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Week 2: June 3rd- June 7th
Monday was spent trying to learn Matlab. The plan at this point is to start working with Sandra on Tuesday and I need to be able to use it. Hopefully she will be patient with me. On a side note: I bought some new shoes on Sunday (Sperrys) and I had the worst blisters ever. I had to walk to my car barefoot at the end of the day.
Tuesday was a frustrating day. In the morning I met with Sandra to talk about what I would be working on in regards to her research. To explain it in the most basic way (or at least how I understand it) the quadrotor she is working with learns to fly and adapt to carrying a suspended load so that the swing of the load is minimized. The quadrotor uses a decision making algorithm that helps it to learn and choose the optimal action. However, the quadrotor does not always choose this optimal action. What I will be working on is finding what the relationship is between the optimal action and the action taken given different constraints on the system. Cool...except for the fact that I don't know how to do that. Sandra sent me some code files to manipulate and play with in Matlab. I basically stared at the computer screen for 2 hours trying to figure out what the code was even doing. Research is tricky. You have to be really good at identifying the problem at hand and then being able to think creatively about how to address it. So far I am not able to do that, most likely because I need to understand the research and project better. I feel way in over my head and I am hesitant to ask questions because everyone is working on their own projects and are light years ahead of me. Towards the end of the evening I came up with a plan to create a large sample space of optimal and taken actions based on small changes made to the modeling function. Hopefully this will allow me to observe a pattern of some sort that will help explain the relationship. We will see how it goes.
Not a whole lot happen Wednesday. I mostly just worked on the project write up for the work I will be doing with Sandra. A good hour of the day was taken up with a CS photoshoot. I guess the department just needed some stock photos that they can throw into a catalog or brochure whenever they need to.
Thursday was super productive! I worked in Matlab all day creating a mini sample space by changing the values on the function that models the state transition of the quadrotor. I don't know if I accomplished much but I understand the function and Matlab a lot better now.
On Friday I worked on generating some graphs that depicted what would happen when you held certain values of the modelling function constant and changed others. It got exciting for a while when I almost crashed the computer by creating an infinite loop that was drawing hundreds of graphs. Rookie mistake, I know. But eventually I figured out how to do what I actually meant to. Side note: My grandma is being moved to a rehab facility here in Albuquerque so I will be seeing a lot more of my family.
Leisure Time On Friday night I went to a party at a friend's house. A lot of people I grew up with go to school at UNM so it was nice to see familiar faces and catch up. It was also fun to be around people my age. Saturday and Sunday were pretty laid back. I hung out at the pool and relaxed at the house. My dad and brother also came to visit me. This next week is going to be interesting though. Since my grandma is in the rehab hospital not to far from where I live my great uncle is going to be staying with me a few nights so he can visit her. At this point I am used to living alone so adjusting to sharing my space with someone will be a new adventure. Hope it works out!
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