Daily Life
We had monday off as it was Independence day, but I went into the office for a few hours to catch up on a few things (and because I've been having SO much fun doing this!!!!). On Wednesday, it was my boyfriend's birthday. I got a piece of cake and candles, and video conferenced on Skype to wish him a happy birthday.
On the way back from lunch on Friday, John took Rachel and I to the Meteor Museum of UNM. They have quite a few meteors there. They also had a piece of glass that was formed when a meteor hit the sand of a desert.
Research
I began with fresh copies of the files and was able to make some progress. Further modifications are needed, however, the current version is now able to compile. It's nice to see when a new print statement or new error message appear as they indicate the program has reached a new section of the code. However, when I run the testSerialMulti.PRMRoadmap.xml, I receive an error message. Although I'm able to locate the print command for the message, I've been unable to determine the correction needed. I'll make the changes you suggested regarding the distance metric to see if this is causing my current error. I'm quite pleased with what I have currently however as prior to beginning with fresh copies, I had a large number of error statements.
On Thursday, we attended a weekly Brown Paper Bag Lunch session regarding student research being done at the CS department of UNM on AntBots, and on methods used to determine FireWall settings used by China (The Great Firewall of China).
A point of interest concerning the Antbots was; How intelligent can they be made? Is it acceptable to make them more intelligent than actual ants? They also spoke of the difficulties of using physical robots, such as the placement of the GPS sensor and the size of the memory incorporated versus the current size of the program.
The question was asked, 'Why would anyone want to know what China sensors?'. I found that to be an intriguing question. To me the big answer is, it would provide a better understanding of their culture.
Next Week
We will continue to modify programs needed for the PRMRoadmap_testSerial.map file. Once these files are successfully modified, the code will be tested and data will be collected on parameters previously determined to be of interest. Rachel and I will go over pmpl and Vizmo with Tony early next week and I'll be available throughout the week to answer any questions he may have.