Final Report

I am just going to start out by saying my time in Korea was amazing. I learned so much while having some of the most fun ever. In this report I am going to explain and reflect on my project, travels, and the people I encountered. I will wrap it up with a summarization of how my trip contributed to the fulfillment of PIRE goals. So without further introduction I will dive into my project in Hubo Lab.

Previous to my arrival at Hubo Lab, Bruce Maxwell and I had laid out a week-by-week plan of what I wanted to accomplish in Korea. A group of students at Colby programmed Simon Says for virtual miniHubo. I planned to program arm movements in Webots, like pointing at whom ever is out. Upon my arrival though this did not sit well with my mentor Inho, who thought my time would be better spent gaining experience with robot movement. My project then changed to learning inverse kinematics and Robotics Lab to simulate a three-degree of freedom Puma robot and programming it to spell out my name in the air with the end effector.

I started my research in textbooks. Since everyone in the lab had taken the introduction to robotics classes as KAIST they had a range of intro books leftover for me to read from. I learned the basics of robotics, such as the classifications of robots, types of joints, and the vernacular in general. However the highest-level math class I have taken is multivariable calculus. I was lost amongst the pages and pages of equations in the textbooks that I could not wrap my head around because I did not have the math knowledge base they assumed. I definitely could have benefited from a linear algebra class. I did not feel comfortable asking for help without a little bit of background as to what I was even asking. I decided to look on the Internet for video explanations.

My first stop was YouTube. I found lectures by Professor Oussama Khatib’s Introduction to Robotics Class at Stanford. It was much easier to understand a person explaining a concept and even more helpful to have video when it came to visualizing rotations. I learned about Denavit-Hartenberg parameters and homogeneous transformations from these videos. This gave me a little more of the background I was missing from round one of reading the textbooks. So a little more confident I went back to the books and was able to understand significantly more. I was then able to ask intelligent, specific questions as opposed to, “I don’t get it.”

Inho gave me a test on what I had learned. This was a bit of an ordeal because he unintentionally gave me a very difficult problem that I had not studied material for and even took him over an hour to solve. Of course we did not discover this until after I had secretly asked every single person in the lab for help at least twice and several frustrating conversations (as if communication wasn’t frustrating enough sometimes already) about not being able to solve an “easy” problem A couple of days and several fried brain cells later, I passed the test and began using Robotics Lab, a robot simulation program. Virtually building my three-degree of freedom Puma robot was pretty uneventful thankfully because I had experimented with Robotics Lab the first week I was in Korea. Besides some minor axes issues I had my robot and its servos running relatively quickly.

After I got the servos running the next step was to control them. Inho gave me some of his code for controlling Hubo. I used this as a reference and a crutch since I did not know C. I did not learn the ins and outs of C (I can do that anytime) but instead learned the ins and outs of my code; I understood the purpose of each line and what happened when it was executed. My program was basically a continuous loop that called a function that calculated the next angle position for the servo until it reached the final position that I hardcoded in. This function changed an array in memory. I then set the appropriate servo to go to the appropriate angle in the array. The program stopped running when the user pressed Q.

However, I wanted to make several movements to spell out my name, not just to one endpoint. I modified my code with a series of if statements that relied on the variable time. Inside each if statement was my angle settings for the servos. In the end, I had programmed my robot to write out my name (L-I-Z) and Inho’s name too because he helped me so much.

I was very proud of my final product. It was really gratifying after spending all of the time and effort to have solidly reached my goal. I was also very pleased with my studies in general. I am normally an independent learner but I have always found I need a human explanation when it comes to math. I knew Inho had a lot of work on his plate so I spent a lot of time finding alternatives and reading things repeatedly to get as much as possible out of each non-human resource. I definitely have never worked so hard at or have been so dedicated to math.

It was really challenging at times though. It was not uncommon for me to be beyond frustrated and confused. The hardest part would be when I had spent hours if not days working on one task, coming at it from every angle, doing absolutely everything and anything I could think of to solve the problem and then being completely stumped. But as they say, what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger. These struggles were what helped me learn the material. Hubo Lab provided the ideal environment for me to study, from the resources to the people.

