amount of exercise throughout

the day. This gives the children a sense of achieve-

ment while the parents need not worry about their kids being too inactive. Additionally, parents can

record the time and let the system monitor the ac-

entertainment appliances. They can view earlier

data (e.g., how many calories have been burned) level. Figure 7 shows an example table containing

a child’s recent exercise data. This exercise table is accessible from the server.

DISCUSSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

In the proposed system’s current form, after

performing exercise, a child connects the iPod to

the client computer. This will update a database on

the server, and eventually a new schedule for the related appliances will be sent from the server to the ActiveHome Automation System. However, it is more desirable to operate the system in real time, where the updating process is done automatically

and wirelessly. This can be done by using a Blue-

tooth adapter connected to the iPod. This way, there is no need for the child to connect the iPod to the computer in order to extend his/her time budget.

Apart from Nike + iPod Sport Kit, other types

of sport kits can be added to the system in future to

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

29

FIGURE 4 SYSTEM BLOCK DIAGRAM

FIGURE 5 DETAILED BLOCK DIAGRAM OF THE SERVER.

30

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

provide the children with more options to perform physical exercise. Also it should be noted that the

server side and client side of the system (Figure 3) can run on two networked computers, or they can run on a single machine.

A new method of gaming can be designed in

order to make players benefit from doing physi-

cal exercise in the real world. This can be achieved by extending the system to a server maintained by game companies. Similar to the design for the

Home Automation System, the system now rewards children who have performed a sufficient amount of exercise with the profit in the game. For example,

a child’s character in the game becomes stronger and thus is able to carry better weapons. It is anticipated that this idea gives encouraging incentives for children in exchange for performing physical exercise.

No Pain No Game can also cooperate with

a children’s health organization to advocate for-

mulating an exercise plan, encouraging children by a competitive display record on the organiza-

tion’s website. A child can upload his/her exercise progress and get ranked, accordingly. Further, the

exercise data collected from children can be a useful resource for related research institutes. People

tomation systems. In this system, called No Pain No

FIGURE 6 (TOP)

the trend of health data progresses during the ex-

time in order to be able to activate any entertain-

NO PAIN NO GAME.

in health-related organizations can analyze how ercise.

CONCLUSIONS

Childhood obesity has been a public concern

as people expend money and resources in order to maintain their children’s physical fitness and overall health. As such, it is necessary to build an

application that continually encourages children to perform physical exercise. Several parental control

Game, children have to perform exercise for enough

ment appliance. The activity level of children is

monitored using a Nike + iPod Sport Kit, which is

AN EXAMPLE TABLE OF THE EXERCISE DATA.

cation can calculate calories and other related data from the records. A database is utilized to store the

exercise records and the time budget for every registered child.

No Pain No Game lowers the risk of being

system technology ever improving and with the

how to extend their entertainment time. Children

proposed system is built on the idea of home au-

FIGURE 7 (BOTTOM)

steps taken and time elapsed. Therefore, the appli-

cheated by means of its validation process. Also,

number of related research projects growing, the

OF THE CLIENT GUI IN

becoming more popular. It records the number of

units have been designed, but few of them can effectively impact children. With home automation

A TYPICAL SCREENSHOT

its user-friendly GUI easily allows children to learn

can obtain a sense of achievement, while parents

can let the system automatically monitor the acBRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

31

NO PAIN NO GAME CAN ALSO COOPERATE WITH CHILDREN HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS TO ADVOCATE FORMULATING AN EXERCISE PLAN… A CHILD CAN UPLOAD HIS/HER EXERCISE PROGRESS AND GET RANKED ACCORDINGLY.

32

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

tivity level of their children and the status of the

Agricultural Research 2006 March.

appliances. It is believed that a complete No Pain

[11] Coshott, R.J., 2007. Encouraging exercise whilst playing elec-

pervise their children’s exercise and entertainment

[12] Tudor-Locke, C., Pangrazi, R.P., Corbin, C.B., Rutherford, W.J.,

No Game product would enable the parents to suinexpensively and in a completely unobtrusive fashion.

REFERENCES

[1] Troiano, R.P., Flegal, K.M., Kuczmarski, R.S., 1995. Overweight

prevalence and trends for children and adolescents. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1995;149:1085– 91.

[2] Ogden, C.L., Flegal, K.M., Carroll, M.D., Johnson, C.L., 2002. Prev-

tronic games. USPTO Application number: 20090098979.

Vincent, S.D., Raustorp, A., et al, 2004. BMI-referenced standards

for

recommended

pedometer-determined

steps/day in children. Preventive Medicine, 2004.

[13] Cook, D.J., Youngblood, M., Heierman, E., Gopalratnam, K., Rao, S., Litvin, A., Khawaja, F., 2003. MavHome: An agentbased smart home, in: Proceedings of the IEEE International

Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, 2003, pp. 521–524.

alence and trends in overweight among US children and

[14] Jiang, H., Han, Z., Scuccess, P., Robidoux, S., Sun, Y., 2000.

[3] Walker, A.R.P., Walker, B.F., 1998. Rises in schoolchildren’s an-

with disabilities. Proc. of the IEEE 26th Annual Northeast

adolescents, 1999 – 2000. JAMA 2002;288(14):1728– 32.

thropometry: what do they signify in developed and developing populations? J R Soc Health 1998;118(3):159– 66.

[4] Andersen, R.E., Crespo, C.J., Bartlett, S.J., Cheskin, L.J., Pratt, M., 1998. Relationship of physical activity and television

Voice-activated environmental control system for persons Bioengineering Conference, 2000, pp. 167–169.

[15] Cole, A., Tran, B., 2002. Home automation to promote inde-

pendent living in elderly populations. Presented at Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology

watching with body weight and level of fatness among chil-

24th Annual Conference and the 2002 Fall Meeting of the

Examination Survey. JAMA 1998;279:938–42.

2002, Houston, TX, United States, 2002.

dren: results from the Third National Health and Nutrition

Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES / EMBS), Oct 23–26

[5] Robinson, T.N., 1998. Does television cause childhood obesity?

