Conor, Entry #1, Ready For Takeoff

Today is a little different from the typical day. Right now it is 11:20 am and I am not the first one from my team in the lab. The other day no one from my team showed up until 12:30. I had already left for lunch and came back. The first day of work, I asked what my daily hours should be, and Jon, the phd student I am following replied with, "Show up whenever you want." With my abnormal sleeping habits, I could definitely get used to this. 

I have the PR2 humanoid robot staring me down always to make sure I stay on task

But do not interpret it like we are not doing work, we definitely are. We have deadlines to match, and as long as we meet that quota, we can get there by any means possible, which justifies sleeping later every day. Our current project is to get our quadcopter to navigate itself in an indoor environment using a variety of sensors and methods, and to ultimately work in tandem with our segbot. The segbot is actually a very scary machine. It is around 200 pounds and can run at speeds of 25 mph. When Jon was giving me a tour of the lab, he showed me all the holes and dents in the walls where the segbot ran into. Just in case the segbot gets out of control, Jon said to either push the giant red buttons that they installed on the robot, or to just run. However the segbot is pretty much done, as the project was completed a while ago. Our big hurdle now is to allow visual odometry with our quadcopter. What this pretty much is from looking at known QR markers, the quadcopter is able to judge distances and locate itself on a small scale, such as a room.

Under the hexacopter is the segbot. Like I mentioned it is a 200 lbs and 25 mph behemoth.

This is the quadcopter my team and I are working. It looks innocent but it potentially has the power to chop off your pinkie finger.

The first week of the lab I was getting used to the lab setting and going over ROS (Robot Operating System) and C++ tutorials, as I will likely be using them in the coming weeks. I have also assisted with flight tests, and I will post a video soon. But recently my project has been to model and 3D print parts for the quadcopter. That fall term project in EXP class to 3D print something came in uber handy! So far, I have made landing gear, blade guards, and parts to mount sonar and infrared sensors. 

It is now the start of my third week. So far so good, and I am optimistic about the weeks to come!