North Carolina State University

About: North Carolina State University is a education organization based out in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Thin film. The organization has 44161 authors who have published 101744 publications receiving 3456774 citations. The organization is also known as: NCSU & North Carolina State University at Raleigh.

Inter-vehicle communication systems: a survey

Abstract: Inter-vehicle communication (IVC) systems (i.e., systems not relying on roadside infrastructure) have the potential to radically improve the safety, efficiency, and comfort of everyday road travel. Their main advantage is that they bypass the need for expensive infrastructure; their major drawback is the comparatively complex networking protocols and the need for significant penetration before their applications can become effective. In this article we present several major classes of applications and the types of services they require from an underlying network. We then proceed to analyze existing networking protocols in a bottom-up fashion, from the physical to the transport layers, as well as security aspects related to IVC systems. We conclude the article by presenting several projects related to IVC as well as a review of common performance evaluation techniques for IVC systems.

Narrative planning: balancing plot and character

Abstract: Narrative, and in particular storytelling, is an important part of the human experience. Consequently, computational systems that can reason about narrative can be more effective communicators, entertainers, educators, and trainers. One of the central challenges in computational narrative reasoning is narrative generation, the automated creation of meaningful event sequences. There are many factors - logical and aesthetic - that contribute to the success of a narrative artifact. Central to this success is its understandability. We argue that the following two attributes of narratives are universal: (a) the logical causal progression of plot, and (b) character believability. Character believability is the perception by the audience that the actions performed by characters do not negatively impact the audience's suspension of disbelief. Specifically, characters must be perceived by the audience to be intentional agents. In this article, we explore the use of refinement search as a technique for solving the narrative generation problem - to find a sound and believable sequence of character actions that transforms an initial world state into a world state in which goal propositions hold. We describe a novel refinement search planning algorithm - the Intent-based Partial Order Causal Link (IPOCL) planner - that, in addition to creating causally sound plot progression, reasons about character intentionality by identifying possible character goals that explain their actions and creating plan structures that explain why those characters commit to their goals. We present the results of an empirical evaluation that demonstrates that narrative plans generated by the IPOCL algorithm support audience comprehension of character intentions better than plans generated by conventional partial-order planners.

PSOt - a particle swarm optimization toolbox for use with Matlab

Abstract: A particle swarm optimization toolbox (PSOt) for use with the Matlab scientific programming environment has been developed. PSO is introduced briefly and then the use of the toolbox is explained with some examples. A link to downloadable code is provided.