[16] The ActiveHome Pro SDK from X10, http://www.x10.com/

[6] Freedman, D.S., Dietz, W.H., Srinavisian, S.R., Berenson, G.S.,

[17] Dr. Gily’s Health Portal, http://www.drgily.com/exercise-cal-

tors among children and adolescents: the Bogalusa heart

[18] Annavaram, M., Medvidovic, N., Mitra, U., Narayanan, S., Spru-

[7] Sallis, J.F., Patrick, K., 1994. Physical activity guidelines for

Thatte, G., 2008. Multimodal sensing for pediatric obesity

JAMA 1998; 279: 959–60.

1993. The relation of overweight to cardiovascular risk facstudy. Pediatrics 1999; 103: 1175–1182.

adolescents: consensus statement. Pediatr Exerc Sci 1994; 6: 302 –314.

[8] Pate, R., Trost, S., Williams, C., 1998. Critique of existing guidelines for physical activity in young people. in Biddle, S., Sallis, J., Cavill, N. (Eds), Young and Active? Young People and

Health-Enhancing Physical Activity-Evidence and Implications, Health Education Authority, London, pp. 162–76.

activehomepro/sdk/

orie-counter.php

ijt-Metz, D., Sukhatme, G., Meng, Z., Qiu, S., Kumar, R., and

applications. In UrbanSense08 Workshop at SenSys Raleigh, NC, USA, November 2008.

[19] Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) from Wikipedia, http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent

For further reading: http://bit.ly/kLTVD3

[9] Corbin, C.B., Pangrazi, R.P., Welk, G.J., 1994. Toward understanding of appropriate physical activity levels for youth.

President’s Council of Physical Activity and Sport. Phys Act Fit Res Digest 1994;1(8):1– 8.

[10] Thompson, D.I., Cullen, K., Baranowski, T., 2006. Using Computer Games and Other Media To Decrease Child Obesity.

AMINI@CS.UCLA.EDU

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TEC: A TRAINING GROUND THAT BRINGS THE UNIVERSE TO OUR UNIVERSITY Tanuj Thapliyal, Electrical Engineering

LIFE AT COLLEGE LETS YOU LEARN ABOUT ONE WORLD. LIFE AFTER EARNING YOUR DEGREE REQUIRES AN ENORMOUS READJUSTMENT. IS THERE A WAY TO BRIDGE THE TRANSITION BETWEEN THE TWO? At UCLA, the Technical Entrepreneurial Community

The organization takes part in several entrepre-

aim. TEC actively fosters a culture of entrepreneur-

ITA Program

(TEC) is a group operating since 2005 with just that ship at UCLA—answering the question, “What will

I innovate or do with what I have learned?” TEC

Participants work with the Institute for

from any background or direction. Its activities

their startup ideas.

believes that a business entrepreneur can come

help create environments where successful alumni

share with Bruins to discuss, educate, network, and start companies.

How would you like to find out if you should start a business with your degree?

Because TEC is open to all UCLA students, faculty,

alumni, and staff and is free of charge, its events

help connect the dots for people in all disciplines,

whether undergraduates, graduates, or post-docs.

TEC currently offers eight programs for the UCLA community. Every year since its inception, the number of programs and attendees has grown.

34

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

neurial programs and services as follows:

Technology Advancement to help develop Technology Assessment Group

Participants learn the process to evaluate early-stage technology for commercial

feasibility through a seminar series, report writing, and delivering a presenta-

tion on a UCLA patent. Participants who complete the program obtain a signed certificate from the Dean of the Engineering school and from the Vice Provost.

Tech Coast Angels Mentorship (TCA)

Startups receive guidance from angel investors.

Cross-Campus Entrepreneurship Mixer A mixer is arranged where engineering

students can network with business school students. 93 students attended the inaugural mixer in February.

Dinner with an Entrepreneur

Participants have a private dinner with a successful alumnus.

In-House Legal Counsel Participants obtain free legal counsel on

WORKING IN COLLABORATION WITH OTHER MEMBERS OF TEC WILL DEFINITELY FOSTER ONE’S OWN DEVELOPMENT OF NET-

intellectual property.

WORKING, COMMUNICATION,

Successful entrepreneurs, investors, and

AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS—

Seminars

lawyers speak on a variety of issues.

TCA Screening Sessions

Participants are a “fly on the wall” as they hear entrepreneurs pitch business plans to investors.

TEC is entirely student-run and set up to incorporate new programs with people’s interests. Students

ALL IMPERATIVE WHEN BRUINS COMPLETE THEIR TRAINING AT UCLA AND BEGIN THEIR TRANSITION INTO INDUSTRY.

who have ideas for entrepreneurship activities that

are not currently offered are encouraged to become a part of TEC and submit a proposal. Working in

collaboration with other members of TEC will definitely foster one’s own development of networking,

communication, and leadership skills—all impera-

tive when Bruins complete their training at UCLA and begin their transition into industry.

HTTP://WWW.TECBRUINS.ORG INFO@TECBRUINS.ORG

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

35

FIGURE 1 MAZDA’S CROSS-SECTIONAL ROTARY ENGINE DISPLAYED AT THE MAZDA RACEWAY IN MONTEREY, CA.

36

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

INNOVATIVE DESIGN METHOD CREATES NEW VARIETIES OF ROTARY ENGINES Sarah Warren, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

THE ONLY ROTARY ENGINE DESIGN THAT HAS ENJOYED ANY MEASURE OF POPULARITY AND SUCCESS IS ATTRIBUTED TO ENGINEER FELIX WANKEL AND THE GERMAN AUTOMOTIVE COMPANY NSU. After seeing their first working prototype,

scape with the advent of the Iranian revolution and

ers recognized the potential of such a small, light-

tively new engine had been under limited develop-

Americans Glenn Curtiss and the Wright brothweight, and powerful engine; they immediately

bought the North American rights and built their own. Incredibly, the Wankel-type rotary engine

was about half the size, half the weight, half the manufacturing cost, and had fewer than half the

moving parts, for the same horsepower as the wellestablished piston engine. Because of the intrinsic

rotational motion, the rotary is a quieter engine, is

the subsequent 1979 crude oil shortage. The relament for about ten years and had not yet achieved the fuel efficiency that it commands today; it was not even competitive with its centenarian rival, the

piston engine. This single deficiency nearly erased the Wankel from automotive history. Now the only

manufacturer building a production rotary engine is Mazda, for their RX-8 sports coupe.

