An Unforgiving but Eventful April & May 2013th

Stuff stuff stuff.

Many things happened the past month and a half, and I really don’t know where to begin. All I know is that I’ve been busy non-stop since beginning of April and it only started slowing down at 5pm today.

Honestly, this has been quite the most stressful two months ever in MIT.

From classes, projects, PSETs, social life, organizing events, etc, It’s all have been very hectic. They say “Sleep, Work, Party, choose two,” and I always act as if I had all three options.

In all honesty though, I’ve been doing the “Work and Party” variant.

Today was equally hectic, but tonight I have a short break. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. On Wednesday, absolutely everything will be turned in.

Now I shall reflect about two categories: Work and Social life

——-WORK——-

I know it’s been bad when I’ve been pulling 3 all nighters as a weekly basis.

April 1st, was my birthday. It was the beginning of a most painful month. 

2.671: Guitar String Analysis Project

Essentially, the project was to find out what are the best strings out there in the market right now that will be the best fit with my guitar.

image

The entire experiment took ~15 hours as I had to redo it three times. Restringing 4 string sets + 10 experiments per string generated millions of data points.

The analysis took 2 all nighters to finish.

But! The report got a great grade and I couldn’t be happier with the poster:

image

They say that if you can explain something complex in very simple terms, then you have full understanding of the subject. I was glad that when I presented my project to bystanders, that they actually understood my project and found it very helpful for my endeavors!

The entire experiment, analysis, report write-up, and presentation ordeal just finished last Thursday.

The final report is due this Wednesday, and I’m almost there!

6.141 Robotics Science and Systems (RSS)

This class involved building and programming a robot that can autonomously navigate around the field, pick up blocks, and make the blocks into a structure..

My primary responsibility was to build an awesome mechanical device which sorts the blocks into a structure.

This was the robot CAD which took about two weeks to finalize the design.

The actual robot was finished last Monday (Notice how exact it looks like to the CAD model:

image

But was further changed due to a particular person in our group not doing their job. So the final mechanical design of the robot was finished last Friday:

image

Everything worked mechanically, and wouldn’t have been possible without my roommate Andres and my friend Alex’s help. (You too Nathan ^^)

However, this was the most frustrating and aggravating group project I have ever been involved in. 

Our team was full of incredible technical capability: one person TAs and gives lecture for advance algorithms 6.046 (One of the hardest class in MIT). Another person had a lot of robotics experience, passion, and share similar interest as I do. My roommate is incredibly brilliant and one of the most efficient, practical, and fastest learner I have ever seen. And the last member was equally competent in mathematical theory, programming, and complex concepts.

However, one of these people was always too paranoid and always felt the world was against him. He failed to deliver and he ruined the final project for us. 

He didn’t do his part, pushing the entire team into a rut. It was due Wednesday last week and it was pushed back to Monday this week. 

I had to make a major mechanical change of the robot’s drive base overnight and tune the mechanical sorter with another all nighter. We were given five extra days to work on it, and still! STILL was not able to deliver the full capability that we wanted for our robot all because he failed to do his part.

During the presentation, after running the robot for 10 seconds, it picked up two blocks (the fastest anybody has done), sorted the blocks successfully, but overall failed miserably because it couldn’t navigate around the field.

We spent the next 30 minutes explaining my mechanical sorter. And demonstrating its features and how it was machined. I have some video of it working, but that’s a different post all together.

Although my mechanical design received praise from my peers and the professor, would have been so much better had the navigation part worked.

The only reason it didn’t was because one group member was too ambitious, stubborn, and more importantly did not deliver anything at all.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry at somebody. My roomates claim that this is the first time they’ve seen me visibly annoyed and pissed at somebody. Of course, I am never good at confrontation, so I never really blew up and mentally attacked said person. =.=

Personally, I really thought I would be ok after the final presentation, but I think left over rage is still in me. I’ve also ranted about this to almost everybody so I apologize if you’ve heard it so many times from me.

2.14 Feedback and Control Systems

Our final project was simulating the dynamics of a helicopter and controlling it via matlab. We submitted everything by 11:59PM on Sunday, so this is effectively done.

We ended up controlling the altitude of the helicopter and made sure it performed subject to disturbance forces. See screenie:

image

With this control block using matlab:

image

(Props to my ex roommate Matt Times who designed it).

This was was more lax and not so stressful… But I feel that it also could have been so much better. I can tell that one of my group members was not particularly happy at the final result of the project. I can tell that they were hoping for something more impressive when I first presented the idea a month ago.

I wish I had more time dedicated to this project. I really do…. I wanted to do more controls on the different axes, I wanted to try the non-linear controller the academic paper suggested.

I can’t help but blame that one person from 6.141 for taking up my time that would have been dedicated to this project, and no matter how hard I try to explain it to my group members, I know it just seemingly sound as a s bunch of excuses.

———————————————————————————————————————-

Still, it’s all said and done, and there’s nothing I can do about it anymore. 

Alright. Time to recap my Social Life:

——-Social Life——-

The month of April and May also had very memorable moments. 

