June 1 - June 5
Yes! I have arrived at the prestigious Texas A&M University for my 1st ever research program experience. As a result, I did not know what to expect. Faced with an 8:00 a.m. orientation meeting, I needed to not only quickly find the building where the orientation was located, but also a place to park that was free or relatively cheap. Clearly, if you go to TAMU, you obviously would laugh at both the latter and the former. I ended up paying $9 to park for 6 hours! Furthermore, I ended up being late for orientation trying to decifer an awesome map of the campus. But the rest of the day went well. I met a lot of new people including my research team and mentor, the infamous Dr. Nancy Amato. As expected, I enjoyed the rest of my week in the research atmosphere of College Station. The rest of the week included a ton of reading, a few meetings, and of course eating; below I have outlined the details of those activities.
Readings
- Motion Planning: A Journey of Robots Molecules, Digital Actors, and Other Artifacts
- Principles of Robot Motion: Theory Algorithms and Implementation- Chapter 3: Configuration Space
- An Unsupervised Adaptive Strategy for Constructing Probalilistic Roadmaps
Meetings
- USRG Welcome Breakfast & Orientation, Monday, 8:00 a.m.
- REU Briefing, Monday, 9:00 a.m.
- REU Welcome Lunch, Monday, 12:00 p.m.
- Motion Planning Reading Group, Wednesday, 1:00 p.m.
- REU Brown Bag: Grad Student Panel, Thursday, 12:00 p.m.
- Full Group Meeting with Mentor, Friday, 12:00 p.m.
- Motion Planning Reading Group, Friday, 3:00 p.m.
- Code Review with Lydia, Friday, 4:00 p.m.
Places to Eat
- Chipotle (burritos!)
- Subway (the best cookies!)
- Corner Bar (Great burgers!...Hot Sun-I recommend eating inside)
Fun Stuff
- On Monday, I went to Houston to watch the Meta-Four Poetry Slam Competition. Meta-Four is the Houston youth poetry slam team (ages 13-19) coached by my personal friend, Outspoken Bean. The teenagers put on a great show, all competed to the best of their ability to make the team. In the end, 6 poets made the team. I send out congratulations to all who competed and all who made the team.
- I spent the weekend in DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) to attend my brother's graduation. I am so proud of him; he graduated as an IB candidate/Arlington Scholar/Magna Cum Laude/National Honor Society Member/Key Club member.