Even today Wankel’s rotary engine does not

more compact, and has less vibration while being

have the fuel efficiency of a comparable piston en-

motive company in the world was anticipating the

stead reserving it for performance purposes. Mazda

higher revving. By 1975, nearly every major autoeclipse of the reciprocating piston engine and either held a license, or was in negotiations, to build Wankel’s rotary engine [1].

Fifty years have passed since the debut of the

Wankel engine. NSU was eventually absorbed by Volkswagen then coalesced into Audi, and the Wankel disappeared from the auto manufacturing land-

gine, inhibiting any economical applications and instunned the world in 1991 by winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans with their rotary race car, prompting an

immediate rule change to make rotary engines ineligible against piston engines due to their inherent

and insurmountable advantage. Even so, the lightweight powerhouse has proved itself repeatedly in

racing competition since then. The Wankel’s lower BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

37

fuel efficiency may be attributed to a few inherent features, including the combustion chamber

and the apex seals. But optimizing the combustion chamber and engine sealing—in fact, changing any part of a Wankel engine profile—is not so easy.

One other remarkable and unique character-

istic of the rotary engine is its fuel versatility. The engine design itself is inherently octane-flexible

and easily adaptable to alternative fuels. Mazda has demonstrated this with gasoline and hydrogen hybrid vehicles, designing a duel-fuel rotary engine that can alternate between the two fuels at the flip

of a switch. It is conceivable that the rotary engine,

with improvements, could reduce fossil-fuel dependency while allowing the defense industry, rac-

ing industry, and vehicle enthusiasts to indulge in performance.

The scope of this research project includes

applying a relatively new method of conjugate pair

generation in order to design optimal rotary engine alternatives to the Wankel. This method is called

the deviation-function (DF) method and was originally developed by Yang, Tong, and Lin and applied to lobe pumps [9].

ALL PRODUCTION ROTARY ENGINES TODAY ARE OF WANKEL’S ORIGINAL DESIGN PROPORTIONS, WHETHER THE APPLICATION IS A SPORTS CAR, COMPRESSOR, MODEL AIRPLANE, OR OUTBOARD MOTOR.

WANKEL’S ROTARY ENGINE

The photograph in Figure 1 shows a cross-sec-

tion of Mazda’s Wankel engine. The triangular rotor rotates eccentrically inside the oval-shaped engine housing. The engine’s crankshaft is at the center of the housing and rotates three times for every full

revolution of the rotor. During its orbit, the rotor is

always and only in contact with the housing at the three apexes, never contacting the housing along

its flanks. This creates three chambers between the rotor flanks and the housing, effectively sealed and

thus thermodynamically isolated from each other.

The chambers are constantly changing shape as the rotor turns, allowing the four strokes of the Otto

cycle to occur sequentially for each chamber and

simultaneously on all sides of the rotor, similar to a multi-piston internal combustion engine. The intake and exhaust breathing is through ports in the

housing, eliminating the need for valves and a valve train. This is one reason why the rotary engine has

so many fewer parts than the reciprocating engine.

Thus the rotor and housing are analogous to a pis-

ton and cylinder, but one clear advantage of the Wankel is the frequency of the power stroke. For a one-cylinder 4-stroke engine, the power stroke occurs once for two rotations of the crankshaft. For a

one-rotor Wankel engine, the power stroke occurs on every rotation of the crankshaft, utilizing its displacement twice as frequently.

Although not always credited by name, all pro-

duction rotary engines today are of Wankel’s origi-

nal design proportions, whether the application is a sports car, compressor, model airplane, or out-

board motor. Since no other rotary engine design

has ever been in production, the name Wankel is often thought to be synonymous with a rotary and

reciprocating combustion engine. In fact, the Wankel engine has specific proportions for the 3-lobed rotor and its conjugate housing profile. All design

variations are engendered by tweaking a single ratio of rotor radius R to eccentricity e, called the K factor, or trochoid constant.

38

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

The housing of a Wankel engine is very spe-

choid is defined for a potential engine housing, the

FIGURE 2

choidal curve. An epitrochoid is a type of trochoid

family is the eccentricity. Thus, eccentricity is one

(B) CHANGING ECCENTRICITY

cifically defined by generating a particular epitrocurve, and a trochoid is generated by the path of a

single point within a circle that rolls along the pe-

riphery of another (base) circle. The base circle is stationary, the rolling circle is called the generating circle, and the point that draws the path is called

the generating point. The two circles are related in size because one must have a radius that is a

whole number multiple of the other. To create an epitrochoid curve, the generating circle rolls on the

outside of the base circle, illustrated in Figure 2(a).

For the housing of a Wankel engine, the generating

difference between the other curves in the same

profiles, the other being rotor radius R. Rotor radius is the distance between the center of the ro-

tor and its apex, as indicated in Figure 3(b). The profile of the 3-lobed rotor is found by rolling the 2-lobed epitrochoid around the rotor’s eccentric

center. Examining all incremental positions of the epitrochoid during its orbit at the same time reveals two 3-lobed envelopes of the overall motion,

ECCENTRICITY IS ONE

is large, the generating circle is small, and the gen-

OF THE CHARACTERISTICS

erating point is identified by its radius, eccentricity

e, and is marked along its epitrochoidal path. The generating circle rolls without slipping on the base

circle, and all of its points describe trochoids, ex-

cept the center whose path is a circle. A family of

epitrochoid curves is defined by choosing different

(A) EPITROCHOID

of the characteristics used to design Wankel engine

circle of radius r2 is equal to half of the base circle

radius r1. In Figure 2(a), the stationary base circle

EPITROCHOID GEOMETRY.

