Week One
June 3rd- June 7th,2013
This week I was introduced to the Parasol Laboratory at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. It is quite a bit of an adjustment for me since I am not from Texas, so on top of learning a new programming language, I had to deal with days full of allergy trouble. This is my first time being this far away from home, and so far I like it.
My faculty advisor is Dr. Nancy Amato, and with her are numerous graduate students that I have been seeking help from. One thing I like to note, is that everyone seems so helpful and friendly here. Traits like that is very uncommon back home in Georgia. Most students who have a lot of knowledge are very short patient and usually try not to be seen by other students so they won't have to help.
Previously before coming to A&M, I took a computer science course. In that class we learned how to create basic programs in Microsoft Visual Studios using the programming language C#. It was bit of a challenge, but after two weeks of some studying and learning the terminology on my own, I was fine. Hopefully I can use this same approach with learning C++ in the Parasol Laboratory. I appreciate the crash course; the pace is keeping me on my toes. I'm not complaining because the course is actually enhancing my critical thinking skills; which most engineers and scientist need when it comes to problem solving.
My biggest issues this week was not having a foundation in C++. For instance, I don't know the terminology or the basic commands. Monday onward through Wednesday, I wanted to pull my hair out. I felt like a dear standing in headlights. I also feel a like an outcast because everyone else seems to have some type of knowledge with C++. Towards the end of Wednesday, I asked about any books I can read that will help me get the basics of C++. One of the other REU students gave me two .pdf books before leaving the lab Wednesday. Between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m., I was up reading throughout the books on my iPad. Thursday morning, I felt like a new person. I went through 2 previous lessons of the crash course in about 20 minutes. Throughout Thursday and the latter part of Friday, everything was somewhat of a breeze. I am still having some small struggles here and there, however they aren't enough to be stuck on them four hours or more.
Next week, I want to keep the momentum going. I will still be reading the C++ books on the side and asking questions. I have never asked so many questions in all three of my undergraduate years. I don't want the graduate students to feel like I'm bugging them. They constantly remind us to ask questions, so I guess I am okay until I get the hang of things. Jory gave me an idea of my research project for the summer and I absolutely love it! I think I love it so much because it's not really affiliated with pmpl so much as the other projects. Let's see what type of adventure week two brings!
Week Two
June 10th - June 14th,2013
This week was somewhat of a relief for me. My assigned research project is AWESOME! My research project will use the sensor technology of the Microsoft Kinect to detect humans and other obstacles. The long-term goal of this project is to integrate the sensor on iRobot Creates. These robots are already used for caravanning. Caravanning is an application designed by members of our lab for distributed group coordination amongst heterogeneous robots. More powerful sensors would allow the robots to follow humans and better detect objects in the path of the robots.
Along with preparing for the initial research, the crash course is coming along. I finally got a change to read over the standards in depth with one of my peers. This week we had out first brown bag meeting. They served cookies and soft chocolate brownies that were pretty yummy! The graduate students gave some great insight on graduate school. I believe after that session, I am completely sold into going to the 5-year Ph.D program.
Earlier this week, I went to the REU Summer Scholars luncheon with a few of my peers. I must say the food selection was pretty good. That may have been the best salad & lasagna I've had in quite some time. Dr. Becky Petitt gave us great insight on how to get the best out of the REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) in College Station, Texas. I spent the rest of the week, taking heed of Dr. Petitt words. I spent more time networking with peers whether it was in my specific lab or other labs across the campus. I went to movies Friday night and I saw the "Man of Steel" for $4.50 with the student discount. I also had my first Whataburger this week and it was delicious. I'm glad I hung out with some friends this week, it really took some tension off of my shoulders.
Next week, I want to keep the momentum going. I think what helped me the most this week was giving myself daily goals and an overall weekly goal. That method kept me very organized and ready for the week. Bring it on, week three!
Week Three
June 17th - June 21st,2013
This week was absolutely a roller coaster ride for me. I was very sick Monday and Tuesday but I pushed through the lab hours. I don't know what it is about me being in Texas, but it is really killing my allergies. I was completely drained Tuesday because I took 2 Benadryls prior to coming to the lab that morning. Remind me to never do that again. As you can see I got very little done the first part of the week.
