Author: Yehyun Lee, Email: leey93@unlv.nevada.edu
Date Last Modified: 04/27/2025

This Friday, our entire lab was busy preparing to welcome Professor Dong Soo Kwon. Everyone was getting ready to showcase demos of their own projects, and it was really impressive to see how confidently they presented the results of their hard work. While we were preparing for the demos, I was lucky enough to experience Nathan’s project. Using a VR headset, I was able to see the world from hubo’s point of view and control hubo’s hand movements by moving my own hands. It felt like I had actually become hubo! I was able to shake hands, hold a cup, and even make a toast through hubo. It was an incredibly thrilling experience to personally try out the kind of advanced technology I had only ever seen in the media before. At the same time, I noticed how important precise sensing and minimal control delay are in creating a seamless and immersive experience. It made me realize how much engineering effort is required behind the scenes to synchronize a robot's movement with human intention in real time.

I had the opportunity to meet Professor Dong Soo Kwon from KAIST, who visited our lab. After retiring from his academic career, he founded a surgical robotics company and developed Zamenix, a robotic system designed to assist in the removal of kidney stones through the urinary tract. Since I have always been interested in the intersection of engineering and medicine, meeting someone who has successfully bridged the two fields was a valuable experience for me. What impressed me the most was how he pursued his vision even after retirement, driven by strong confidence in the research he had dedicated decades to. In the medical field, where precision and reliability are crucial because lives are directly at stake, his determination to transform his long-standing research into real-world solutions was truly inspiring. Meeting him reaffirmed my aspiration to become an engineer who develops technologies that can meaningfully improve people’s lives.

I was impressed by how confidently people in the U.S. express their strengths. In Korea, humility is considered a virtue, and openly promoting oneself can sometimes be seen as boastful or arrogant. However, in the U.S., people believe that if you don’t advocate for yourself, others won’t recognize your abilities, and opportunities might pass you by. I realized that confidently expressing one’s strengths is not seen as arrogance here, but rather as a necessary step to seize new opportunities. It gave me a new perspective on how cultural values shape personal and professional behavior.

I assembled and tested a quadcopter drone. It reminded me of my previous capstone project in Korea, where I worked on wiring and powering a fixed-wing UAV using Arduino. This time, I learned how to set up a multirotor system using Pixhawk and QGroundControl, which made the process more efficient and user-friendly. Through this experience, I better understood how different flight components—like ESCs, motors, and power modules—are connected and configured. I also learned how to calibrate sensors and upload basic flight settings, which deepened my understanding of drone electronics and system integration.