USED TO DESIGN WANKEL ENGINE PROFILES; THE OTHER BEING ROTOR RADIUS.

points (excluding the circumference) on the generating circle as shown in Figure 2(b). Once an epitro-

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

39

FIGURE 3 WANKEL ENGINE GEOMETRY. (A) INNER AND OUTER ENVELOPES (B) HOUSING AND ROTOR PROFILES

http://bit.ly/lFkRRP

shown in Figure 3(a). The silhouettes of the various positions of the engine housing profile while rolling around describe the conjugate inner envelope

and the conjugate outer envelope. A rotary engine’s 3-lobed rotor is the engine housing’s conjugate inner envelope, correctly positioned together in Fig-

ure 3(b). The ratio of rotor radius R to eccentricity

e (the K factor) determines the engine compression ratio, the relative volumetric displacement, and the

maximum leaning angle. There is a unique K factor for all Wankel engine designs, so by deciding on a

single design criterion, such as maximum leaning

angle, the design of the engine profile is completed.

This method of designing a trochoidal mechanism

may recall the child’s toy Spirograph, and indeed part of the success of Wankel’s design can be attrib-

uted to the easily understood geometry. However, this simplistic methodology belies the profound

and powerful relations of trochoids and their conjugate envelopes [5] [8].

40

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

The main design considerations for the pro-

lation or incidence, refers to the angle of contact that

sions), relative volumetric displacement, theoreti-

orbits. The maximum leaning angle indicates how

files of a Wankel engine are size (physical dimencal compression ratio, and maximum leaning angle.

The size of the profiles relative to the pitch circles and the eccentricity are both manifest in the gear

set that positions the rotor relative to the housing.

The annular gear (for positioning, not power transfer) is placed inside the rotor, and the eccentricity of the designed profiles is sustained in the rotor’s

THE VARIETY OF ROTARY ENGINE DESIGNS NOW AVAILABLE FOR OPTIMIZATION IS EXPECTED TO GENERATE INTEREST AMONG DESIGN ENGINEERS AND MANUFACTURERS.

the apex seals have with the housing as the rotor

well each chamber can be sealed from its neighbors and thus serves as a sealing index. Manufacturers of the Wankel engine have achieved optimal sealing

FIGURE 4 PITCH PAIR EXAMPLES. (A) TWO GEARS WITH THEIR PITCH CURVES (B) NONCIRCULAR EXTERNAL PITCH CURVES [7]

http://bit.ly/mBRETN

by using housings with fatter “waistlines.” This type

of chamber has lower maximum leaning angles, utilizing smaller swaths of contact on their apex seals.

A higher maximum leaning angle, characteristic of

housings with high eccentricity (a sharply defined waistline), means that the apex seals are in working

contact closer to their edges, which is detrimental to sealing and will wear the seals out sooner [3].

DEVIATION-FUNCTION METHOD

Introducing a new method to rotary engine

design demands adhering to certain industry standards so that results of this project can be easily, fairly, and convincingly compared to the Wankel engine. In accordance with this objective, the same design and performance criteria of displacement,

compression ratio, leaning angle, and efficiency are and will be calculated for DF-designed profiles.

The variety of rotary engine designs now available

for optimization is expected to generate interest eccentric shaft. Theoretical compression ratio and

maximum leaning angle are indicators of horsepower and efficiency, and both are limited by practicality. The leaning angle, also called angle of oscil-

among design engineers and manufacturers. Ide-

ally, the complete development of the DF algorithm as it applies to the rotary engine will appeal as an

accessible methodology for achieving previously inaccessible results.

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

41

The possibilities of the DF method are wide-

ranging but cannot be described without first appreciating conjugate pairs. Two rigid bodies that are in contact along their profiles and have relative

motion, such as rolling or sliding, are called conjugate pairs. Two gears in mesh are an example of a

FIGURE 5 EXAMPLES OF CIRCULAR AND NON-CIRCULAR INTERNAL PITCH CURVES.

conjugate pair that have combined rolling and slid-

1. Design the conjugate pitch pair.

2. Design a generated pair based on the pitch pair.

The pitch pair has pure rolling contact and

defines the relative motion of the meshing con-

and when the centrodes each have respective fixed

the pitch pair, the geometry of the pitch profile

ing contact, then the profiles are called centrodes, files, or pitch curves. In general, the relative motion

of a conjugate pair is specified by its correspond-

ing pitch pair. Figure 4(a) shows two gears in mesh (the conjugate pair) and the corresponding pitch circles (the pitch pair) [6].

THE INEFFICIENCY OF THE DESIGN PROCESS IMPEDES THE INVENTION OF NEW GEARS, ROTORS, AND OTHER CONJUGATE MECHANISMS.

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

two steps:

ing contact. When a conjugate pair is in pure rollrotation centers, they are referred to as pitch pro-

42

The design of conjugate pairs involves

jugate pair. In generating the conjugate pair from is altered such that the required task can be performed; for example, a pitch circle is transformed

to the toothed body of a gear. The generated conjugate pair in mesh has sliding contact, so the relative

motion is not pure rolling, but the speed ratio between them is the same as for the parent pitch pair.

The collective drawbacks to all current methods for conjugate pair generation are

1. Limitation in the types of pitch pairs they can be applied to.

2. Use of noncircular pitch curves requiring solutions by high-order nonlinear equations.

3. Lack of geometrically intuitive design of profiles of the generated pairs.

4. Inability to assign analytical properties to the designed conjugate profiles.

Because of these limitations, the design of

In practice, pitch curves are almost always a

conjugate pairs is a blind trial-and-error process.

pair of perfect circles, or circular solid objects, such

sign and analyze resulting profiles. The inefficiency

conventional conjugate pair generating methods,

This makes it difficult to improve conjugate pair deof the design process impedes the invention of new gears, rotors, and other conjugate mechanisms.

as cones or cylinders. Because of the limitations of only numerical methods are used to generate non-

circular pitch curves. The only known application in

The deviation-function (DF) method was de-

industry for noncircular pitch curves is noncircular

FIGURE 6

pitch pairs, circular or noncircular, it enables geo-

combined with poor understanding of their prop-

CIRCULAR PITCH CURVES.

veloped to address these problems; it works for all

metrically intuitive designing of profiles, and analytical properties can be assigned to the generated conjugate pairs [6].

