Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Chen, Yinong
Description
A common challenge faced by students is that they often have questions about course material that they cannot ask during lecture time. There are many ways for students to have these questions answered, such as office hours and online discussion boards. However, office hours may be at inconvenient times or locations, and online discussion boards are difficult to navigate and may be inactive. The purpose of this project was to create an Alexa skill that allows users to ask their Alexa-equipped device a question concerning their course material and to receive an answer retrieved from discussion board data. User questions are mapped to discussion board posts by use of the cosine similarity algorithm. In this algorithm, posts from the discussion board and the user’s question are converted into mathematical vectors, with each term in the vector corresponding to a word. The values of these terms are computed based on the word’s frequency within the vector’s corresponding document, the frequency of that word within all the documents, and the length of the document. After the question and candidate posts are converted into vectors, the algorithm determines the post most similar to the user’s question by computing the angle between the vectors. With the most similar discussion board post determined, the user receives the replies to the post, if any, as their answer. Users are able to indicate to their Alexa device whether they were satisfied by the answer, and if they were unsatisfied then they are given the opportunity to either rephrase their question or to have the question sent to a database of unanswered questions. The professor can view and answer the questions in this database on a website hosted by use of Amazon’s Simple Storage Service. The Alexa skill does well at answering questions that have already been asked in the discussion board. However, the skill depends heavily on the user’s word choice. Two questions that are semantically identical but different in phrasing are often given different answers. This is because the cosine algorithm measures similarity on the basis of word overlap, not semantic meaning, and thus the application never truly “understands” what type of answer the user desires. Improving the performance of this Alexa skill will require a more advanced question answering algorithm, but the limitations of Amazon Web Services as a development platform make implementing such an algorithm difficult. Nevertheless, this project has created the basis of a question answering Alexa skill by demonstrating a feasible way that the resources offered by Amazon can be utilized in order to build such an application.
ContributorsBaker, Matthew Elias (Author) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis director) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Karate is a Japanese martial art that originated approximately a century ago, with heavy influence from Chinese martial arts at the time. Although it was originally created as a form of self-defense, many today practice it for sport. Organizations such as the World Karate Federation (WKF) and USA Karate establish rules for competitions as well as host tournaments for practitioners of all ages and skill levels to participate in. Dojos will often host small, local tournaments for their students to practice and sharpen their competition skills. Smaller tournaments often do not have the same tools and technologies that larger tournaments do. Sign-ups are typically done in-person and payments are cash-only, which can be inconvenient for those who are extremely busy or forgetful. Another issue with hosting local tournaments is that the software used to run the timer is a desktop application, called Karate Semaphore. In the case of technical difficulties, installing the software on another machine can be extremely time-consuming and delay the progression of the tournament. Not to mention, Karate Semaphore was created following the 2012 WKF rules—meaning it is currently out of date, as it does not contain any features supporting new rules.
For my creative project, I designed a website through which smaller, local tournament registration and management are possible. Users can register for tournaments through the registration page. Registered users can check their registration is successful by viewing a table of all competitors. If the list of competitors is too long, they can filter results based on search criteria. Tournament management will be possible via a functioning timer following WKF rules which keeps track of both the match’s score as well as time.
For my creative project, I designed a website through which smaller, local tournament registration and management are possible. Users can register for tournaments through the registration page. Registered users can check their registration is successful by viewing a table of all competitors. If the list of competitors is too long, they can filter results based on search criteria. Tournament management will be possible via a functioning timer following WKF rules which keeps track of both the match’s score as well as time.
ContributorsRuan, Shirley (Author) / Sarwat, Mohamed (Thesis director) / Chen, Yinong (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The instruction of students in computer science concepts can be enhanced by creating programmable simulations and games. ASU VIPLE, which is a framework used to control simulations, robots, and for IoT applications, can be used as an educational tool. Further, the Unity engine allows the creation of 2D and 3D games. The development of basic minigames in Unity can provide simulations for students to program. One can run the Unity minigame and their corresponding VIPLE script to control them over a network connection as well as locally. The minigames conform to the robot output and robot input interfaces supported by VIPLE. With this goal in mind, a snake game, a space shooter game, and a runner game have been created as Unity simulations, which can be controlled by scripts made using VIPLE. These games represent simulated environments that, with movement output and sensor input, students can program simply and externally from VIPLE to help learn robotics and computer science principles.
ContributorsChristensen, Collin Riley (Author) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis director) / Kobayashi, Yoshihiro (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Computing and Informatics Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
In June of 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum for its citizens to decide whether to remain a part of the European Union or take their leave. The vote was close but ultimately the U.K. decided to leave, triggering the two-year process of negotiations that would shape the U.K.’s departure (Brexit). The question of what will become of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is heavy with implications for the national identity of people living on either side of the border, and this makes it one of the more pressing concerns in Brexit discourse. This research analyzes how national identity is used as a rhetorical tactic in media to influence and persuade readers to vote in accordance with the author’s political goals. It does so by evaluating how borders shape national identity and analyzing newspaper articles from the two highest circulating Northern Irish daily newspapers (The Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph) during the week leading up to the June 23rd, 2016 referendum. In analyzing news articles relating to the Irish border issue of Brexit from The Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph during the time frame of June 16th-23rd, 2016, four analytical categories of how identity-related rhetoric was used were discovered: fear, self-interest, Irish Nationalism, and a negative association of the past. Further, it was hypothesized and confirmed the political leanings of the papers influenced which type of rhetorical tactic was used. In the broad realm of Brexit and media related discussion, this research could help strengthen understanding of how traditional media uses national identity to persuade readers to and influence voting behavior in the midst of such a divisive referendum.
