Photo Journal #5

I can’t believe my time in Korea is already over. I am writing this photo journal from the AAAI conference in Atlanta because the end snuck up on me so quickly! Danielle, Bob, Peter and I spent the last 4 days in Jeju (the Hawaii of Korea) together but I got to spend time with the boys the night before Peter and I flew back.

My last official lab day was July 6th. Dr. Oh had a faculty meeting so he was out of the lab all day, which gave the boys a little more freedom. Typically Danielle and I would make a big deal when it was someone in the labs birthday and since we had a lot of January birthdays we decided to have a big half birthday party on that last day. Cheol , noticing the emphasis we put on birthdays, got me a half birthday cake. It was the sweetest thing ever. We put on two and a half candles (because I was 20.5 years old on July 5th) and sang happy half birthday in Korean. The cake was an awesome sweet potato cake but this is different than the American orange sweet potato. It looks like a normal potato but is sweeter and is usually served with this almost syrup tasting sauce on it.

Our idea of a big party was playing Korean card games with a traditional Korean deck of cards and, of course, good old regular poker. Chung su, Jungwoo, Inho and I stayed up late playing a tournament and then I hit the hay before waking up super early to go to Jeju.

I got back from Jeju on Sunday and it worked out perfectly that the World Cup final was at 3 30 in the morning on Monday. I got to finish up my packing and decompress from Jeju and then the boys said they would come in for one last hurrah with Peter and me. Jungwoo, Cheol, Taejin, Dongil, Peter, Danielle, and I went out and ate lots of Korean food and Soju (Korean rice alcohol). Peter and I brought our luggage in the back of Jungwoo’s car on the way there because we had to go straight to the airport immediately after the game because our flight was at 10 30 Monday morning. The above picture of Danielle, Jungwoo, Peter and me was when we were saying goodbye (even before the game ended because we didn’t have time to see it all!) on our way to the bus. It certainly was an interesting adventure getting to the airport. Actually now that I think about it, it was the exact opposite of interesting because we passed out immediately upon getting on the bus.

We got on the plane and that was it! We certainly made the most of our hours in Korea. Peter did the calculation and we did not sleep in 52 hours before finally falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow at the Georgia Tech apartments we are staying at for this conference. Definitely the longest I have ever been awake, I am pretty sure I was losing my mind. Peter and I tried to log in to his blog for about 20 minutes, going through every email he has, and didn’t even realize until the next morning we were typing his email address @google.com instead of @gmail.com. It is five o’clock even after twelve hours of sleep last night and I am already ready to go to sleep.

I was really sad to leave Korea. I was mostly sad to say goodbye to everyone I met. Going around the country was really fun and I was really glad I did it but my favorite part was definitely just hanging out with the lab boys. I loved how they would teach me bits and pieces of Korean, help me out on my project whenever, eat whatever crazy delicious concoctions Danielle and I would make, go along with all of our ideas that must have seemed ridiculous to them, and just being friends with a group of great guys. I mean no one has actually gotten me a half birthday cake, no matter how much I go on and on about it.

I really hope to stay in touch with them in the long term. Jungwoo and Cheol already had facebooks and Danielle is setting them up for the other guys. I actually skyped with Danielle at 4 this morning (jetlag…) and got to say hi to everyone. Danielle said afterwards they all said how much they missed us and wanted us to come back and just really great things so I don’t feel like I am keeping up fake relationships but real friendships. I also have been convincing them to come to the US and hopefully down the road they will. Who knows, maybe I will hit up Korea in the future and be able to hang out with them.

All in all it was such an amazing trip. I think back to the time in February when I first heard about it and my apprehension about traveling to Asia for six weeks. I mean if you had asked me before this trip where the last place on the planet you would ever find me it would probably be some Asian country. Now I am so happy I went and can’t wait to return. It is different but people are people. I had so much fun getting to know the hubo boys and exploring the country that I definitely would not trade this summer for anything.

This experience was even more perfect when I think about it in conjunction with my traveling abroad this September to Jordan. Korea was the perfect stepping-stone because the language is completely different like Arabic, which gave me the feeling of being really helpless while at the same time being an easier language and everyone in Korea is nice and helpful (which I am not expecting to the same extent if at all in Jordan). I got to learn how to travel the right way in a very foreign country to an American but still a safe environment. I can apply this to make myself more effective at traveling and living in Jordan; I have that many less hiccups to survive.