THE INNOVATION, POTENTIAL, AND MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THE WORK DESCRIBED HERE IS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOW THE DF METHOD

gears. The large amount of computation required, erties and how to design them, has limited their use. The most frequent application has been for a

ENGINE PROFILES WITH THEIR

http://bit.ly/lVESVB

pair of identical elliptical gears [2]. Their potential

has been acknowledged, however, because of their

successful application in quick-return mechanisms, speed matching on assembly lines, and stop-and-

dwell motion. Noncircular gears have been used to improve the functionality and simplicity of mechanisms, but their diversity has so far been limited

to ellipses [4]. Figure 4(b) shows a pair of external

noncircular (and nonelliptical) pitch curves that were designed for use with the DF method as it applies to lobe pumps [7].

Internal pitch curves, like those in Figure 5,

AND NON-CIRCULAR PITCH

are the type that apply to the rotary engine. The in-

CURVES CAN OPTIMIZE

described here is in the development of how the DF

ROTARY ENGINE DESIGN.

CONVENTIONAL WANKEL

novation, potential, and main objective of the work

method and noncircular pitch curves can optimize rotary engine design. The DF method can be used with pitch circles to design conventional Wankel

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

43

engine profiles, and examples of these results are

range of design solutions that are inaccessible by

tors.

number of possibilities, compounded by the variety

shown in Figure 6, along with their calculated K facFIGURE 7 (BELOW) DF-DESIGNED ROTARY ENGINE PROFILES USING THE SAME NONCIRCULAR PITCH.

http://bit.ly/mwzl8w

In practice, noncircular internal pitch curves

are even more unusual than noncircular external

pitch curves. The acknowledged success of noncircular gears in certain applications suggests that

mechanisms using internal pitch pairs may also be improved by noncircular pitch curves. The deviation-function method is a new solution to an inhib-

iting problem for noncircular internal pitch curves; up until the DF method was developed there was

FIGURE 8 (ABOVE) DF-DESIGNED ROTARY ENGINE PROFILES USING DIFFERENT NON-CIRCULAR PITCHES.

http://bit.ly/kmZxA8

no systematic way of designing, and therefore utilizing, noncircular internal pitch curves.

a selection method to find the best solution is nec-

essary for practicality. The algorithms for applying the DF method to circular and noncircular pitch rotary engine design have been developed; all that

remains for the practical application of these equa-

tions is relating them and their parameters to the standard design criteria for Wankel engines. One of

the ultimate goals of this research is to develop a

DF-based selection method for the rotary engine.

Figure 7 shows some of the possible rotary

engine profiles resulting from a single pair of non-

evitably contains parameters that are adjustable

functions. The noncircular pitch pair is drawn in

choosing a so-called deviation function, which inusing the DF method to design for particular mechanical properties. Even considering one type of deviation function, say sinusoidal or quadratic

polynomial, the possible combinations of parameters are literally endless, encompassing a broad VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

of monotonically increasing continuous functions,

The DF method involves first and foremost

for rendering different profiles. This is the crux of

44

conventional design methods. Because of the sheer

circular pitch curves, using different deviation thin lines, and the rotary engine housing and triangular rotor are drawn in heavy lines. Only a single

parameter in the deviation function is changed to generate the different profiles. Each deviation function may have four or more parameters that can

be manipulated to achieve different results. Figure

8 shows examples of using different noncircular

made Wankel’s simplicity ironclad. The plot in

pitch curves in Figure 8 were generated using the

a Wankel engine on a single line. As mentioned pre-

pitch curves with the same deviation function. The same function, but increasing the noncircularity from left to right.

To demonstrate possible design improve-

ments over the conventional Wankel engine solution, the relative volumetric displacement, maximum compression ratio, and maximum leaning

angle are calculated for a range of noncircular pitch rotary engines.

Figure 9 shows the three main design criteria for viously, by selecting any of the three criteria specifi-

cally, or by selecting the K factor, the design of the engine profile is completed. In the conventional design process the relative displacement and theoretical compression ratio are limited by a range within

which the maximum leaning angle is minimized.

The reason for this is that the maximum leaning angle is probably the most important criterion since it

serves as a sealing index and has the largest impact

FIGURE 9 ROTARY ENGINE DESIGN CRITERIA CHART.

WANKEL AND DF-DESIGNED

on engine efficiency and longevity. Additionally, the

was undoubtedly ingenious, but unforgiving and

the two-dimensional profile has been determined.

ROTARY ENGINE COMPARISON

Felix Wankel’s original rotary engine design

limited in terms of modification and experimen-

tation. The complexity and calculations required to manipulate and design other conjugate profiles

relative displacement and theoretical compression ratio can be adjusted by the width of the rotor after The scattered dots in Figure 9 represent de-

viation-function-designed noncircular-pitch rotary engine profile results. Only three of eight deviation-

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

45

THE ROTARY ENGINES POTENTIAL HAS NOT BEEN REALIZED WITH ALTERNATIVE FUELS; AND POSSIBLY ITS PERFORMANCE COULD BE IMPROVED FOR GASOLINE AND DIESEL-POWERED APPLICATIONS.

46

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

function parameters were manipulated to generate

cessible and utilized in a familiar and practical way.

and switch angle. Switch angle represents the con-

not yet been realized for use with alternative fuels;

this plot: pitch curve noncircularity, eccentricity, jugating range of the rotor and the housing and thus

affects the maximum leaning angle. Besides the DF design results that are clinging to the conventional

Wankel engine line, clusters appear as certain fami-

lies of profiles emerge with similar results. This suggests that a more exhaustive survey and smaller

increments of manipulation will produce distinct blobs of heretofore inaccessible rotary engine solutions. Dramatic changes to the engine profile are

More than likely, the rotary engine’s potential has and possibly its performance could be improved for

gasoline and diesel-powered applications. Exploring the alternatives now available by using the DF

method and noncircular pitch curves makes optimization and innovation possible.

REFERENCES

[1] Cole, David E. “The Wankel Engine.” Scientific American Volume 227 No. 2 (August 1972) 14–23.

not necessary, however, to improve the maximum

[2] Dooner, D. B. and A. A. Seireg. The Kinematics of Gearing. John

the conventional Wankel engine design line, but

[3] Hege, John B. The Wankel Rotary Engine. Jefferson, NC: McFar-

placement and compression ratio can be changed

[4] Litvin, Faydor L., Alfonso Fuentes-Aznar, Ignacio Gonzalez-Pe-

leaning angle. Many DF design results fall close to

not directly on it. So a Wankel engine of certain disslightly but improved significantly by selecting a DF-designed rotary engine with a lower maximum

Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1995, 56–63. land & Company, Inc., 2001.

rez, and Kenichi Hayasaka. Noncircular Gears: Design and Generation. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

leaning angle.

