ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my advisor, Dr. Brian Huff, for his keen insight of the research topic, his technical advice, and his friendly and patient assistant to me in all aspects of this dissertation. I also would like to thank Dr. Don Liles for providing financial support and, as a committee member, guidelines for this research. Thank you to my other committee members- Dr.Rogers, Dr.Kim and Dr.Dogan for their precious comments and advice through the dissertation process. Thanks to my dear friends Joye Homles and Libby Leatherman for undertaking the arduous task of reading and revising for this dissertation, and their superior encouragement. I would like to thank Rory Cannaday who initially coded an independent scout vehicle model on which this research was able to make further development. I want to thank all that I have mentioned. Finally, I would like to thank all of my friends for their encouragement, advise, and listening to me about this work. Most of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents, my aunts, my brother, my sister in law, and my dear lover, Li-Chieh Hsiao, for providing me the support, understanding and patience that I needed. I could not have done this work without them