Key Words: Brexit, Irish border, national identity, rhetoric, newspapers
Key Words: Brexit, Irish border, national identity, rhetoric, newspapers
ContributorsCaldwell, Tara (Author) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Thesis director) / Ripley, Charles (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor, Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
If you’ve ever found yourself uttering the words “Honey, I forgot the—” or “how did I miss the—" when coming home from the grocery store, then you’re not alone. This everyday problem that we disregard as part of life may not seem like much, but it is the driving force behind my honors thesis.
Shopping Buddy is a complete Amazon Web Services solution to this problem which is so innate to the human condition. Utilizing Alexa to keep track of your pantry, this web application automates the daunting task of creating your shopping list, putting the power of the cloud at your fingertips while keeping your complete shopping list only a click away.
Say goodbye to the nights of spaghetti without the parmesan that you left on the store shelf or the strawberries that you forgot for the strawberry shortcake. With this application, you will no longer need to rely on your memory of what you think is in the back of your fridge nor that pesky shopping list that you always end up losing when you need it the most. Accessible from any web enabled device, Shopping Buddy has got your back through all your shopping adventures to come.
Shopping Buddy is a complete Amazon Web Services solution to this problem which is so innate to the human condition. Utilizing Alexa to keep track of your pantry, this web application automates the daunting task of creating your shopping list, putting the power of the cloud at your fingertips while keeping your complete shopping list only a click away.
Say goodbye to the nights of spaghetti without the parmesan that you left on the store shelf or the strawberries that you forgot for the strawberry shortcake. With this application, you will no longer need to rely on your memory of what you think is in the back of your fridge nor that pesky shopping list that you always end up losing when you need it the most. Accessible from any web enabled device, Shopping Buddy has got your back through all your shopping adventures to come.
ContributorsMathews, Nicolle (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Chen, Yinong (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
A common design of multi-agent robotic systems requires a centralized master node, which coordinates the actions of all the agents. The multi-agent system designed in this project enables coordination between the robots and reduces the dependence on a single node in the system. This design change reduces the complexity of the central node, and makes the system more adaptable to changes in its topology. The final goal of this project was to have a group of robots collaboratively claim positions in pre-defined formations, and navigate to the position using pose data transmitted by a localization server.
Planning coordination between robots in a multi-agent system requires each robot to know the position of the other robots. To address this, the localization server tracked visual fiducial markers attached to the robots and relayed their pose to every robot at a rate of 20Hz using the MQTT communication protocol. The robots used this data to inform a potential fields path planning algorithm and navigate to their target position.
This project was unable to address all of the challenges facing true distributed multi-agent coordination and needed to make concessions in order to meet deadlines. Further research would focus on shoring up these deficiencies and developing a more robust system.
Planning coordination between robots in a multi-agent system requires each robot to know the position of the other robots. To address this, the localization server tracked visual fiducial markers attached to the robots and relayed their pose to every robot at a rate of 20Hz using the MQTT communication protocol. The robots used this data to inform a potential fields path planning algorithm and navigate to their target position.
This project was unable to address all of the challenges facing true distributed multi-agent coordination and needed to make concessions in order to meet deadlines. Further research would focus on shoring up these deficiencies and developing a more robust system.
ContributorsThibeault, Quinn (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Chen, Yinong (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
There exist many very effective calendar platforms out there, from Google Calendar, to Microsoft’s Outlook, and various implementations by other service providers. While all those services serve their purpose, they may be missing in the capacity to be easily portable for some, or the capacity to offer to the user a ranking of their various events and tasks in order of priority. This is that, while some of these services do offer reliable support for portability on smaller devices, it could be even more beneficial to the user to constantly have an idea of which calendar entry they should prioritize at a given point in time, based on the necessities of each entry and regardless of which entry occurs first on a chronologic line. Many of these capacities are missing in the technology currently used at ASU for course management. This project attempts to address this issue by providing a Software Application that offers to store a user’s calendar events and present those events back to the user after arranging them by order of priority. The project makes use of technologies such as Fibrease, Angular and Android to make the service available through a web browser as well as an Android mobile client. We explore possible avenues of implementations to make the services of this platform accessible and usable through other existing platforms such as Blackboard or Canvas. We also consider ways to incorporate this software into the already existing workflow of other web platforms such as Google Calendar, Blackboard or Canvas, by allowing one platform to be aware of any item creation or update from the other platform, and thus removing the necessity of creating one calendar entry multiple times in different platforms.
ContributorsNdombe, Kelly (Author) / Chen, Yinong (Thesis director) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05