[5] Norbye, Jan. The Wankel Engine. Philadelphia; Chilton Book

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

[6] Tong, Shih-Hsi. New Conjugate Design Pair - Theory and Appli-

The ultimate goal of this research is to develop

a method of selection in which the DF parameters can be manipulated to control performance criteria. All results so far have been obtained computationally, so the next immediate step is to fully real-

Company, 1971.

cation. Ph.D. thesis. University of California - Los Angeles, 1998.

[7] Tong, Shih-Hsi, and Daniel C. H. Yang. “Generation of Identical

Noncircular Pitch Curves.” Transactions of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design 120 (1998) 337–341.

ize the equations governing the noncircular-pitch

[8] Yamamoto, Kenichi. Rotary Engine. Toyo Kogyo Co., Ltd., 1981.

resulting characteristics. Specifically applying the

tion Based Pitch Curve Modification for Conjugate Pair

engine housing and rotor profiles, as well as the DF algorithm to rotary engine design requires computational geometry, especially envelope theory,

to define the housing and rotor profile equations.

After all profile equations have been established in

terms of DF parameters, the relationships between

[9] Yang, Daniel C. H., Shih-Hsi Tong, and J. Lin. “Deviation-FuncDesign.” Transactions of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design 121 (1999) 579–586.

To see animated demos: http://bit.ly/j3OUTK

the rotor geometry and the design criteria can be determined. Performance indices to evaluate an

engine’s power efficiency and volumetric efficiency will be defined so that the influence of pitch curve

noncircularity, and all other design parameters, is clear. Then the new DF method of design can be ac-

SARAHWARREN@UCLA.EDU

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

47

THE SOCIAL NETWORK IS EVERYWHERE IN ENGINEERING WHAT TO READ? WITH WHOM TO WORK? WHERE TO PUBLISH? Jong Hoon Ahnn, Computer Science

SCIENTIFIC TECHNIQUES FOR ORGANIZING AND CONDUCTING ENGINEERING RESEARCH

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VOLUME VOLUME 11 // SPRING SPRING2011 2011

In recent years, the growth of social networks

among data—a kind of meta-database linking their

FIGURE 1

spread. As no surprise, such a network is composed

tant as content contained in the World Wide Web

WHO HAS 308 PUBLICATIONS,

within engineering research has become wide-

of more than databases, relationships, and merely the linking lots of information together. Research-

ers and scientists for example are commonly tied by one or several specific types of interdepend-

ency, such as friendship, employment, mentorship,

discipleship, similarity of beliefs, and recognized

publishing relationships—has grown more imporhas grown. I have been fascinated with this type

of problem since 2009 and have developed some

AUTHORS. THE CLOSER AN EDGE LINKING A PEER TO SOMEONE, THE MORE CITATIONS OF THE

above as my model.

AT STANFORD, HAS CITED DAVID E.

ploying the world of academic citations mentioned

It was an interesting problem in the begin-

that track academic published papers with authors:

technique people could use to help them locate the

sors and other authors. Sifting out these patterns

20,978 CITATIONS, AND 283 CO-

PERSON’S WORK FROM THE PEER..

ning: my advisor in Computer Science Miodrag

Who has been published and is related to profes-

DAVID E. CULLER AT UC BERKELEY

harvesting techniques over the last two years, em-

knowledge or prestige. From the relationships in these networks, there have even arisen databases

A CITATION NETWORK FOR

FOR EXAMPLE, THE CLOSEST COAUTHOR, PHILIP ALEXANDER LEVIS CULLER 351 TIMES IN THE YEARS 1985–2010.

Potkonjak asked me one day, “Can you imagine a

most productive, creative, and prolific new discov-

eries in a blogosphere of contributions?” To answer BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

49

that, a data set with which to model and test this

ing publication databases, the scientific objective

world revolves around academic papers—learning

scribing what guides the actions of highly success-

seemed already at hand: as a graduate student, my

others’ work and contributing my own. It’s a sizable population.

According to Microsoft Academic Search,

there are 10,869 researchers with at least twenty

citations in highly respected publications. Taking as an example the social network of David E. Culler at

UC Berkeley, it is interesting to note he has worked with 308 collaborators and garnered 20,978 cita-

is to develop statistically sound techniques for de-

ful contributors to engineering research, whom we define for the purposes of this article as ones who author the most cited papers. It is evident such

techniques for establishing relationships (a “Who’s

who” of activity) can be applied to any number of other kinds of data sets: sports, foreign languages, the spread of epidemics, patents, and many others.

What we crafted over the two years has the

tions, as shown in Figure 1. The number of cita-

following characteristics. At the core of our ap-

is tempting to think that co-authoring papers with

number of citations for a paper starting at the mo-

tions is drastically different for different authors. It

most-cited authors or the most prolific authors would be helpful for one’s own citation records.

Furthermore, there is a question whether it is better to publish at highly specialized, smaller conferences dedicated to an emerging topic or to target

the most prestigious and established venues. In

ONE OF OUR OBJECTIVES WAS TO EXTRACT A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EACH PREDICTION PARAMETER AND THE NUMBER OF CITATIONS.

proach is analysis and prediction of the expected

ment of its publication. Essentially, for the purpose of our analysis we assume that the goal of a re-

searcher is to publish highly cited papers. Of course that is not an altogether correct assumption; how-

ever we postulate that there is a strong correlation between the number of citations and the actual

impact of the paper. We also assume a strong correlation between the authors of highly cited papers

and their impact. One additional line of reasoning is that one can benefit from reading papers that will

be highly cited following their publication. There-

fore, our goal is to predict the number of citations a given paper will receive over a specified period

of time, as well as the likelihood that it will receive that number of citations, by only using data that is

available at the time of publishing. This information includes several citation indices, the average

number of citations for papers at a given database, summary, each researcher must make a number of

wrestle with questions and technical challenges.