It is amazing how attached one can get in six weeks. Even less than six weeks in the program I was near tears when the Korean Red Devils got eliminated in the World Cup! I hope I get to see these guys at many points again in my life but in the mean time thank you whoever invented the internet!

Final Results

This was the final result of my project. This is my 3 degree of freedom version of the Puma robot programmed to spell out my name in the air. I also programmed it to write Inho's name in the air because he helped me so much. After I wrote my last blog post Inho went to Mexico and so I was on my own. I really wanted Inho to be proud when came back and to have proof that i was working the whole week. I first saw him at midnight the night he came back and i went up to his desk and said that my robot could write his name. He said he wanted to see and as we were walking in the hallway he asked "who helped you?" and i proudly, like a five year old, said i did it by myself. He watched and was super impressed and told me i did a good job like three times (which if you have been reading is legit). I was sooooo happy. Its odd, i have never really looked for someone's approval as much as Inho's. I am not sure why, maybe because i really liked him, but i just wanted him to think I was doing a good job.

I didn't actually use inverse kinematics to do the name writing because the positions were very easy and mostly just common sense. I am still glad I learned it though. It gave me a much deeper appreciation for the problem solving involved in robots. It is easy to just think a robot can do anything but still serious work is put into just getting a robot to move the slightest bit.

Along with this appreciation though came the realization that robots are no where near where I thought they were. The media makes it sound like any day now we are going to have robots servants, or robots running the world, or robots doing amazing things we can't even dream up yet but we are no where near that. I remember Danielle asked Dr. Oh when is she going to get a robot to do her dishes and Dr. Oh said she would be lucky if she ever saw that. Additionally Hubo is run by Jungwoo on a computer pressing buttons. I haven't seen it do anything autonomously so there certainly is a long way to go before I get my robot servant.

The problem (and im not sure i even know what i mean when i say the problem, i guess just the whole robot uh..thing...) is a lot more complex than I assumed. I know I only learned a tiny piece but I get why even though all over the world people have dedicated themselves to robots we still don't have flying cars and what not. This was a solid educational experience and I would recommend it on so many levels to anyone. I am a government major and I still got a ton out of it. Anyone willing to work hard and be out going should absolutely jump at this opportunity. All that matters at all is whether you are willing to put in the effort to do what you want. It really is the type of program where you get out what you put in and I will be forever grateful I put all I could in.

Photo Journal #4

This is a picture from the weekend Peter and I spent in Seoul. We met up with Cheol (on the very left), his brother (on the very right), and his brother’s friend to watch the Korea world cup game (and it was pouring rain).

This week provided me with a window into the mind of Koreans. Up until now I was under the impression that yea, maybe had some different customs but that essentially we all thought the same way. I knew there were some differences, like the way disabled people are swept under the rug or homosexuality was not accepted but we encounter that in the US regularly to some extent, or at least I am aware of that line of thinking. I was so surprised at three instances this week in which Koreans left political correctness at the door and just said it like it is.

First was Cheol. Bob, Peter, Danielle, Cheol and I were sitting around. Bob was talking about Mike going to the gym and Cheol said, Mike needs to go to the gym. He needs to burn off his fat. He needs to burn some calories to get into shape, he is too fat. The four of us were just silent, jaws semi-dropped. Danielle then asked “you said that to him?!” and Cheol replied “yes, he needs to know. I am helping him” completely serious, like he had just done something really nice for Mike. We continued on saying , “you cant say that! That is mean.” But he insisted, saying how it wasn’t mean, that he was helping him. We were all so surprised. However in retrospect Cheol also told Danielle that she had gotten bigger compared to when she first got here (which isn’t true by the way) right before going into a bathhouse. But then it seemed like a joke, whereas this time he sincerely was trying to help Mike. Another instance of this was when Mr. Kim walked up to the office manager and told her she had a big pimple on her face. She just looked down when she told him and when Danielle asked him about it he too explained how he was helping her.

At first I was just so surprised that my knee jerk reaction was how do they not have emotions, I mean do they think that the other person doesn’t know already? But I find it sort of refreshing now. They just speak the truth instead of cluttering it up with formalities. And if that is the norm then maybe hearing someone say a comment along those lines wouldn’t be as hurtful as it may sound to us Americans. No beating around the bush, straight to the point. I like that. Another aspect of this is that it seems Koreans wear their emotions on their sleeves. They don’t put on happy faces to make everyone around them happy; if they are angry, upset, sad you know it.

