Students

Recently I've been in Heidelberg for a meeting of all the RISE students in Germany. And I have to say, it feels like I'm a high school student again. I'm surrounded by stereotypical examples of my age group, universities are vying for my attention, and we're all being herded extremely inefficiently to our crowded rooms, halfhearted events, and cheap food. That sounds very negative, but it wasn't entirely intentional... that really is a pretty accurate description of what happens when one tries to wrangle students. But it's not all bad. Thursday was fun--I saw one or two graduate programs that looked intriguing, and it was nice to feel wanted again. But today was kind of a dud. You see, this program generally caters to the hard sciences, such as biology, chemistry, and particularly engineering. The reasons for this are obvious--the grant money comes from the German government and various German industries, and they are all interested in gaining the most profitable talent for their country/company. There were a few computer science opportunities grouped under "software engineering", and I snuck in on one of those, but today when we did our company visits, I was lumped in with the engineering group. We went to visit Bosch, where we saw an assembly line making fuel injectors, and we also visited the Porsche museum. I got the feeling the engineers were happy enough, but I was bored out of my mind.

Afterwards we went to a dinner, which was nothing special... had some good conversations and okay food, at least. But then, as students do, we all got separated and wandered around the city looking for bars. Our group wound up fragmenting and reforming in some very organic ways, and the entire time everyone was talking intently about where to go, without any decisions being reached. It was my intent from the very beginning to simply find the next bus back to the youth hostel, and I was merely following the other students because I thought, naively, that the general direction of the group might head that way. I was right, as it turned out, but it took almost two hours, and meanwhile I was treated to an endless monologue about every aspect of getting shitfaced drunk for as cheap as possible. (It wasn't just one person, but I hesitate to use the word "dialogue", because everyone just seemed to be shouting into the crowd and waiting for an echo to come back on a close enough subject to continue the "conversation". Amoebalogue, maybe?)

I'd like the emphasize that this... there, now I'm hesitating to even use the word "activity"... that this state of being was not restricted to the hours after dinner and before breakfast. Every waking hour I have been with these students has been the same loop playing over and over. Usually in the same order, too: how drunk we were last night... how drunk we're going to be tonight... how we can get as drunk as possible for as cheap as possible... how hung over we're going to be tomorrow morning. The different hours of the day are like the different states of matter--different behaviors emerge, and reactions are different, but in the end it's all just a bunch of atoms. Or, in this case, alcohols.

To summarize... this trip has been alright, except for all the students. And I am looking forward to having a nice restful Sunday.

Update: The last day was very similar to the second--the tour (this time of the castle overlooking Heidelberg) was quite boring to me, and when it was all over it just sort of... ended. We got together for a group picture, everyone applauded, and then the huge lump of 300 students slowly dissolved into the city. There was one thing that helped a bit, though. The "debriefing" on Saturday morning consisted mostly of a summary of how things went, and a lot of talking about how we were less rowdy than the previous group, and about how difficult it was for them to organize all of this. (Apparently they've only had like two full-time staff members organizing everything and answering emails for the last three months or so.) It may not sound like much of a motivational speech, but it was very humanizing. I think it really did a lot to prevent us from walking away griping about how shoddily this was all planned.

What I'm Doing Here

I'm here in Koblenz working with the Arbeitsgruppe Aktives Sehen (AGAS)--the active vision team. In a word, I'm working with robots. Right now I'm involved with the Robbie 13 project, which is the 13th iteration (in as many semesters) of a robot that is by now quite adept at fulfilling its duties--namely, to autonomously navigate a simulated "disaster area", map the area, and find "victims" (heat sources). Robbie has been very successful at past competitions, participating in the RoboCup Rescue League. I won't go too far into detail, but there's a lot more information at the website if you're interested. Now, though, Robbie is being groomed to take part in a different competition, the SICK Robot Day. Unfortunately the description is all in German, but I'll summarize the basic competition. The robot will be placed in a large oblong arena with obstacles scattered about, and 9 signposts clearly labeled 1-9. The robot's task is to navigate to each of the signposts in order (naturally, it has to read the numbers itself), while avoiding the obstacles as well as a second robot doing the same task in the opposite order. A collision with the other robot will mean disqualification, but the final judge of success is speed. It sounds pretty challenging, but a lot of Robbie's existing capabilities are well-suited to this task. In fact, except for the lack of image recognition (to read the numbers) and weatherproofing (this competition will take place outside, rain or shine) he's almost got everything he needs right now. But of course there is always room for improvement, and we've got until September to make him ready.

Unfortunately I'll only be here until mid-August, so I won't get to see the little guy compete. Currently my task is to build a pan-tilt unit to integrate the new laser range finder. Robbie already has one of these, and it's an indispensable part of his operation--it scans a wide radius in 2 dimensions to sense walls, and it's hooked up to a little servo which allows it to scan up and down to get a 3-D snapshot, mostly for identifying inaccessible areas ("rough terrain"). It's just a little tiny one, though, and now we've got a big heavy-duty new one--the SICK S300. It's actually quite portable compared to most LRFs, but it still weighs more than a kilogram, so just sticking it on top of a servo won't quite work. That's what I'm here for. Although I've never done any CAD before, I jumped in feet-first and over the past week I made a pretty good, basic schematic for an aluminum bracket to hold the LRF. Once the servos get here, I can take a few final measurements, get the design finalize, and then find out if the thing works at all, but for now I'm working on the software to control the servos. It's been a long time since I've done any object-oriented programming, so once again I'm really learning on the job. Overall, though, I think I can get this all finished in just another week or so. I hope so, anyway--this is interesting work, but I'd like to get this finished and start on another project before I go. I'm particularly hoping to have a crack at the higher-level designing... actually contributing to the intelligence of the robot. Anyway, I'll keep you posted!

Hello Internet

I will be blogging for you today. Let me introduce myself--my name is Thomas Foss, and I'm a California college student currently interning at the University of Koblenz in Germany. I figured this was as good a time as ever to start a blog, because it seems like I might actually have something to talk about for a few months. So, glad to make your acquaintance... now let's get started.