The need for building such an author citation

have very few citations. Therefore, to take that into

database has become apparent: our practical objective is to address some of the essential productivity questions for persons in engineering, including

such questions as What papers to read? Where to publish? and With whom to collaborate? In analyzVOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

In developing this analysis method, we had to

important decisions that impact not just her count of citations, but also the quality of her research.

50

and the citation data for co-authors.

We found first of all that the vast majority of papers account, any accurate prediction algorithm for the majority of papers must predict that a given paper

will have very few citations. The resolution be-

tween well performing algorithms is blurred due to

the distribution of citations followed by the power

FIGURE 2 BLOCK DIAGRAM OF OUR CITATION PREDICTION FRAMEWORK.

law. We addressed this problem by employing clas-

each prediction parameter and the number of cita-

was how to select a correct classification algorithm.

more important than the actual prediction of the

sification instead of prediction. Another challenge

There exists already a huge number of widely used

classification procedures; it is tempting to add to

tions. A firm grasp of this knowledge may in fact be number of citations for a given paper.

Put all together, we generated prediction re-

that collection and develop yet another classifi-

sults based on a generic framework that we de-

into an area of diminishing returns. Our analysis

with publication network data sets as inputs, and

cation technique. However, it is evident that goes showed that different classification algorithms best perform on different data sets. Therefore, we decided to look for better predictions elsewhere, i.e.

in identifying best predictors. Of course, identification of essential predictors was critical to our work.

Our procedure for finding accurate prediction pa-

rameters followed two dimensions. The first was looking for predictors that are accurate by themselves. The second was to identify principal components, i.e. predictors that predict well when they

are used simultaneously in combinations. Finally (and maybe most significantly), one of our objectives was to extract a causal relationship between

veloped. We call this framework CiteCast. It is fed it terminates when the prediction accuracy cannot

be improved. During the process, it selects one ma-

chine learning (ML) algorithm and its parameters to obtain the best prediction results as outputs. In our case, for a given paper, the goal was to predict citation counts one year following publication. We used only information available at publication time

(zero citation history) as predictive features for an

individual data set, extracted from the feature ex-

traction scheme. We solved this citation prediction problem as a multi-classification problem using a set of thresholds, where thresholds can be obtained from the distribution of citation counts in the data

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

51

set; a training set was a set of pre-classified sam-

self contributing a paper and sharing the progress

a feature sample. The training set was augmented

Now, where things stand today on this work is

ples. Each sample as a paper instance consisted of

with a class vector which represents the class to

that no matter what data sets are used, we can au-

with multi-classes, we obtained citation prediction

the data set. The framework builds a classifier with

which each sample belonged. Using a classifier results as to which class the predicted citations belonged. Importantly, we defined prediction accura-

cy to be the number of correctly classified instances divided by the total number of instances.

For the features, we employed three terms: h-

index, g-index, and e-index, which are closely related in that h-index is a basis of g-index and e-index.

The g-index is defined as the highest number g of papers that together have received g or more ci2

tations. From this definition it is already clear that

g = h”. In contrast to the h-index, the g-index gives more weight to highly cited papers. The e-index on the other hand tries to represent excess citations that the h-index ignores.

To create this data shifting technique, we

made progress only after clearly understanding

these relationships. The key technique that we found was to select features based on a linear correlation coefficient (CC) c, while a regression coefficient is heavily utilized in the literature for feature

selection. The reason is that a CC-based approach

from the distribution of citations, selects then one

ML algorithm to predict future citations, identifies the top n features by one of the ranking algorithms, and finally tunes parameters of the ML algorithm to

obtain the best results at the end. The framework

depicted in Figure 2 runs until it obtains a best-performing ML algorithm with proper parameter settings. Although we used features with correlation

coefficients less than 0.5, a combination of the top n features performs well with 82.5% of accuracy in

tenth year predictions. We also applied it to the data

set from the database field, thus generating 83.5% prediction accuracy in the same setting. Interestingly, the e-index turns out to be a very important

factor in the database field, while the h-index plays an important role in different data sets.

As an interesting application to our methods,

we applied it to the prediction problem of an au-

be an individual feature. The higher |c| we get, the

A FRAMEWORK THAT IS FED

predicting target.

WITH PUBLICATION NETWORK

c( fi , f j ) =

n

n∑ fi f j − ( ∑ fi ) ( ∑ f j )

(∑ f ) − (∑ f ) n (∑ f ) − (∑ f ) 2

2

i

i

2 j

DATA SETS AS INPUTS, AND IT 2

j

When we had gotten about halfway along, I

mentioned at one point to Potkonjak, “Isn’t this exciting?” and he gave me a knowing look. Further work began yielding accurate results to the point

that research about published papers warranted itVOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

multi-classes using a set of thresholds determined

WE DEVELOPED CITECAST,

more correlation between a selected feature and a

52

tomatically extract a set of predictive features from

is shown to be less sensitive to the year of predic-

tion in our experiments. Let us denote fi and fj to

(1)

we had made.

TERMINATES WHEN PREDICTION ACCURACY CANNOT BE IMPROVED.

thor’s future ranking, based on the same data set

concerns what to measure and, more importantly,

FIGURE 3

graph presents an equally interesting relationship

tative metrics used.

LEY WHO HAS 308 PUBLICATIONS

used in the citation prediction problem. A co-author

between authors. The implication illustrated in Fig-

how to evaluate the predictive nature of the quanti-

For this reason, predicting the future rank

ure 3 is that, for an edge connected more closely

of individual authors is important because it can

connected person has co-authored with the target.

quality of research outcomes in advance. Faster

to a targeted person, the more publications the

For instance, David E. Culler has had 308 publica-

tions in total as of 2010, and among them twentythree papers are with his collaborator Eric Brewer at UC Berkeley. Such a relationship from the graph has garnered a great deal of attention in academia,

because quantifying the quality of an individual’s

DAVID E. CULLER AT UC BERKEAND 283 CO-AUTHORS.

provide a powerful new method for assessing the

identification of promising individuals can draw attention in the early stages of one’s career and provide potential benefits on promotion, tenure, and

new funding opportunities. We introduce RankCast based on the same framework used in CiteCast.

