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--- jason_journal [2019/07/07 21:36] – jkreitz
+++ jason_journal [2019/08/07 04:58] (current) – jkreitz
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 I did not get a chance to go to Rainbow this last week - I think the software team is pretty busy, as they are somewhat difficult to contact at the moment. However, Mark has been very helpful in helping me understand creating a ROS action server/client. He has been using ROS for about 3 years and created his own wrapper for the mobile HUBO project. He's been awesome, and I'm really grateful that he's been very open to helping us out.
+===== Week 5: 07/08/19 - 07/14/19 ======
+==== 1. Photo of the week ====
+{{:jkreitz:lunch_w_mar.jpg?nolink&300|}}
+This weekend I was able to meet up with a family friend from high school. Her name is Marwood, and she has been teaching English in Korea for the past five years. She is close with my sisters and me from our time doing high school theater, and her mom and my mom still keep in touch. So I knew that when I had the chance to go to Korea, I needed to meet up with her.
+This picture is of the lunch that I had with Marwood down in Busan (where she is teaching). We hung out with her friends Anna and Jaewoo on Saturday night, and this is us grabbing Vietnamese food on Sunday day.
+{{:jkreitz:catching_upw_marwood.jpg?nolink&300|}}
+Here is another picture of Marwood - albeit sideways (I don't know why daslhub rotates every picture to be landscape).
+{{:jkreitz:busan1.jpg?nolink&300|}}
+Marwood lives a block from the beach, so I was able to take some beautiful pictures of the bridge. Here is a picture of Busan by day.
+{{:jkreitz:busan2.jpg?nolink&300|}}
+Here is a picture of Busan by night.
+==== 2. New Korean that I met ====
+I met Jaewoo through Marwood. He is dating Anna currently, so his English is pretty good. He is a videographer and graphic designer. He and Anna have plans to move to Vietnam this next year.
+==== 3. Cultural Insight ====
+I knew that Korea has a pretty heavy Christian influence, but I was not really expecting a heavy Catholic influence. Most Christian Korean Americans that I know are non-denominational or baptist. However, I have been seeing nuns everywhere this week. They were walking up and down the street in Busan, waiting for trains at the train station, and I even noticed a couple Catholic churches.
+What was really impactful for me, however, was on Sunday night, a group of nuns and church members were giving out hot meals for the needy in front of Daejeon station. I haven't seen too many people with disabilities or many homeless since coming to Korea, but on Sunday night they were there lined up outside of Daejeon station. I wanted to take a picture, but figured it would be rude and insensitive. Having experienced doing community work with the Catholic church back in Vegas, I am very happy that the Catholic church in Daejeon carries the same community focused mission of helping the needy.
+==== 4. Self-Discovery ====
+I didn't exercise at all this week, and I just do not feel the same level of energy as I had before. Since coming to Korea, I have been exercising almost every day - until this past week. It's not as easy to manage the stress, and I'm just feeling a bit heavy and lethargic.
+One of my goals coming to Korea was to get back to a place where I feel fit (since I literally have no life here). I wanted to carry those good habits back with me to Vegas, but the more I have been hanging out with other lab members, the less I have been going to the gym. Because it is a priority to me, I need to make sure that I am still carving out time for exercise.
+==== 5. Technical Project ====
+One of the researchers at the lab (Hyobin) has been working with HUBO's ankle actuators. Here is a video of HUBO walking on an uneven surface.
+{{youtube>RIlIiEmQD0Y?medium}}
+As I have been spending more time with the hydraulics team, I have been able to see their robots in action. Here is just a small video of hydraulic hip actuation that they will be using for their next robot. Buyeon just pulled it out of the box, so he is just doing some preliminary tests.
+{{youtube>l9lweKohPbU?medium}}
+As for my project, I am finishing the wrapper today. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time searching through the code on how to receive status data (joint states, whether or not the arm is moving, etc.) from the arm - Mark wasn't sure how to receive that data either. Rainbow still has not responded to our emails, so we needed to search for it ourselves. Thankfully, we found a header file this last Friday that contained the correct calls to the arm. We will be using those calls so we can send updated information to ROS.
+{{youtube>JSliLmMHTtI?medium}}
+This video was taken last Wednesday - it is of a ROS action client sending commands to the ROS wrapper, and the ROS wrapper then sending the commands to the RB5 arm. There is a delay between each of the movements because we could not receive a status update from the arm that the movement was complete (which is a status contained in the header file). Instead, I just waited for 7 seconds between each movement. I am implementing that status update today, so we can have continuous movement.
+I was able to set up my camera rig, so now I am trying out a QR code prototype of the pick and place movement. There's currently no gripper attached, so I am just going to emulate the movement. We are doing a demo for Professor Oh later this week, so I am aiming to get the prototype done by the end of the week.
+===== Week 7: 07/22/19 - 07/28/19 ======
+==== 1. Photo of the week ====
+This past week I went to Japan to visit Stephanie's (my girlfriend) extended family (aunts/uncles). Her mom and brother were also there, so it was basically a huge party. Her family in Tokyo had hosted us for a whole month about two years ago, so I needed to make sure that I spent time with them while I'm in the region.
+What surprised me the most, however, was that with her grandpa welcomed me easily this time. The previous time, we never interacted much with one another. So I was very happy for him to have opened up to me.