&nspp Wednesday was a little better however because I was mostly out of it the previous two days, I didn't get many of the questions done for the crash course. I have nobody to blame but myself for that. On the brighter side, Dr. Amato reviewed my research proposal and she liked my writing. There was one error however; it was not written in Latex. Latex is a documentation preparing system where you create a .tex file, and once your are finished, the program creates a readable .pdf file. The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor application used to write those documents.
Bridging over into Thursday I was so frustrated with how things are going. I felt like I was in a whole different world. After a long phone conversation with my mother, I realized that my previous institution, Savannah State University didn't expose me into the tech world that much. We were kind of hindered from thinking outside of the box, whereas here, you can go as far as your imagination takes you. On that note, I would like to thank Dr. Amato and the Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates program for allowing me to participate this summer.
Friday morning, I woke up pretty early to finish some stuff in the lab. I finished my proposal, ethnics training, and discussion questions all within 2 hours. I don't get as much done when everyone arrive to the lab, so getting there early was a great head start for me. Friday was the best day of the week for me. I was very interactive in the discussion meeting as well to my peers in my lab. I start my research my project next week and I can't wait! I have a good feeling about week four.
Week Four
June 24th - June 28th, 2013
This week was pretty great. On Monday, I started working with the Microsoft Kinect. It's pretty cool with what you can really do with this this sensor. It can detect humans height and depth. Using the Kinect will be pretty useful with the multi-robot caravanning project this summer. Also, I started reading research papers for the upcoming crash course discussions this week. I am really nervous that we have to present the papers to our lap peers.
Tuesday was pretty mellow. I was trying to get an acquired code to work with the Kinect but I needed to download two other libraries to get the code to working. I went a seminar where we were informed about different financing opportunities for graduate school. I believe it was very insightful. I also enjoyed the free Mexican food that was provided to us prior to the seminar. I am sold on the fact of going to graduate school; I just don't know if I want to settle for a Masters or go ahead and get a Ph.D.
Wednesday and Thursday was informative. I had to present one of the research papers I read to my group of lab peers. I was very nervous so it didn't go well as planned. Overall, I think I still did a good job. During the brown bag luncheon, Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup talked about his life. That was a one in a lifetime thing. It is not everyday that you get to talk to the creator of C++ programming. I really liked that fact that he didn't boast about his accomplishments. He seemed very down to earth and only doing things that he loves to do. He did not mention once that he was doing it for the money, and I love that about people in his profession. It shouldn't always be about the money. You should do something you love, no matter how much money you make.
We are currently trying to get the code to run but we are getting source errors. We need to download another library before it can run. I did excellent on my research paper today although I didn't need to discuss it in depth as everyone else. I hope next week I can get the code working or maybe work on generate my own code to work with the libraries I already have acquired.
Week Five
July 1st - July 3rd, 2013
This week was very short for me. It was literally a three day week. On monday I created a code to tilt the camera up 27 degrees and down 27 degrees for testing purposes. We were working on some small code to interact with the Kinect just for future purposes if we want to use these functions in the caravanning process, they will be easy to implement.
Me and my partner, Michael Cantu worked on some object detection code Tuesday, but we were unsuccessful trying to find the function to take in the depth information. Wednesday, after meeting with our mentor, he gave us so small steps to take towards working on our object detection function. He also helped us go over a libfreenect demo which include the function to take in the depth.
I had to leave early Wednesday for a trip to Dallas to meet some family so that took about an hour away from me getting close to close completing our object detection function. Hopefully next week, we can get things up and going at least by Tuesday afternoon. I look forward to much success and progress next week.
Happy Independence Day!!!
Week Six
July 8th - July 12th, 2013
I had an amazing week in the Parasol Laboratory. My project shifted to something more familiar to my major, mechanical engineer. I won't actually be working with the Microsoft Kinect, only to move deeper into applying algorithms. Algorithms is a procedure for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number of steps that frequently involves repetition of an operation.
&nsbp; I will also be involved with editing the Parasol Benchmark page. I have came up with some great ideas for it already so I hope that Monday morning it will be ready for Dr. Amato to review it. Somehow I've become very interested in graphics and art over the summer so, I have been viewing frequent tutorials on Adobe Photo & Adobe Dreamweaver.