I found nothing noteworthy about being a female in an all male lab. I prefer it that way; I seem to get along better with those of the male persuasion. Having said that, I loved having Danielle. We became such good friends and she was one of the primary reasons my time was so amazing. From both of us riding a bike at the same time around Daejeon to sharing a moped in Jeju we were best buddies. But I would not attribute our relationship to the fact we were the only women in the lab. I think at first we became friends because we were American and then our personalities clicked so well that our friendship was natural and inevitable.

I love the lab guys. I was skyping with David Urias and he kept saying that every time I mentioned the people I met my “face completely lights up.” The people were definitely my favorite part. Even if it was just a regular day in the lab we still had a fun time. What I liked most about the lab guys was that they were really helpful in the lab but we also had a great time out of the lab. One time we were out at a bar watching the World Cup and I was bemoaning the difficulty of a problem that I was having trouble solving. Cheol then offered to go through the problem from beginning to end with me and the next day we went over it. Another time we were asking for a jimjilbang (bathhouse) in Jeju to spend the night. Jungwoo printed out a list of jimjilbangs on a map in English and Korean. What I liked most about the boys was that I felt I could be myself around them, make jokes, and talk about anything. We even met up with Cheol and his brother in Seoul one weekend.

It is weird that I did not find the age difference between the lab guys and me weird. Since a lot of them had done their two-year mandatory military service and had already done undergraduate school and/or gotten their masters, they mostly were in their upper twenties. Whenever we hung out our ages never seemed relevant (unless I was teasing them about being old and boring). It was really nice to feel equal among all of these obviously smart and older guys. This allowed us to be friends and to feel comfortable around each other. I think the novelty of Americans contributed to the initial candidness but the transition to friendship is what continued it.

It seemed to be the general consensus amongst all KAIST students that Daejeon was not the place to be on weekends. You didn’t have to tell us twice so every weekend Peter, Danielle, and I adventured to a different area of the country. The three of us were the best traveling companions. Danielle knew a lot about Korea’s history from her three months prior to our arrival and was amazing at planning. She gave us our own private tour of Seoul. Peter was energetic and inventive, pushing us to do things I may not have not done (like cliff jumping at Oedolgae Rock!).

The coolest thing I saw was the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-shin in Gwanghwamun Plaza. Admiral Yi fought off the Japanese during the Joseon Dynasty through several invasions from 1592 to 1598. Admiral Yi was victorious in all of his 23 battles and his last words were spent telling the navy to hide his death in secrecy so the enemy would not gain morale. Admiral Yi’s statue stands tall over a mall with water fountains spewing in front of him. At the foot of his statue lies a turtle ship, which he was known for strategically using. The water from the fountain rises to such a height that the ship could be floating on top of the water.

I was so amazed by this statue because when I originally saw it I was under the impression Admiral Yi’s body was encased by the turtle ship part of the statue. I was actually under this impression until I started writing this paragraph and looked at some websites to check my facts (FYI he is buried in his hometown next to his father). Regardless, Admiral Yi’s story still impressed me. I will admit I thought the statue was a lot more interesting when I thought his body was in the turtle ship; it made me feel a connection and brought the history of Korea alive as I stood next to it. I really enjoyed the site of children frolicking in the fountain of history under the calculating stare of the admiral. I was honored to be in what I thought was the presence of a Korean hero.

The markets in Seoul were really fun to navigate. It gave us a lot of chances to practice Korean, especially the numbers. One time Danielle and I were at Myeongdong and all of a sudden every girl we could see started screaming and running. The next thing I knew Danielle had grabbed my hand and we were running along side these fanatic girls. We arrived at the front of something similar to a mosh pit in front of a skin store and asked the security guard holding us back what was going on. A Korean pop group, 2 PM, was doing a promotion. We played the “we are Americans and have no idea what is going on and we are just trying to get out of this zoo of girls” card to get under the arms of security, which made the other fans livid, get a closer look at the stars and then left on our merry, VIP un-crowded path.

