1. Current Research Projects
Jim Skon
Kenyon College
Fall 2017

2. Ongoing Projects
Adaptive Online Learning System – Couple relationship coaching (ongoing)
Solar Power System Monitoring (ongoing)
Architecture Engineering: International Building Design & Code Requirements Assessment (new)
Metric Space Visualization and Exploration (new)

3. 1. An intelligent online learning system for relationship coaching
Externally funded for 2-3 students a year

4. Concept – Relationship Mentoring
Since 2009 I’ve been working on the design an development of a system to to assess a couples situation, and then construct and deliver a custom curriculum to the couple.
A human mentor is involved.
Based on curriculum developed by a colleague with experience and a Pd.D in counseling.

5. Intelligent learning system for relationship coaching

6. Intelligent learning system for relationship coaching

7. Intelligent learning system for relationship coaching
Adaptive – knowledge driven

9. Ongoing Challenges
Creation of a statistics module to compute and display trends and patterns.
Utilize the ASP (Anwser Set Programming) to enhance system intelligence
Generalization of the system for other curriculums
Creation of a subsystem for managing the creation users, and associating users, coaches, and courses.
Adding mobile (phone and tablet) interface components.

10. 3. Solar Power monitor system

11. Solar Power System Monitoring and Management

12. Kenyon Students and Faculty have been installing grid tie solar power system on schools in Belize since 2015.

13. We have modified Wi-Fi power sensing devices to send power generation data to our learning system so we can track power generation at each school.
These devices send voltage and power numbers to the learning system every minute.
The power usage can be seen on this webpage:

14. Power Monitoring Product
Power Sensor
Homer User
Internet
Rasberry Pi Zero
WiFi Router

15. Monitor, graph, and study power use and production
Power Monitor Goals
Monitor, graph, and study power use and production
Monitor usage of circuits and of devices being used.
Create a low cost solar monitoring product for home owners.

16. 3. Architecture Engineering
3 Summer Science students for 2017

17. Architecture Engineering: International Building Design & Code Requirements Assessment
Goal: to assist in building design with respect to costs and building code requirements.

18. Design Process Requirements Design Code Cost Architect
Customer provides requirements and costs goals
Design
Architect
Code
Architectural engineer
Cost
Based on design

19. Design Process Requirements Design Code Cost Based on design Architect
Customer provides requirements and costs goals
Design
Architect
Code
Architectural engineer
Cost
Based on design

20. Architectural design is expensive
Issues
101’ tall - $$
99’ tall - $
Architectural design is expensive
Building code assessment is expensive
Mistakes can be costly
Meeting certain requirements can be expensive.
Requirements based on distinct boundaries

21. Research Questions
How can we appropriately represent architectural code and building requirements in the form of expert system rules?
Can we use an expert system to determine the optimal (or even adequate) code requirements from a set of building requirements?
Can the expert system explain the costs (and codes) selected for building design. (The why?)

22. Research Questions
Can expert system use building cost tables to estimate the cost of proposed building?
Can the learning system platform be used to efficiently ask adaptive questions (successive refinement) about building plans, and then report the results.
Can we use the expert system and learning system to build a web based design program where the user can play with building designs, and iteratively adapt it to achieve a set of goals (cost, size, safety, etc.)

23. Collaboration with Professor Snipes Possible summer science topic
3. Metric Spaces
Collaboration with Professor Snipes
Possible summer science topic

24. Metric Space
A metric space is a set X with a distance function d : X x X → R+ that satisfies
d(x, y ) = 0 ⇔ x = y
d(x, y ) = d(y , x)
d(x, y ) ≤ d(x, i) + d(z, y )
for all points x, y , z in X.

25. We have many questions about certain Metric Spaces
Can computational modeling help us answer questions about these spaces?
Can image visualizations help us understand these spaces?

26. The Laakso Space
This is one embedded space that Professor Snipes has been exploring
I started working with her to build a computation model and visualizations
We came up with this: ml

27. STUDENT RESEARCH POSSIBILITIES
Creation of computational models for embedded spaces to explore the model, answer questions, and help with proving certain properties.
Creation of visualizations of embedded spaces to help with gaining intuition about these spaces, and the associated properties.