I am pleased to say that I have had a terrific week. I learned so much in this past week. I was able to finish the assigned crash course topics. I was so excited when we were able to use the iRobots and program them. I am looking forward for another great week.

• Attended a welcome breakfast with the other programs.
• Met Dr. Amato and the PhD students.
• Introduced to the lab by Read, and was given a key for the lab.
• Introduced to Linux and Terminal.
• Began lesson 0 of the crash course and developed my personal website.
• Read Nancy’s expectations for her students.

• Attended Chinwe’s defense at 9am.
• Began lesson 1 of the crash course.
• Attended Jory’s defense at 2pm.
• Finished lesson 1 of the crash course.
• Started reading the research papers.

Research Paper - “How to Read a Research Paper” : this taught me how to effectively read a research paper. In order to understand you must use the three-pass approach. First pass, Second pass, and Third Pass. This taught me how to read a paper and comprehend the information given.

Research Paper - “Motion Planning” : this gave me a great introduction to motion planning. It introduced me to the history of motion planning, and the different terms such as, DoFs, (degrees of freedoms), and the free space.

Research Paper - “Probabilistic Roadmaps” : I learned about the method that computes collision-free paths for robots. The method uses two phases: the learning phase and the query phase. I learned about CSpace, the local planner, the node neighbors, and the distance function.

• Started on lesson 2 of the crash course.
• Fixed the issue with webpage malfunction with the assistance of David.
• Started discussion questions.
• Read organized a discussion with everyone about the discussion questions, PMPL, Motion planning, and the research papers.
• Finished lesson 2 of the crash course.

• Finished discussion questions.
• Started on lesson 3 of the crash course, “Physical Robots”.
• Read the Physical Robots research papers.

Research Paper - “An Imitation of Life” : this paper is about an experiment with a robot, Elmer. It is experimented on mimicking an animal. This helped me understand the infinite amount of creations and ideas you can perform with a robot.

Research Paper - “A Machine that Learns” : this paper is about how an experiment which they try to make the robot perform different types of behaviors. They add several sensors to help the robot achieve their goal. This assisted me into learning the way a robot learns with its motors.


• Started Physical Robots - Hello World
• Started using the iRobots and played around with them.
• Worked on the weekly report.

• Get more familiar with the terminal and the workflow.
• Ask more questions.
• Get more comfortable with all the people in the lab.
• Most importantly, learn more.