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====== Fausto Vega REU 2019 Journal ======

**Author:** [[unlv_vega|Fausto Vega]], Email: <vegaf1@unlv.nevada.edu>
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**Date Last Modified:** 07/20/2019
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===== Week 8 =====

==== Photo of the Week ====

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This is a picture of the robot that I am currently using for my project. It is called a Pioneer P3-DX and has been around since 2006. It is fascinating how this hardware continues to work after so much time. Initially, these robots were mounted with SICK laser scanners and now I have integrated an rplidar a3 for scan data. It also shows the progress of engineering as they improved drastically in Laser scanners based on the size and accuracty of the SICK and rplidar a3. 

==== Weekly Progress/ Next Week Plans ====
This week I got the navigation stack to work on the pioneer P3-DX. It took a lot of configuration in certain parameter files, yet the code compiles. I also modified the URDF file in order to incorporate the stand that the laser scanner is on. The laser also had to be modified to exist on top of the stand instead of its previous position. All the transforms are broadcasted successfully which make the robot take goal positions and execute them. My professor provided me with the map as they have scanned the entire building with the PR2 before. For this week, I will include the work I did in the previous weeks with the leg detector and bounding boxes to include everything in RVIZ. The point of the program is to know where certain objects are in order to execute a socially aware navigation path. 

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==== What I Learned about Myself ====

I learned that I want to try to get an internship in industry for next year. I want to expand my knowledge on the opportunities that are available for an engineer after graduate school. I have been compiling a list of the places I want to apply and I'm excited to see the outcome if I get into one.  

I also learned that computer science is a lot of googling. A lot of problems are solved by googling your way out. For example, pip install was not working this week and I spent a whole day trying to fix it in order to install a python package that is essential for the leg detector.   
 
==== New Person That I Met ====

This week I met Ryan, a student working in Dr. Kostas Alexis lab. Their project seems interesting as their lab is competing in a DARPA challenge that consists of an exploration of a subterranean environments. His project is object recognition as that is a challenge in these types of environment. He is implementing a bag of words algorithm that will detect certain objects the challenge requires.