Author: Fausto Vega, Email: vegaf1@unlv.nevada.edu
Date Last Modified: 06/09/2019

This weekend all the REU participants made a trip to Lake Tahoe to enjoy the amazing scenery and hike up several trails. I chose this photo as this trip was an important bonding experience with all the members. It is important to get to know people from all across the United States as it expands my network. It also conveyed a feeling of realization as I am on my own for these next 10 weeks.

Most of the first week consisted of logistics and project proposals. I was assigned to work under Dr. David Feil Seifer in the socially assistive robotics lab. My current project proposal is to aid a Phd student in his dissertation which includes Socially Aware Navigation. He currently has everything working in simulation, yet there needs to be data collected with an actual experiment. This will consist of working with a camera and laser scanner to detect the 3D location of a human, along with integrating several ROS packages such as leg detector and navigation for path planning. The plan is to run the code off a Pioneer 3DX robot. His code consists of a robot adjusting its path based on the dynamic of the environment such as walking on the right side or navigating to a specific location during group formations.

I have been reviewing the ROS basics along with a package called TF which transforms coordinate frames of two objects. I have also been reviewing laser scanner and webcam information as this is all new to me. I have also written a clarity memo which proposes the project plan. The REU also consists of workshops which we are required to attend. This weeks workshops consisted of Github, elevator pitches, and how to read a research paper. Next weeks plans are to take a look at the existing simulation code and do a code review to understand, and install several laser scanner/usb scanner packages to study the topics and messages that are transferred across the publisher and subscriber.

I also had the chance to visit Dr. Hung La's Lab and was impressed with the projects that are going on at UNR. He showed me the climbing robot that they are developing that checks the welding and cracks and steel bridges. Another robot he showed me was the one for concrete which consists of a thermal camera to check the rebar in the concrete and electric resistivity sensors for checking the durability of the concrete. Anh also talked about his project which is designing another version of the steel climbing robot out of aluminum using the CNC machine. Dr. La originally had a project with the REU, yet he was busy this semester with 5 projects, therefore they assigned another professor to the REU. Dr. La also gave me a few recommendations and one of them was to master ROS as it is extremely important. I have not used ROS as much at DASL, so that will be a goal of mine throughout these 10 weeks.

I learned that it is challenging living alone as there are many responsibilities one has to do on top of the work assigned. I also need to practice my programming as this is what the 10 weeks is going to consist of. I am also the only mechanical engineering student at the REU, yet there are no projects relating the material I have learned. Therefore I learned that I have the motivation to adapt to any new project and try to get the most out of this 10 week experience.

During the first week at Reno, I met Chung, a student working in Dr. La's lab. He attended the REU last year and came back to Dr. La's lab to finish up his project. The project consists of using multiple iCreate robots to follow an optimal path for dirt cleaning. He is also entering his 3rd year at the University of Oklahoma studying Computer Science.