====== Ethan Nowery NIST 2024 Journal ====== **Author:** Ethan Nowery, Email: \\ **Date Last Modified:** 06/07/2024 \\ ===== Week 1 ===== ==== Photo of the Week ==== {{ week1spot.jpg?400 |}} Here is a picture of the obstacle course that I will be running with SPOT. You can see SPOT laying down on the right side in the back. The blue crates in the back are off limits to students, so I will only be using the obstacle with the 15-degree ramp and offset flooring for various slip situations. ==== New Person ==== This week I have met many new people. At the hotel I am staying at, there are 7 of us that are both involved in this internship. We all met on day 1 when the bus service that NIST provided that week came to take us to campus. They are from all different areas, including San Francisco, New York, Detroit, and Atlanta. We all exchanged numbers that day and been talking every day on the commute to and from campus. We also go as a group to go grocery shopping and to explore the neighboring area. Meeting them has already made the rest of my trip that much easier as I have people to hang out and run errands with. ==== Cultural Insight ==== To my surprise, the robot testing facility that I am working at is very similar to DASL. There are projects placed all over the place, and if there is anything that we need to test or set up, if we don't have it we build it. The work ethics and flow are very similar to DASL, although a little more laid back since we don't have weekly meetings. ==== Self Lesson ==== This week I learned to trust myself, my skills, and work ethics more. Everyone has some degree of impostor syndrome and sometimes I let mine get the better of me. But being among some of the most talented and smartest people I have ever met, as well as being in a place that is so renowned for research makes me feel a little better about myself and what I can accomplish. ==== Technical Projects ===== As of right now, I don't officially have my project that I will be focusing on. This last week has been busy with building some of the omni drone tests for a tour that we had for VIP's from NIST and the FBI. Of that tour, I gave a demonstration of walking SPOT (Quadruped from Boston Dynamics) over the obstacle course that is built here at the lab to test robotic dexterity and material traversal. I only had about 20-30 minutes of prior experience walking SPOT before this demonstration. This summer I will continue to hone my skills with this obstacle course, and by doing so I will also be tracking my progress in order to give a better understanding of what the standard run time for this course should be.