During the earlier part of the week, I edited the texture and converted files over for the Willow Garage PR2 robot. I haven't necessarily assembled it yet, but there files are ready for me to work on that in the near future before I depart College Station. Implementing this PR2 into the lab simulation will give student mores robots to work with in the Vizmo++ simulations.
The minority meeting was very empowering this week. We talked about stereotypes and race. I shared numerous of my struggles that still goes on through today. I get the worse stereotypes sometimes just by being an African American male. Over the years I've gotten used to it, so I use it as fuel to my fire. Later on in the week, Brittany Duncan spoke at the brown bag lunch about picking a research mentor. I took a lot of information from her talk. I was even able to talk to her about doing research as an undergraduate student back at my home institution , The Georgia Institute of Technology. There are four weeks left of research and I'm looking forward to finish successfully.
Week Seven
July 15th - July 19th, 2013
First, I would like to start off by saying how I always embrace change. Back home, I always tell other other students to embrace change. Be able to adjust to such changes makes a well-rounded individual. Those very words come back to me quite often. With that being said, I have no problems with the changes to my summer research project. I actually feel more prepared for this project which requires less programming. Another change was for me to restructure the Parasol Benchmark Page.
Converting over the environment and query files isn't the problem; running them in pmpl is. Out of seven benchmarks, I have succesfully ran about 3 in pmpl during the later part of the week. I will more than likely be in the lab over the weekend to catch up and finish converting the environment files. I am working on converting the environment files and the webpage simutaneously.
Week Eight
July 22nd - July 26th,2013
I am very proud at my progress over the past two weeks. With the change of the initial research project, I have been quite successful and completed tasks in a very timely manner. I tend to over think things, so the previous issues that had me at a standstill, are now a breeze. If I just learn how to read things for what they are and not overthink them, I will be better off and save a whole lot of time.
In the minority meeting this week, Dr. Merna Jacobsen, Chief of Staff, Office of the Vice President for Administration, gave a very informative speech about "Effective Presentations". All the sub-topics she discussed all had very valid points that I notice from other speakers at rallies, or seminars. I am very shy, speaking to a group of people, I often stutter or loose my train of thought right in the middle of the presentation. I will definitely use some of her techniques at the poster presentation in the upcoming week or so.
Successfully, I finished 6 out of the seven benchmarks yesterday(Thursday), so today I will finish up the last one along with editing the benchmarks page or the Parasol site. While updating the page I had issues with the jQuery library, so I pray that things will work in my favor soon so I can start on my final paper and the poster.
Week Nine
July 29th - August 2nd, 2013
Time is going by very fast. I felt as if I started the program just last week. Also feeling a bit overwhelmed with due dates coming up left and right. Yesterday I felt extremely exhausted and stressed so I took the rest of the day off to go home and get some res much needed rest.
For the most part, everything is coming along quite well. I have to finish some minor tweaks to the benchmarks page like, how to use and linking the benchmarks back to their perspective pages. I've finished updating the benchmarks but I need to run them through experiments.
I had a chance of speaking with Dr. R. Malak for about an hour or so this week about the possibilities of coming back next summer for research or even for Graduate School. I'm still unsure abut what I want to do with my. He gave me some insight into how broad Mechanical Engineering is and how I don't have be so specific with what I want to do.
I will be putting in major overtime over the weekend so I will not be stressed next week about finishing things in a timely manner. I plan to get the experiments going today through tomorrow and possibly Sunday if needed. While the experiments are running I will work on the benchmarks page and my final DREU website. I am pushing to finalize those tomorrow. If I can get those finished and out the way, I want to work on my introduction for my paper. Hopefully by Monday, things will go a lot smoother once the small stuff is completed and out of the way.
Week Ten
August 5th - August 9th, 2013
This week concludes ten successful weeks of my first research experience. I must say I really enjoyed myself here at Texas A&M University. I enjoyed the working atmosphere and the overall experience at the school.
Being here the past ten have taught me alot. As a young, black African-American Male, we feel as though we never get opportunies like this. I'm happy to say that I've had the chance to come here and gain some research experience. I am very hopeful to possibly return next summer and even for Graduate School. I would like to thank everyone who have helped me this summer. I really appreciate the guidance and strong words of encouragement. I would to especially thank Dr. Amato for her help as well over the summer.