The markets in Seoul are one of the iconic images of Asia. They are filled with bright signs, tons of people, and street vendors for haggling with. But that was about the only expectation that I found to be true in my travels. Another expectation I had was that the generational gaps would be vast. Though this assumption was accurate the difference was not what I had anticipated. I thought the older women would be extremely traditional but they seemed to just be perpetually unhappy unless they are standing in the street with other old women either laughing or glaring at others. Perhaps this is a side effect of the Korean War because it does not reflect in the generations below. The younger generation was a lot more normal than the super cute hyper bubbly girls I was imagining. I think what I was picturing was more Japanese but regardless I was happy to encounter down to earth girls. Though the couples everywhere holding hands in matching outfits could make even Hubo gag.

One of the main goals of PIRE is the exchange of tribal knowledge between the United States and Korea. I learned inverse kinematics and got experience programming a robot. Though I could learn from a textbook anywhere I would not have the access to Hubo information everywhere. For instance, Inho showed me some of his Hubo code to help me learn Robotics Lab, Cheol taught me a special way to set up my Denavit-Hartenberg table. I took all the knowledge I gained and brought it back to Colby to improve the movements for playing Simon Says with miniHubo. Peter and I are vessels that brought humanoid research tools to Colby. Hubo Lab provided a mentally stimulating environment and really contributed to our research. We saw many demos and we could experiment with Hubo to get a better understanding of his movement. This contributed to making our motions as fluid and natural as possible.
By enhancing the movements of the Simon Says game we are making the robot more relatable. When people are more comfortable they are more likely to explore something new and unfamiliar. This is a great way to get everyone willing to explore technology, regardless of age or discipline. Additionally it makes the robot more impressive, which brings new people to the field of humanoids, another goal of PIRE. The United States dedicates nearly one third of its budget to military, which makes up nearly half of the world’s military budget. Robotics is and always will be focused militaristically but simple awareness can shift the public focus to humanoids and get diverse groups interested, invested, and active in the humanoid community. The more this occurs the more the humanoid community expands, spilling over into the general public, which the government cannot ignore. This can manifest simply as record number of humanoid grant approvals, more media coverage, or integrating more robotics into science curriculums nationwide. Regardless, by taking the Korean emphasis on the humanness of Hubo and applying it to our Colby project we can contribute to the momentum humanoids need.

I embody the fusion of US and Korean research. Though my research was low level compared to what the rest of Hubo Lab was doing, it was what my school needed. My project wasn’t blazing any trails in the world of robotics, which would not have been a realistic goal, but I was blazing trails for the projects at Colby. Korea provided Peter and me with resources we could not get in the United States while at the same time directly benefiting our school, which contributes to PIRE and humanoid robotics in the United States.

Additionally, the relationships we formed, though they cannot be quantified or packaged up as a deliverable, are a significant part of PIRE’s goals. The global collaboration aspect of this project is crucial to uniting engineers. Though I seldom take life advice from Woody Allen, I can’t help but admit he is right when he says, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.” Despite my government major I made international partnerships that are indispensible, even to the engineering community. By experiencing Korea I laid that path for other Colby students to do the same. Colby is a part of the PIRE alliance and it is important that we be globally engaged due to the norm for advancements to be a result of international work. Globalization is not only about fast food chains in third world countries but the increased communication and cooperation worldwide. My success facilitates the preparation for and participation in international research collaboration for future Colby/PIRE students.

My trip to Korea has been positive for PIRE and even more so for me. This experience really opened up my eyes to the rest of the world. I am already going to Jordan for fall semester to study abroad but I enjoyed Korea so much that I am returning to study at Yonsei University for spring semester too. The lab boys and I are already planning epic reunions for February. I cannot express how thankful I am I had this opportunity; I will just have to leave it at 감사합니다.