Week 0 {May 24 - May 27}:
My first few days in Pittsburgh. My mentor, Jessica Hodgins, was out of town, so I had a few days of rest and some time to explore the city before I started my work. Aloha Pittsburgh, here I come :)
Week 1 {May 28 - June 2}:
Tuesday, May 29 - my first day at work. The week was filled with new experiences, impressions and acquaintances. I began preliminary work on my research topic and by the end of the week narrowed it down to a specific area.
Week 2 {June 3 - June 10}:
This week I was able to start on my research project and take the first steps in setting it up. I've worked with a couple of different environments and wrote scripts to test the basic properties of wiimotes as well as record the information off of them. I also attended various talks and presentations and got a chance to talk to some interesting people.
Week 3 {June 11 - June 17}:
I ran my own motion capture session and was in charge of its design and data collection! I learned a lot of information related to my project (C-like syntax, hexadecimal values and bit masks, PCA and much more).This week I also had a great conversation with my officemates and got to know them a little better. A wonderful trip with my friends concluded this busy week.
Week 4 {June 18 - June 24}:
It was a nice and productive week. Takaaki, Jimmy and I each built our own "sensor" bar. We also met with Jessica and set up a plan of actions for the next two weeks. I ran another mo-cap session but this time recorded the data using my own C++ program.
Week 5 {June 25 - July 1}:
Attended more presentations and thesis proposals. Primarily worked on my program to record wiimote acceleration data but touched up on the window-matching program as well. In between reading various papers learned how to walk on stilts ;-)
Week 6 {July 2 - July 8}:
Ran another mo-cap session and developed my code for data processing. Worked with Jimmy and Takaaki on preparing our presentation for the retreat (brainstorming sessions between CMU and Georgia Tech faculty and student researchers).
Week 7 {July 9 - July 15}:
On Monday I spent most of the day at the mo-cap lab filming my presentation for the retreat. Thank you very much, Justin, for all your patience and help in getting the videos to be as perfect as they could be!
The rest of the week I spent at a family reunion in Florida.
Week 8 {July 16 - July 22}:
Back to work... there is very little time left for Jimmy and me to finish up our parts of the project. Since Jimmy is leaving at the end of this week, I will have to transfer his and my work to Takaaki before we all leave for the SIGGRAPH conference.
Most of the week I worked on my window-matching program but I also created a quick program to extract acceleration data from the axis specified by the user.
Week 9 {July 23 - July 29}:
Last-minute additions and changes to the Wiimote programs: updated window-matching program and obtained results for the searches, worked on resolving timing issue in the data recording program. Assisted Takaaki with his first motion-capture session and taught him all the nuances of my program's code. Met with CMU researchers who are working on the "Storytelling with Alice" project!
Week 10 {July 30 - August 5}:
This is my last week at CMU...
I spent it working on the final report, cleaning up the code and writing documentation for my program, spending more time with friends I made in Pittsburgh, packing up and getting ready to go to San Diego, packing up to be ready to go back home to Hawaii after I come back from San Diego...
Week 11 {August 6 - August 10}:
The SIGGRAPH was amazing! It was an overwhelmingly exciting, energetically educating, friendlily uniting interesting experience :-) Check out the album for some pictures from San Diego.
This concludes my unforgettable CRA DMP summer research internship at Carnegie Mellon University. Thanks to all those who have made this possible and contributed to this experience!