+The picture below is one that I sent to Stephanie after I landed.
+{{:jkreitz:stephs_grandpa.jpeg?nolink&200|}}
+==== 2. New Korean that I met ====
+I met a few new Koreans from Seoul National University and Kookmin National University during out seminar trip this last weekend. We hung out and played ping-pong/billiards with several of our lab members.
+I didn't get a chance to go out much outside of the trip, however. I only had about three days in Daejeon, and those were spent preparing a demo for Dr. Paul Oh (we had already done our demo for Professor Jun Ho Oh the previous week).
+==== 3. Cultural Insight ====
+Man... Japan and Korea are different. Regardless of all the politics currently going on, culturally they feel different. Being half-asian and growing up in a heavily Asian American community, my friends and I all learned about each others respective cultures through what was passed down by our parents. And so I never really realized just how different the respective cultures are without the American culture in the middle.
+Japan is overly organized, and everything has a place. I met up with a close friend from UNLV in Tokyo, and we were talking about how the business culture of Kaizen (the Japanese word for continuous improvement) actually gets in the way of innovation. In comparison, Korea has felt much more open to people going at their own pace. Maybe it's a recent development with the younger generation - or maybe it's because Daejeon is a more relaxed city - I'm not sure.
+==== 4. Self-Discovery ====
+Engineering classes teach us tools, but they don't teach us how to think about them or their use. It seems pretty obvious, but man... It's really easy for people without experience to get caught into the trap of "learn this and become a master." I was waiting for classes to teach me how to implement a concept, instead of using my classes to better understand what/why I'm working on my projects.
+I realized this shift in my mentality when implementing my finite state machine (FSM). I had previously thought that an FSM was just some concept that only computer science students learned in their Automata classes - and that you could only implement it if you had studied these concepts rigorously. But now I realize that conceptually it's not too difficult to understand - anyone should be able to create a FSM as long as they understand basic coding.
+However, the FSM completely changed the way that my project worked. No longer were the requests being hard coded, and there was no hand controlled input. Everything became very hands off, with the shift in states controlling what the arm would do next.
+And so my hope is to go into this next semester of operating systems, computer languages, and algorithms courses with a better understanding of how the concepts I'm learning can better help me answer questions that pop up during research.
+==== 5. Technical Project ====
+We got a chance to get a close look at the FX-2 in actual operation. Man, just a year ago I only would have thought "holy crap this is so cool." But now I am in awe because I know just how little I know. This thing must have taken so long to make - and then on top of that, it must have taken a large number of trials to actually walk with a rider.
+{{:jkreitz:fx_2_picture.jpg?nolink&300|}}
+{{youtube>-MPEzdjA6Zs?medium}}
+Below is the state of my current project. I'm jamming out to music during the video, so feel free to put it on mute.
+{{youtube>n4j1hCwLTFI?medium}}
+In the video, you can see my FSM put to action. It will only start moving when it detects an object on the table. I can see that, from here, there are ways to use probabilities with the FSM to create a more robust decision making process for difficult processes. Thankfully, this process is fairly straightforward.
+Youngbum and I had spoken this last week for things left to do before I leave and ways to move forward once I get back home. I feel like there is a good path forward for when I return, so I am thankful to have been able to gain this experience with the RB5 over here.
+Even though I feel like I have gotten a lot done, I am realizing that there is still so much to learn in order to solve more difficult problems.
+===== Week 8: 07/29/19 - 08/04/19 ======
+==== 1. Photo of the week ====
+==== 2. New Korean that I met ====
+This last week, I met two new Koreans: Bora and Mingu.
+Bora is Soonghoon's (from the hydraulics lab) girlfriend. I had been trying to hang out with them for a while, and we finally got a chance to go out this last Friday. Ook (another lab member), his friend Mingu, and Akshay also came along. We all got along pretty easily - which has often been the case when Akshay and I meet people together (thankfully).
+==== 3. Cultural Insight ====
+==== 4. Self-Discovery ====
+I am going to miss KAIST. I've learned a lot here about what it means to be a roboticist (more specifically, learning how much I don't know). The problems that roboticists tackle are non-trivial, and it takes a huge amount of time, effort, and understanding to get past more trivial problems. Being here has helped to foster a greater sense of cooperation between me and Akshay, showing that we can think through problems more efficiently when we can rely on someone else's perspective.
+I am going to miss the lab members here. There is definitely a sense of camaraderie between the HUBOLab members, regardless of whether or not they work directly together. They have welcomed Akshay and me into the lab, even though we hadn't worked with them on any projects.
+==== 5. Technical Project ====
+This past week I have been helping out Akshay with the object following module for the RB5.
+We've noticed significant lag in the communications that weren't present with the simple pick and place demo. After digging into the issues, I found that the ROS wrapper is not receiving robot data from the RB5 control box in a timely manner. I am working out these issues (maybe will be fixed up by resolving timing/threading issues) and will continue digging into it after we return.
+Dr. Jun also requested that I import the RB5 into RVIZ before coming back to Vegas. I just received word from Dr. Bae earlier this week that they have not made a URDF for the RB5, and so I will need to make it. Once I make the URDF, I will need to make a node that posts the RB5 joint data to the URDF topics.