This week was the final stages of my semi-puma robot project. I was writing the code for it and no matter what I did I could not get control of one of my three servo motors. I had spent hours trying to fix it but finally asked Inho and he straight up told me not to bother him with little problems and that he has been reading other people’s code a lot and it is takes a lot of time for anyone besides the writer to understand what is going on and that he was not my teacher. Of course it was really hard to hear this but the fact he just told me and his actions and facial expressions clearly matched what he was saying made me really appreciate what he was saying. He was totally right and he was not going out of his way to soften the blow.

I have welcomed this sharp contrast but I think that is due to my personality. I would much rather here how I am failing right to my face than have it sugar coated and watered down. I have a feeling this won’t catch on in the US. I don’t think enough people share my enthusiasm for bluntness; everything is about positive reinforcement but sometimes people just need to hear they are wrong. It makes the compliments that much more momentous. I know when Cheol said I was a fast learner or when Inho says good job that they truly mean it.

Sometimes we flirt with heartbreak when we ask the guys how we look to Koreans or if we are too big compared to the Korean girls but that is part of the fun (cheol says that Danielle and I are not too big and that we are a good size, so whew dodged a bullet there). I will miss this honest society but maybe I will spare those who surround me from bringing back this part of the culture, well anymore than I already do
: ).

Project Time

I have finally finished building and programming my Puma robot. It was really rough. I first had to learn inverse kinematics, which I thought i understood until Inho gave me a test. On the test were two robots and I had to show the denavit-hartenberg parameters, tranformation matricies, and inverse kinematic solutions for them. I got through the first one fine and the second one was the puma robot. I did the forward kinematics and then started the inverse kinematics but none of my expressions were making any sense. I spent about a day working through it on my own because I wasn't allowed to ask any questions (it was a test, picture on the right). But it really just got to the point where I had no idea what to do and so I started asking other people in the lab questions whenever Inho wasn't in the room because Inho kept telling me "this is easy! this is easy!" He had checked my forward kinematics just to be sure I was on the right path. I must have talked to every single person in the lab asking little tid-bit questions asking for help until finally Minguk realized that the forward kinematics were wrong. Inho was really surprised it was wrong. When he made the table he made it the same way I did so that made me feel less stupid. So now that I had the revised parameters I went to work on the inverse kinematics again.

I worked on it all night and all morning and still couldn't figure it out though. I was struggling so hard and felt so bad about myself because Inho kept laughing and telling me how easy it was. I just got so frustrated I took a nap and when I woke up Choel offered to go through the whole problem with me, from the beginning. I was so grateful. He sat down with me and we made it about five minutes before he informed me the robot was impossible. I'm not really sure what that means but he said there was no way to do the inverse kinematics. So I was back to square one and more confused than ever.

I finally went to Inho for help who just kept telling me i was getting confused because I was talking to lots of different people and getting conflicting information, which was true, and that I should just listen to him. The big controversy was one parameter in the denavit-hartenberg table, which describes the structure and movement of the robot. But one parameter changes all of the transformation matrices and the elements of the matrices are essential in figuring out the inverse kinematics (determining the joint angles for a robot to be in a certain position). I was beginning to just feel really bad about myself and that I didn't deserve to be in Hubo Lab. I am surrounded by math and engineering masters and PhD students, why would a political science major be here? I don't even know the trig identites, crucial to discovering the solution. I kept trying to tell myself that I am trying, I learn quickly, and that I am doing the best I can but i couldn't help thinking I just wasn't good enough.

I was fianlly just so beat down I went up to Inho and said "if this is so easy could you please just walk me through it." He had the most annoyed look on his face, he was clearly getting sick of having to deal with me. He sat down and started at the beginning. After twenty minutes I couldn't tell if it was difficult for him or not so I asked him if it was still easy for him and he said no, it was very hard. We sat there for over an hour. He approached in in three different ways, moving on to the next method when he couldn't solve it with the current one. He eventually used some method I hadn't read about in any of the books and was more advanced he said. And even then we didn't get all of the angles. Inho said he accidentally gave me a robot arm that has an offset (or something...) instead of what he had intended. So I think he understood why I was running around asking so many questions. I felt so much better after he had struggled so long. I had no confidence in my math abilities when I went to ask him for help but by the end I was proud that I had put so much effort into it and gave it my all because even Inho really struggled to solve the problem.