To start off, my friends from high school celebrated my birthday.

They treated me out to Legal Sea foods and bought me lobster. <3

image

We went chairing in MIT (you slide down on a huge slope with a rolling chair):

image

And hung out at the SigEp roof (one of my favorite spots in Boston as you get to overlook the Charles River and see MIT): 

image

Middle of April was also CPW, so I had a lot of fun helping out ATS and hosting events. In particular, BobaFest! People stood behind tables and shot boba pearls at us. I helped Captain the event so I made gallons of milk tea and pounds of sweet boba pearls.

image

We also had Xifan Sunday as a brunch ordeal.

image

A day later I hung out with some of my fraternity brothers and my new friends! 

image

A week later, I met up with old high school friends! 

image

ATS had a huge shopping trip, so I became one of their primary laborer. :D

image

Then, as a finale, SigEp hosted my favorite event: Wine and Cheese!

This is me bartending since I turned 21.

image

Some of our delicious cheese and crackers:

image

An amazing life band:

image

And of course, how can I not enjoy it without my amazing and beautiful guests:

image

SigEp is awesome…

I was also glad I got to hang out with my family line in SigEp (missing Jyotishka, but featuring my little’s GF ^^). We are also in the process of converting Ray to asian status. Notice the cameras:

image

Thus far, has been my April and May.

I have been functioning under low sleep, but that will soon change as I have no finals, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. ^^

F(*$&amp;@!~! I just need to get it out of me. After spending multiple all-nighters since Friday night with sinusoidal feelings of motivation, depression, excitement, and happiness, the robot for 6.141 (Autonomous Robotics) is finally ready to be manufactured&#8230;. On Monday night, I pulled an all-nighter finishing all other work for my classes so that I can devote 100% on finishing the model by Wednesday, manufacturing from Thursday - Saturday, and assembly on Sunday. Although many of the mechanical details has been sorted out, I&#8217;m not completely happy with it because it&#8217;s missing some details (like screws or mounting holes). My roommate even said that &#8220;dude, just glue it. no need to make it hard for yourself&#8221; &lt;&#8212; Smart idea.  (for my high school friends: I did a &#8220;zwoop-zwoop&#8221; on some of the design. Sorry!) But after spending &gt;100 hours on this, I&#8217;m quite sick of looking at it, and I pretty much know where all the holes would go&#8230; I&#8217;m just eager to manufacture.  I&#8217;ll write a more detailed blog post about this, but for now&#8230; it feels good to be finally done with a working mechanical design I&#8217;m on schedule, and so tomorrow we machine&#8230;. /thoughtdump
Pop-upView Separately

F(*$&@!~!

I just need to get it out of me. After spending multiple all-nighters since Friday night with sinusoidal feelings of motivation, depression, excitement, and happiness, the robot for 6.141 (Autonomous Robotics) is finally ready to be manufactured….

On Monday night, I pulled an all-nighter finishing all other work for my classes so that I can devote 100% on finishing the model by Wednesday, manufacturing from Thursday - Saturday, and assembly on Sunday.

Although many of the mechanical details has been sorted out, I’m not completely happy with it because it’s missing some details (like screws or mounting holes). My roommate even said that “dude, just glue it. no need to make it hard for yourself” <— Smart idea. 

(for my high school friends: I did a “zwoop-zwoop” on some of the design. Sorry!)

But after spending >100 hours on this, I’m quite sick of looking at it, and I pretty much know where all the holes would go… I’m just eager to manufacture. 

I’ll write a more detailed blog post about this, but for now… it feels good to be finally done with a working mechanical design

I’m on schedule, and so tomorrow we machine….

/thoughtdump

The secret to a higher salary is to ask for nothing at all

Twenty years ago, I developed a powerful approach to negotiating that goes beyond “win-win.” It involves starting by offering the most and asking for the least. It works extremely well, but I was unable to explain why until I read Wharton professor Adam Grant’s excellent new book Give and Take. Adam identifies three types of…

The main point: Give everything and expect nothing.

I’m not sure if I agree on it completely, but it’s an interesting approach.

MIT Life, Lyapunov Functions, and Fall Semester Woes

Today was a most exciting day for many reasons.

@ CSAIL

Having 4.5 hours of sleep, I woke up at 9:00 for a UROP meeting in 9:30. Turns out this meant manual labor, communicating with CSAIL staff, and organizing parts for 2.5 hours. It was tiring, but it was good for me since I woke up early to do work, and I also got a bunch of exercise to start the day.

at around 12 I had an enjoyable lunch with Carmela and Kris. Mostly talking about alcohol and cultural stuff but that was quite amusing. 

@ 6.141 Lecture (Robotics class), our professor started talking about the DARPA Urban challenge. Main points were about what the team’s design principles are, what strategies MIT employed, what funny stories happened, how DARPA changed the rules screwing MIT over, and how some teams gamed the challenge to get an advantage.

