Research / Doctoral dissertation

The CWave 2000
Visual Agent Workbench

Visual programming for distributed measurement and control.

The research

As measurement systems evolved from central computers to networks of intelligent devices, conventional program logic control became increasingly difficult to scale, debug, and manage.

My doctoral research examined how autonomous software agents and a visual programming language could address those limitations. The work combined a customizable visual environment with an agent architecture designed for distributed measurement systems.

The workbench

The CWave 2000 prototype supports the design, simulation, and management of agent systems. Two case studies explored large-scale agent deployment, redundancy in distributed measurement applications, and the visual construction of loggers, filters, and performance measurement tools.

The dissertation compares this visual approach with conventional development methods and examines its use for both rapid prototyping and system development.

Ph.D. in Computer Science · University of Utah