So with my spirits renewed I set off on building the Puma in Robotics Lab, the original simulation program I was using instead of Webots. I was going to work on the finger pointing for SimonSays at Colby but Inho was adamant I do the Puma robot to get experience. Now that I am writing about it I wonder why he cared so much. I bet he regrets it now (wait till you hear about programming the robot...). There were many senior students in the lab who told me not to do the puma robot and to work on Webots but Inho would get angry whenever I suggested doing otherwise and said to only listen to him, which is really uncharactersitic of him because he is a huge clown, he never gets angry so i figured it must be serious. He was my mentor so I listened to him.

I built the Puma robot in Robotics Lab and set out on programming it. Inho gave me some sample code he used to program Hubo and I examined it to learn how to control mine. I started off ok, asking intelligent questions and got control of two out of three of the joints. No matter what I did though the last joint was constantly moving. It looked like Inho had a lot of work so I spent hours trying to figure it out on my own but I couldn't get it. I also don't know C, the programming language of Robotics Lab, so I spent most of time reading the code over and over again, stepping through it to make sure I didn't do anything stupid when I inevitably would have to ask for help. It all looked sound to me so I took a deep breath and asked Inho.

He came into the room and when I showed him the problem he said it was a very small problem and not to bother him with little problems. I felt so bad. I know he is working really hard and has his own work and taking care of the americans is not high on his to do list. I told him how long i had been working on it and he replied that lots of people have been asking him questions and it is really hard to understand someone else's code, and he is right. I kept feeling worse and worse. My guilt was magnified because Inho was totally in the right. I was being such a burden and even though it may not be my fault I was the problem, i still was the problem. Something I really appreciate about the guys in the lab is that they are very straight forward. Maybe it is because they don't know english that well so they can't beat around the bush or maybe it is cultural but they just come out and say whatever. I mean it sucks to be on the negative receiving end of this bluntness but I would rather that than not know what is really going on. Inho left the room and I was back to zero confidence and on top of that felt so guilty about irratating him so much.

Peter and I went to the conveinence store (i didn't even get ice cream i was feeling so terrible...) and when I came back Inho was sitting at my computer looking at my code. He spent an hour on it to find the problem and to make things even worse he turned to me half way through and said "i am not your teacher." I didn't even know how to respond, i was just so emotionally dead, lost, confused, feeling guilty. He figure out that there are different sets of axes in Robotics Lab and that I changed one set to make the motors oriented appropriately but it had to be a different set that we hadn't even heard of. I had no energy so I just went to sleep again so I could wake up and tackle the problem (left is the sleeping room in the lab)

I woke up feeling a lot better and went to work on fixing the axes. I ran the program and IT WORKED!! It was probably the most exctied I have ever been. I was so happy. I worked really hard and even though I got tons of help from everyone I felt like I had actually done something. Now that I can get the robot to go to a certain point I am going to try and link together movements. For example getting it to spell out my name in the air, or something like that. Who knows what emotional roller coaster this task will bring but I think I know a lot more of what I am doing. And as much as I used to get frustrated when Inho told me I needed to do this for experience, he was right. I am really happy I struggled through because it was definitely worth it.

Great time

having a great time!

This week Dr. Oh took out the American students and the head of some artificial intelligence lab or something like that, Professor Kwan. We went out to a Korean style Japanese restaurant. If there is one meal in the world I could choose to never ever ever have to eat or see it would be raw fish. I think I would rather eat only rice (even without soy sauce) for a month than eat raw fish for one night. And I have been successfully avoiding it my whole entire life with no problems...until wednesday night. There was no getting out of this one. I seriously contemplated pretending to be sick but realized the infeasibility so i starved myself all day so i could possibly tolerate it out of desperation (that was plan a).

The restaurant was really beautiful though. We had a nice room which was quickly filled with lots of trays of different sea creatures. There was sea squirt, octopus, salmon, sea urchin, live ocotpus, fugu (pufferfish), sea bass, shrimp, whole fish (bones and all!) and a whole tray of raw fish stomachs and other parts. I tried everything and to my surprise the stuff that sounds the weirdest was by far the best (compared to what else was on the table). The problem is everything is so chewy so it stayed in my mouth forever! I kept trying to swallow but it just wasn't happening. I was pulling a little bit of a gerbil because I kept all of the food i was chomping on in my cheeks because i didn't want to taste it on my tongue. Twice I was chewing the raw fish (for what seemed like an eternity) and it escaped my cheek and spilled on to my tongue. My first reaction was ok maybe i will like it better this time. not the case. I actually turned away from the table and thought I was going to puke. My gag reflexes are on point. I was using every muscle in my body to keep that fish inside. After the first instance of this i moved to plan b: drink myself into liking it. Which was infinitely more successful than plan a. Professor Kwan was a drinking expert and loved teaching us tricks. For instance you add a shot of soju to a glass of beer and then drink it all in one go. Thank god professor kwan was there or i dont even know what would have happened.

