Author: Ethan Nowery, Email: nowery@unlv.nevada.edu
Date Last Modified: 07/22/2024

This last week was spent building what we call an “ant farm”. It is a 4ft x 8ft x 8ft “closet”, and is a vertical drone obstacle course. The drone enters towards the top level and works its way through the hallways and room and then drops down to the next level. Each level gets progressively harder and harder, such as the second level having less light and the gravel/dust which the props will kick up and further obscure the vision of the drone. The last level is made up of a varying terrain of milk crates that are at difference heights. The drones sensors detect the height of the flooring and adjusts the drone offset accordingly.

This week was a slow week due to the Project Leader, Adam, being in Amsterdam for Robocup 2024. There was another intern that I met when a group of us went to dinner. I didn't talk to her much as there were 10 of us in the group, so side conversation just never happened.

I have noticed that the workers here at NIST, interns or fulltime, don't have specific “work hours” the only thing that matters is that they work their daily 8 hours for their salary. The workers here show up whenever, sometimes in the afternoon and I am assuming they stay late as well. The full time workers also have 24/7 access to NIST, which us interns do not. This structure of work hours is the same at DASL. We dont have specific times or hours that need to be fulfilled, but rather our 8 hours to achieve is the progress that is asked for in each weekly meeting.

Since this week was a slower week, there wasn't much to learn. I did take a day off from work to go into DC, and there was another day that the interns had a tour of the Capitol Building.

With the ant farm being finished, I will have time to get back to learning the Telemax robot for my project. Besides that, once Adam gets back im sure there will be a lot of updates and further projects.