A typical approach to author rank is to cal-

research outcomes is important to evaluate his per-

culate and rank it via the number of citations for

ture directions. The problem to solve in more detail

factor can be derived by the number of citations di-

formance and make choices about supporting fu-

A CO-AUTHOR NETWORK FOR

each author. A widely accepted measure, the impact

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

53

PREDICTING THE FUTURE RANK OF INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT CAN PROVIDE A POWERFUL NEW METHOD FOR ASSESSING THE QUALITY OF RESEARCH OUTCOMES IN ADVANCE.

54

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

vided by the number of publications for a given period of time. By contrast, we define an author rank in three different ways using the h-index, g-index,

or e-index, respectively. Now, we can define a no-

REFERENCES

[1] D. Feitelson, and U. Yovel, “Predictive ranking of computer scientists using CiteSeer data,” Journal of Documentation, vol.

60(1), pp. 44–61, 2004.

tion of author ranking as an author rank which can

[2] M. E. J. Newman, “Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s

We found that the best feature for the author

[3] J. E. Hirsch, “Does the h-index have predictive power?,” PNAS,

achieve over 80 percent prediction accuracy. This

[4] L. Egghe, “Theory and practice of the g-index,” Scientometrics,

one point in time are more likely to be important

[5] C-T Zhang, “The e-Index, Complementing the h-Index for Ex-

features obtained from authors’ social networks do

[6] L. D. Fu, and C. F. Aliferis, “Using content-based and bibliomet-

In summary, techniques for predicting future

counts in the biomedical literature,” Scientometrics, vol.

be calculated by one of the bibliometric measures.

ranking prediction is the h-index, which can help implies that authors who have a higher h-index at

in the future. The results additionally show that not help much in predicting author ranking.

citations have had a fundamental difficulty ever

since Price introduced the first quantitative studies in citation networks in 1965. Many researchers

have studied patterns of citation in scientific pub-

law,” Contemporary Physics, vol. 46, pp. 323–351, 2005. vol. 104(49), pp. 19193–19198, 2007. vol. 69(1), pp. 131–152, 2006.

cess Citations,” PLoS ONE, vol. 4(5), 2009.

ric features for machine learning models to predict citation 85(1), pp. 257–270, 2010.

[7] M. Hall, E. Frank, G. Holmes, B. Pfahringer, P. Reutemann, and

I. H. Witten, “The WEKA Data Mining Software: An Update; SIGKDD Explorations,” vol. 11(1), pp. 10–18, 2009.

lications. Fu and Aliferis studied three prediction

[8] C. Lokker, and K. A. McKibbon, “Prediction of citation counts

omedical publications within a horizon of ten years

three weeks of publication: Retrospective cohort study,”

models in their state-of-the-art work. They used bibased only on predictive information available at

for clinical articles at two years using data available within BMJ, 2008.

the time of publication. Their work is different from

[9] N. L. Geller, J. S. de Cani, and R. E. Davis, “Life time-citation

ture citations with bibliometric features based on

Journal of the American Society for Information Science,

our CiteCast in that our approach is to predict fucorrelation coefficients which are more reliable in

rates: a mathematical model to compare scientists’ work,” vol. 32(1), pp. 3–15, 1981.

prediction than are regression coefficients used by

[10] R. Van Noorden, “The Trials of New Carbon,” Nature , vol. 469,

is its generic applicability to data sets. As an exam-

[11] Microsoft Academic Search. http://academic.research.micro-

Fu and Aliferis. The clear benefit of our framework

ple given above, we successfully applied it to an author-ranking prediction problem. Although the

approach in FutureRank is similar to our RankCast in that it utilizes the co-authorship network and

the time of article publication to predict future cita-

pp. 14–16, 2011. soft.com.

For further reading: http://bit.ly/jDa7Te (accepted for publication in the International Conference on Microelectronic Systems Education (MSE), June, 2011)

tions, RankCast has clear benefits in terms of pre-

diction performance as well as in the method itself.

Likewise, no matter what data sets are used as in-

puts and what prediction algorithms are used, the framework can be easily applied to different types of problems generating high prediction accuracy.

JHAHNN@CS.UCLA.EDU

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

55

WELL...

What the customer described.

How manufacturing installed it.

What got budgeted.

What marketing

What the

engineer designed.

What got

advertised.

documented.

What the customer was

What the customer

COURTESY OF TUMBLR: http://tumblr.com/xjgsp2v2

What the customer finally received.

56

VOLUME 1 / SPRING 2011

billed for.

actually wanted.

Here at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sci-

ence, we are committed to providing a world-class education to our remarkable students, so that they may one day become productive engineers and leaders

capable of addressing society’s most pressing needs and continue our tradition of engineering excellence.

At the same time, our distinguished UCLA Engineering faculty are lead-

ing efforts to realize innovative and potentially paradigm-shifting concepts that

will address some of the grand challenges of the 21st century. These include research in areas that could transform people’s lives including renewable energy

and energy efficiency; clean water; personalized healthcare; wireless networking, sustainability and cyber security, just to name a few.

Together, the school’s exceptional faculty, students, and alumni have

helped place UCLA Engineering amongst the best engineering schools in the country.

Recent rankings by the National Research Council of graduate engineer-

ing programs placed three UCLA Engineering programs in the top 10, and seven

in the top 20. This indicates the excellence in breadth and depth throughout the school and in our seven academic departments.

In addition, our Ph.D. production per faculty member continues to be

amongst the very highest in the nation with 164 doctorate degrees awarded in

2010. We continue to enroll some of the brightest undergraduates in the country, receiving more than 11,400 applications for the fall 2011 freshman class.

The average weighted GPA of those admitted were 4.36, and their average SAT score was 2142 out of 2400.

Of course, these numbers are just general indicators of the contribu-

tions of many individuals and their accomplishments. This inaugural issue of

the student-produced Bruin Innovation & Technology magazine spotlights just a few of our talented UCLA Engineering students and their work. I hope readers, especially those throughout the UCLA community, will come away with a sense of shared pride in the work these engineering students are doing, and be inspired by them as well.

One final note, congratulations to all those associated with this new mag-

azine for their foresight and perseverance in bringing it to fruition. I wish this new publication great success and look forward to it becoming a tradition at UCLA Engineering.

Sincerely,

Vijay K. Dhir Dean

BRUIN INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY

57

65 Years of Driving Innovation