After dinner professor Kwan suggested a little bit of noraebang, korean karaoke. Noraebang is realllly big here, you see the places everywhere. I wasn't sure what to expect but still wearing a little asian glow from dinner thought it was a wonderful idea. It was so cool! There is a room with crazy lights going and a big tv with the lyrics and videos going and best of all, tambourines. Peter, Danielle and I did lots of trios together ranging from Kanye West to the Monkees to Taylor Swift. Professor Kwan and Dr. Oh were great also! Overall it was a really great night! most fun i never want to have again (except the noraebang) : )

Photo Journal #2

This week I helped Danielle make finger models. She has a mold that the machinist in Hubo Lab made beautifully from her design. We fill the mold with silicon and let it sit for 24 hours. A lot of the guys in the lab have been involved and really helpful to Danielle, from muscle power to brain power. She has spent the last two months researching to build the mold and this was the first week we tested it out so it was a big deal. It was a little ghetto to measure out the silicon ingredients with tiny plastic ice cream spoons in a paper cup in this high-tech lab but there was not a beaker or graduated cylinder to be found. I guess that is what engineering is for anyway.

We were taking out the very first mold. Danielle was so nervous that the machinist had to take apart the mold for her. Every time something moved she screamed; I am not sure what she would have done if any harm had come to her baby. The machinist jokingly said, “I’m a professional.” I now refer to him as Mr. Professional because I have no idea what his name is. Inho, Choel, Keim, Peter, Danielle, Chung Su, Chung Wu, and I were all huddled around, our anticipation building with each screw Mr. Professional removed, bringing us that much closer to seeing if it had worked. Piece by piece the mold came apart but we still could not see the silicon until it was detached from the very last piece.

This is what popped out. There was a split second of silence. Then the Koreans and the Americans spewed out a combination of eruptive laughter and speaking at the speed of high school girl in between breaths in our respective languages. I have absolutely no idea what words they were saying and I’m not even sure if I could discern what we were saying but everyone knew what was being said. It was funny to be surrounded by all of these guys who poked fun at Danielle saying, “What is this…!” Inho remarked, “Is this your hubby?” (He was saying hobby but the fact it came out as hubby (like husband (for the not so hip)) had us laughing for an additional twenty minutes.) They bring a girl into the Hubo lab and this is what she comes up with. We were all wearing grins while passing the model around for the rest of the day; we could not stop laughing. Even Later that night Danielle and I were working on making another mold and Dr. Oh came in to see the progress. Danielle handed him the mold. He said, “This looks like a…” and Danielle cut him off to preserve some of her mold’s pride.

I chose to talk about this moment because although I have discussed the wonders of everyone knowing English, the feeling has definitely worn off. I mean it is easy enough when we are traveling to find someone who speaks English but in a restaurant or a store where only one person is working, no such luck. And it is a hassle to find someone who speaks English. It is energy draining and just a pain to find someone or to attempt to communicate otherwise. This was the one time where the language barrier proved its permeability, which was really refreshing. I am really happy to have Danielle as a friend. We can talk about how sometimes we are just sick of kimchi, sick of the boys talking in Korean, sick of old women giving us the hairy eyeball or craving some home cooked food.

I am lucky though that in the lab everyone knows at least some English but it is still a game of gestures and some things definitely get lost in translation. Danielle and I make jokes all the time with the guys and they don’t even realize it. Or one time I was asking Inho what sound a certain character made and it took about fifteen minutes because he first explained to me what the whole word I was looking at meant and didn’t understand I just wanted the one noise no matter how I said it. I definitely feel more like an outsider in the negative sense than when I first got here. Maybe I just didn’t realize people weren’t understanding me earlier or maybe everyone is making less of an effort to pretend they understand that language seems to be a bigger barrier than I had originally thought. And Korean class makes me want to jump off a bridge sometimes but that’s another story.

But despite this there are still moments like the mold that revive me. People are people and even all the way across the world we still have the same young dirty minds.