I’m Back

Although serious injuries almost resulted from the obvious ending to this situation it was alot of fun at the time.

NASA

The last 5 weeks at NASA were fantastic; everyone came together and finished not only their team projects but also the group project.

In those last weeks I finished up the hand tracking software although I never got the chance to integrate it in to Archie, there just wasn’t enough time. But I did manage to make a neat demo of the software in action:

In amongst finishing up Archie I was elected the President of the NASA Robotics Internship Program Alumni Association. My first order of business as President is organizing the “reunion trip” to Vegas to see the DARPA Grand Challenge. When we visited CMU Red Wittacker assured us that the Red Team Racing team was going to win the challenge this year; we will see first hand.

In the future I will be working with the Treasurer Daniel Calvo to establish the Alumni association as a incorporated non-profit guaranteeing not only our positions as dictators for life but also giving us an opportunity to figure out how to do it. The only difference between a non-profit and for profit organization is one isn’t allowed to make money; pretty obvious huh?

New Town Pennsylvania
After graduation Kim and I took Amtrak up to New Jersey to eventually meet Kim’s Uncle, Aunt and Cousins at their home in New Town PN.

I couldn’t think of a better way to end my crazy 10 weeks on the east coast then sitting out by the pool and talking to Freddie and the family. If any of them are reading; thanks for the conversation and hospitality.

Reading
Since my last post I finished Robot Visions a collection of Asimov’s short stories; this book was a great collection and the introduction had some interesting insight from Asimov about the Three Laws of Robotics; the most famous words he ever wrote.

Given my next few weeks off I have started to tackle the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming which promises to be a good warm for school. On Intelligence; which was recommended to me by Freddie and it is a book that offers one of the first theories on how the brain creates what we call intelligence.