The Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) enables students to conduct extended, focused research in close cooperation with a Pomona faculty member. Below are recent summer research projects in the Computer Science Department.
Text Simplification
Justin Long ’24, Advisor: David Kauchak
我和考恰克教授一起编写了一个程序，它建立了一个包含超过45个字幕的原始语料库,多种语言的000部不同电影，目标是为文本简化应用程序构建一个大型同义词库. 文本简化是计算机科学和自然语言处理的一个分支领域, as the name suggests, making text simpler.
I wrote the program using Python and MySQL over the course of about two months. 它的工作原理如下:下载每部电影的英语和外语脚本, 它将外文脚本翻译成英文，并在现在两种英文脚本之间执行单词对齐. If a pair of corresponding words differ, the script adds it to a database of synonyms, and the word from the translated script is often the simpler word. The more entries in the database a synonym has, the higher chance it is truly a simpler synonym for that word.
我们对目前收集到的语料库进行了初步分析，结果表明我们的语料库每个单词的音节更少, a higher percentage of simple words, lower syntactic tree heights, fewer noun phrases and verb phrases per sentence, and more common words on average than text from Wikipedia and Simple Wikipedia. 以前的文献已经发现，这些指标中的每一个都是文本简洁性的有效措施, suggesting that our corpus can be a useful resource for generating simple text. Additionally, 我们发现不同MPAA电影评级的文本在简单性指标上几乎没有显著差异, 这表明g级电影和r级电影在语言的复杂性上基本上没有什么不同.
Sim-to-Real Transferability
Christy Marchese ’24; Advisor: Anthony Clark
For the past 2.5 years, 我和克拉克教授一起在自主机器人和复杂系统(ARCS)实验室工作, researching methods to bridge the sim-to-real transferability gap for mobile robots.
我在皇冠体育大学一年级后的那个夏天开始在ARCS实验室做研究. That summer, 我和团队探索了模拟环境中自主导航的各种神经网络架构和数据收集技术, 看看我们可以利用哪些架构和方法来最好地使机器人代理学习通过模拟迷宫的导航任务. For that project, 我开发了新的神经网络架构，探索了状态(记忆)的不同用途。, 我的架构之一是混合卷积神经网络，它接受图像和分类数据(之前的输出)的输入，以告知其导航决策. 我还能够在实验室中承担各种任务，从编写python自动化脚本来训练我们所有不同的模型，到为我们的移动机器人的电子设备焊接电线，再到用CAD设计机器人零件. We ultimately published our work from that summer, titled Investigating Neural Network Architectures for Navigation in Simulated Environments, at the IEEE’s SSCI conference in 2021.
These days in the lab, I have taken a much more active role in driving new research questions, proposing new methodology to approach these questions, and exploring more novel ideas of sim-to-real transferability. I am also driving the exploration of adversarial robustness in the lab, 希望将我在安全性和机器学习安全性方面的研究兴趣和经验联系起来，以新颖的方式提高模型鲁棒性和模拟到真实的可移植性. 我感到无比的幸运和感激，实验室支持并赋予我自由去探索我的许多不同的研究兴趣, projects and opportunities. 我在实验室的经历真的帮助我找到了对研究的热情和解决难题的方法. 所以现在我打算在研究生院继续追求我对安全性和ML安全性的兴趣，攻读博士学位.D. in computer science, 我带着对未来的希望和兴奋进入了我研究旅程的下一阶段.
Animating Asterism
Katiana Wieser ’24; Advisor: Joseph Osborn
Starting my freshman year, I have worked with Professor Osborn on Asterism, 探索如何创造游戏引擎引擎的理念，并在设计电子游戏时降低进入门槛. Asterism是一个用Rust编程语言实现的库，用于实现两种不同的游戏引擎. When I first began researching, 我专注于现有的工作和Asterism库，因为一切对我来说都是全新的——操作逻辑的想法(用于创建游戏的基本功能)。, the Rust programming language, and what it looks like to conduct computer science research! However, over time and with the help of Professor Osborn and a more senior researcher, who always took the time to answer my many questions, I found my footing.
起初，我更多地致力于理解和探索游戏引擎的灵活性和使用. 然后我转向演示如何将我所探索的一些理论理念运用到现有的Asterism库中，即在之前的学生研究员所创造的游戏引擎中创造游戏, which brings me to my personal pride, which was adding more advanced animation capability to the library. 正是我对动画以及艺术与计算机科学的交叉感兴趣，把我带到了奥斯本教授的实验室. 当有机会将个人研究领域与我的研究结合起来时，我很兴奋. Most of the games in Asterism used simple graphics, where all visuals were single-colored geometric shapes; my contribution was to implement the basis of a sprite-based animation system. Using my animation components, 我能够在我之前使用该引擎制作的两款游戏中添加翻页书风格的精灵表动画. 在制作精灵时，我很高兴有机会做一些数字绘图.
该实验室在Asterism上的工作产生了“Asterism: Operational logic as a Game Engine Engine”,这篇论文是我与奥斯本教授和另一位皇冠体育学生研究员共同撰写的. 我们在人工智能和交互式数字娱乐(AIIDE)上介绍了娱乐编程语言(PLIE) 2021研讨会. In my time conducting research at Pomona with Professor Osborn, 我学到了很多，我也知道我只是开始触及可能的表面. My experiences helped and empowered me: seeing how I can contribute, 让我有信心更多地说出来，不要害怕分享我生活中各个方面的想法和观点.