(robotics jargon: all other teams but MIT created densely populating waypoints to navigate an urban terrain instead of creating a robust system to handle the uncertainty problem. MIT lost advantage in trying to address the heart of the problem)

@ 6.141 Lab

A lot of people in one of my classes are bad at asking for materials properly. So  after communicating with the professor, I made a BOM (Bill of Materials) of everything that everyone needed. Cool. The only problem was that I copied a wrong link for a $150.00 set of parts. The person doing administrative work caught this, and corrected my mistake. (Thanks Bryt!) ^^

@ Building 3 (Mech E department)

By 5:30pm, there was a talk by Prof. Tedrake, one of the professors who I work with, and has exciting research background in robotics and non-linear control. I HAD to go to this event, and I’m very glad I did since I learned new key concepts that I need to further investigate as I progress through my robotics career

(robotics jargon: Rigid body dynamics (including trigonometric functions) canbe represented by a polynomial. You may then use a lyapunov function to search through and optimize for stability. This has an optimization philosophy in contrast to Rod Brook’s approach with robotics. A better system representation and a better optimization method makes the search for stability better).

A memorable quote during the presentation:

Student: “How can I tell my parents that they won’t have to worry about terminator-like robots?”

Prof Tedrake: “Well, just tell them that they only have to run for 26 minutes!”  (This is the current energy limit for high-powered robots)

After the formal presentation, Prof. Tedrake advertised two classes he is teaching that are directly related to robotics control theory:

Spring 2014 - (6.003) - *new* Signals and Control

Fall 2013  - (6.832) - Underactuated robotics

This brought me great joy and sadness. For one, I’m excited that I’ll be taking his new version of 6.003 by my senior year.

What makes me sad is that his underactuated robotics class is on the fall semester. FALL SEMESTER. Many awesome classes are offered in the fall semester, and this is one of them. :(

I now have to make a decision on which of the following classes I should take to optimize my learning, graduate in time, but at the same time not kill myself over it:

2.12 : Robotics - Do a lot of dynamics equations, matlab, and exciting hands-on labs (15 hours/week)

2.009: Product and Design: Design and build you own product around a theme. This is one of MIT’s most famous classes. $100k is put into this class every year, and you learn so much from manufacturing and dealing with teams. (20 hours/week)

6.131: Power Electronics:  Design power amplifiers and practical electronics for go-carts, power supplies, custom motor controllers, etc. (25 hours/week)

2.152: Non-Linear Control Systems Design: Graduate level class to learn about non-linear control. Heavily Theory based, but really addresses the math behind it all. (14 hours/week)

6.832 Underactuated Robotics: Professor Tedrake’s robotics class. how can I say no to this? Everything exciting in robotics is in underactuated, nonlinear domains!!! (15-20 hours/week)

UROP: Darpa Robotics Challenge Urop. No way in hell I’m giving this one up, I’m learning so much just by Osmosis. (10 hours/week)

GAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Why are they all in the fall semester? My roommates won’t let me take the classes because they know it’ll be overkill. I mean… can you imagine 104 hours of work per week?

Pif… And thus my fall semester woes….

On the plus side, professor tedrake specifically said that if there is a conflict with my schedule, I should tell him and he will definitely arrange it such that I can take the class. #IMsoHONORED

Anyway… Rightnow there are other things to worry about… like that 2.14 and 6.141 project…

The week has just begun, but it’s already exciting.

/thoughtdump

I haven’t blogged in a while… and there’s a lot that has happened. I could go into so much detail,  but a summary would suffice for my future self:

  • CPW was amazing. I helped organize and captained a few events in SigEp and ATS. This also meant that I did no work. From glow in the dark capture the flag to making and shooting boba, I hope the prefrosh I talked to come to MIT. ^^ 
  • I finally managed to write my 20 page paper for my guitar strings analysis project. It got a 95% for the rough draft, which I guess is nice but it costed me a lot of sleepless nights. There was so much data that they granted me the right to have an appendix.
  • This past week has been quite insane. The bombings on Monday and the manhunt on Thursday was really troublesome for MIT. I’m super glad that everyone I cared about was safe. I’m also proud to say that MIT did a very good job of making me feel safe. RIP Sean Collier.
  • Been CADding a robot since Friday…. I’ll figure you out damnit. This is the 4th design iteration, and if I get this right, it’s going to be quite epic. I’m not giving up. LETS GO.
  • This upcoming week will also be tiresome. When I finish the design for the robot it has to be manufactured. There’s PSETs to worry about, and there are other projects to deal with. There’s so much uncertainty, that I’m quite worried about it all. I  really can’t wait for this semester to end. Go home, enjoy my mom’s cooking, then go back to MIT to learn a lot from my UROP and be in Boston with my friends. 
  • SigEp’s wine and cheese is coming up. As always, I’m looking forward to it since it is my favorite fraternity event. There’s nothing better than fancy dresses, fine wine, awesome apple cider, delicious cheese, and a soothing jazz music in the background while enjoying it with your closest friends.

In all, life is good… It’s stressful, but it’s good. I’m challenged, but I’m appreciative.

Let’s keep moving forward.

/thoughtdump