Bill Smart

This page gives brief descriptions of some of the projects that I am, or have been, involved with. Some of these projects have their own set of web pages, with a much more comprehensive description of the work. If you're reading this page from a machine with a Washington University IP number, you will also see a list of available projects. These are projects that we haven't started yet (or that are currently in hibernation), and that we're looking for help with. If you see something here that interests you, read our rules for joining our group, and send me email.

Current Projects

Non-bypassable Kernel Services for Execution Security

Society is dependent on many engineered systems whose increasing complexity and inter-connectedness have, in turn, increased their vulnerability to adversarial attacks. In many of these systems, protecting the execution of their computations is as crucial as ensuring the security of their data. This research investigates how to maintain survivable operation of such systems, even in the face of invasive attacks where computations are intentionally subverted to interfere with other computations' execution constraints. The goal of this research is to develop new techniques for isolating the effects of interactions among computations through specific resources in these systems, including: flexible specification and rigorous enforcement of computations' execution constraints; explicit control of all OS kernel components under a single scheduler; detailed on-line monitoring of computations and their supporting OS kernel components; automated learning to discover previously unknown interactions among computations; and formal modeling and verification of computations, execution constraints, and system components and resources. Funded by NSF CNS 0716764.
People: Rob Glaubius, Terry Tidwell, Bill Smart, Chris Gill.
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Control of a Robotic Hand Prosthesis Using Cortical Signals

Description coming soon. Funded by WU Children's Discovery Institute and WU School of Engineering.
People: Eric Leuthardt, Bill Smart, Oren Kravetz, Zac Freudenburg.
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Remote Robotic Exploration and Experimentation

Description coming soon. Funded by NSF OCI 0753340.
People: Bruce Maxwell, Bill Smart.
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Optimization of Complex Biomechanical Systems

Description coming soon.
People: Tom Erez, Bill Smart, Herman Pontzer.
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Robots and Theatre

Description coming soon.
People: Chris Wilson, Bill Smart, Anna Pileggi.
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Computer Game Interfaces for the Control of Mobile Robots

Description coming soon.
People: Erik Karulf, Bill Smart, Jim Stevens, Alex Broad, Parker Dunton, Marshall Strother.
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Old Projects

Action Jackson

Action Jackson is a robot abstract artist, designed to produce paintings inspired by those of Jackson Pollock. The robot has a moving painting head, supplied with various colors of paint, that moves over a canvas lying horizontally. By controlling the position and velocity of the painting head, and the color of paint, we can produce some interesting paintings. The goal of the project is to connect the painting system to interesting sensing devices, so that we can create pieces that are driven by activity in the real world.
People: Topher McFarland, Bill Smart, Pehr Hovey.
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Aircraft Transparency Inspection

This project is a collaboration with The Boeing Company to use computer vision and machine learning to find and quantify defects in aircraft windscreens. We take a high-resolution digital images of a large gridboard through the windscreen, and compare it to a reference image of the gridboard. We can use these images to esimtate the distorion cause by the windscreen. We then take this distortion map, along with a human-supplied rating for the windscreen, and use machine learning to learn a classifier. The goal is to have a fully automated system for evaluating the optical distortions in a windscreen, and for providing a rating that agrees with a human evaluation of the windscreen. Funded by The Boeing Company.
People: Bill Smart, Robert Pless, Michael Dixon, Rob Glaubius.
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Software for Robots

How do we design effective software architectures and middleware for robot systems? We are mostly interested in architectures and middleware for mobile robots that give transparent access to sensors and actuators, support graceful degradation in the face of hardware and software failures, and allow different research groups to effectively share implementations of their algorithms. We believe that there is no One True Architecture, but that the best solution is to provide infrastructure and middleware that allows a research group to assemble their own architectures, based on the tasks that their robots are trying to perform. However, having some commonality at the lower levels (in data structures and primitive calls to the robot hardware) is essential if we are to be able to effectively share software between research groups.
People: Fritz Heckel, Bill Smart, Nik Melchior.
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The Robot Photographer

The goal of this project was to create a fully autonomous robot photographer, capable of taking candid, well-composed photographs of humans at social events. The robot wanders around the event, constantly evaluating photographic opportunities. When it identifies a likely shot, it uses standard photographic rules (such as the rule of thirds) to compose the picture, moves into position, and takes the shot. The photographer was deployed successfully at a number of public events, including SIGGRAPH 2002, Washington University's 150th birthday celebration, a science-writers reception, and an actual wedding.
People: Bill Smart, Cindy Grimm, Michael Dixon, Zach Byers, Kevin Goodier.
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