The final week of the internship was, as expected, very hectic. At the weekly meeting, we established that my tasks would be to complete my final paper, assist in implementing a plug-in that allows the rovers to move their cameras, and help build a couple of rovers. Most of the mentors had gone to Cambridge for the Hackathon early, so it was mainly the REUS and a senior intern left. I attempted to help with the plug-in project, but the REU working on it was almost finished and didn't need any help. Work on the rovers did not advance too far either. When the time came for assembly, it turned out that the mentors had taken all the tools with them to Cambridge. We'd have to put the assembly on hold until next week. As a result, I spent my time writing the final research report.
On Friday, we took our flights to join our mentors in Cambridge for the RSS Swarmathon Hackathon (http://nasaswarmathon.com/rssworkshop/). The entire trip was a great experience. We stayed in one of dorms at Lesley University and were given meal tickets for the dorm food. The night we arrived, I went out with some of the other students for delicious pizza. The next day was a series of talks by distinguished researchers where I learned more about the research being done in swarm robotics. Between talks were meals and coffee breaks where I got to know the Hackathon participants better. Afterwards was the main event, we set-up the arena, divided the students into teams, and assigned each a mentor which would rotate after a few hours. I was nervous that I wouldn't know enough to be useful, especially since I had never participated in the Swarmathon and the participants had. However, the experience I gained from the internship allowed me to provide a lot of helpful advice to the participants. Whenever a problem came up that I couldn't solve, I simply referred to another mentor for guidance. Though only one team managed to retrieve any blocks in the end, all the teams were amazing. Some teams were just beginning to learn ROS basics at the Hackathon and still made significant progress. Knowing from the mock hackathon how challenging the task is, I was inspired seeing how much these students achieved. After the Hackathon, I got much needed sleep and then explored the city with the other students. I went home the next day. Next week I will submit my final report and website and do a final presentation. Besides that, I'm officially finished with the internship. I have learned a lot and am grateful for the experience and contacts I've gained. This internship has strengthened my resolve to pursue further education and explore more what Computer Science has to offer.
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Fourth of July fell on Tuesday and Monday was a university holiday so the start of the week was spent relaxing and vacationing. My friends (including one of the other REU students) and I decided to spend 4th of July hanging out at Santa Cruz Lake. The view was gorgeous and it felt nice to be around nature.
When we returned to the lab, the focus for the rest of the week was on Hackathon preparation. The code was updated and placed on the rovers and cameras. Everything needed for the Hackathon was disassembled and set out in the conference room. The next day we packed the equipment into our mentor's van and took it to FedEx for shipping. With Hackathon prep largely out the way, I spent the rest of the time debugging CPFA and starting work on the final report. I decided that I will do two papers, one on CPFA and one on the Hackathon, since my internship experience consisted of those two projects. In the CPFA debugging, I discovered that the pheromone issue is due to the pheromone decay rate being set too high. Just before a rover selects a pheromone, it updates the pheromones list using the decay function which (due to the high decay rate) automatically inactivates all pheromones. With some tweaking, I was able to reduce the decay rate to a reasonable rate. Next week is my last week. It will be very busy because I'll be working on the final report, doing the CPFA work, and mentoring for the Hackathon. I can't believe it's almost over! |