An article about ICEX was published in the Cal Poly Magazine (Spring 2009 issue). The article is entitled "Of Robots and the Underworld: Professor Clark and His Students Explore the Secrets of Malta."Click here for a link to the article.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Cal Poly Magazine
An article about ICEX was published in the Cal Poly Magazine (Spring 2009 issue). The article is entitled "Of Robots and the Underworld: Professor Clark and His Students Explore the Secrets of Malta."Click here for a link to the article.
ICEX on the Evening News
Sunday, April 26, 2009
More Videos and Pictures
Digging through the hundreds of files that came back with me from Malta, I found a few that were post-worthy, and really are meant to help me remember how great of a trip this was.
This is a video of some pre-Malta tests in Matt's parents' pool. We figured out quickly that we needed to lower the gains in the rotation axis for the joystick controls, but the overall system worked beautifully.
This video is from our first site Fort Saint Angelo, and we noticed that the robot was fighting currents in the cistern which made getting stationary sonar scans a little tricky. We had a nice laugh at the robot's expense while it got a little bit dizzy.
This was a view looking out from Fort Saint Angelo into the harbor.
This is Fort Saint Michael looking out from Valletta.
Lastly, this is Fort Ricasoli also taken from Valletta which is the last peninsula before leaving the harbor (or the first peninsula you reach if you're the one attacking!)
This is a video of some pre-Malta tests in Matt's parents' pool. We figured out quickly that we needed to lower the gains in the rotation axis for the joystick controls, but the overall system worked beautifully.
This video is from our first site Fort Saint Angelo, and we noticed that the robot was fighting currents in the cistern which made getting stationary sonar scans a little tricky. We had a nice laugh at the robot's expense while it got a little bit dizzy.
This was a view looking out from Fort Saint Angelo into the harbor.
This is Fort Saint Michael looking out from Valletta.
Lastly, this is Fort Ricasoli also taken from Valletta which is the last peninsula before leaving the harbor (or the first peninsula you reach if you're the one attacking!)Friday, April 17, 2009
A Recap of Malta
Going to a foreign country is always an exciting journey, and this trip was absolutely no exception. Malta was an interesting place to people-watch because it is a big tourist destination for many in Europe, so we met travelers from all over. It is hard for me to come to any conclusions about the Maltese because I would also be including at least a few other countries in my thoughts.
A few things I did make mental notes of were: Cory found out the hard way that the grocery store, and many other stores are closed on Sundays. In Valletta, most of the businesses would close by 5pm every day. The teenagers would go out to party until close to midnight and that the college students would be out past then. The police would follow groups of drunk people to see that no harm was done, but they didn't harass the party-goers simply for being inebriated. The airport in Rome is quite concerned with getting travelers through security checks as quickly as possible, however they make up for it by checking everyone a second time right before boarding the plane.
At the sites, we were able to speak with the residents in a one-on-one atmosphere which I think gave me the best impression about the people. Everyone was very hospitable, very prideful, and eager to share the history of their house, their country, or anything else that had a story behind it. We loved hearing all of the stories they had to tell us, but I often felt like I couldn't take notes fast enough to keep up with the amount of information being relayed to us.
In the hotel in Rome, Justin and I stayed in because we weren't feeling well, but this gave me a unique opportunity. The internet didn't work in the room I was in, so after determining it was a wiring problem, I called the front desk and they sent a repairman to fix it. While Dávide corrected the problem, I told him about our group and our experiences in Malta. I realized after a little while that he understood part of what I was saying, but some of the less common phrases like "underwater robot" and "sonar mapping of the cistern", understandably, did not cross the language gap. After he fixed the wiring, he opened up Google translator and we translated what we talked about so we actually had an idea of what the other person was saying. I had a great time telling and showing him what we did, and also hearing about similar research he had done in the old sewers of Rome. It was nice being able to use technology in such a practical way where it would have been difficult to understand each other without it.
On a technical level, I was the first to learn how to use the KCF Smart Tether, so I became the one to troubleshoot any problems we had with it. It was great to have for our data captures, and will be of great value in making the maps accurate, so we were very fortunate to use the equipment on our trip.
In order to synchronize the Smart Tether data with the sonar and SLAM data, Cory and I wrote a program to interpolate any gaps in the data caused by the loss of a GPS signal fix. This task gave us several nights of little sleep, but we became very familiar with GPS message frames and overcoming several issues in creating data for the variable-length gaps in the stream of actual data.
Lastly, this picture is funny to me (it was very windy on the boat to Gozo):
A few things I did make mental notes of were: Cory found out the hard way that the grocery store, and many other stores are closed on Sundays. In Valletta, most of the businesses would close by 5pm every day. The teenagers would go out to party until close to midnight and that the college students would be out past then. The police would follow groups of drunk people to see that no harm was done, but they didn't harass the party-goers simply for being inebriated. The airport in Rome is quite concerned with getting travelers through security checks as quickly as possible, however they make up for it by checking everyone a second time right before boarding the plane.
At the sites, we were able to speak with the residents in a one-on-one atmosphere which I think gave me the best impression about the people. Everyone was very hospitable, very prideful, and eager to share the history of their house, their country, or anything else that had a story behind it. We loved hearing all of the stories they had to tell us, but I often felt like I couldn't take notes fast enough to keep up with the amount of information being relayed to us.
In the hotel in Rome, Justin and I stayed in because we weren't feeling well, but this gave me a unique opportunity. The internet didn't work in the room I was in, so after determining it was a wiring problem, I called the front desk and they sent a repairman to fix it. While Dávide corrected the problem, I told him about our group and our experiences in Malta. I realized after a little while that he understood part of what I was saying, but some of the less common phrases like "underwater robot" and "sonar mapping of the cistern", understandably, did not cross the language gap. After he fixed the wiring, he opened up Google translator and we translated what we talked about so we actually had an idea of what the other person was saying. I had a great time telling and showing him what we did, and also hearing about similar research he had done in the old sewers of Rome. It was nice being able to use technology in such a practical way where it would have been difficult to understand each other without it.
On a technical level, I was the first to learn how to use the KCF Smart Tether, so I became the one to troubleshoot any problems we had with it. It was great to have for our data captures, and will be of great value in making the maps accurate, so we were very fortunate to use the equipment on our trip.
In order to synchronize the Smart Tether data with the sonar and SLAM data, Cory and I wrote a program to interpolate any gaps in the data caused by the loss of a GPS signal fix. This task gave us several nights of little sleep, but we became very familiar with GPS message frames and overcoming several issues in creating data for the variable-length gaps in the stream of actual data.
Lastly, this picture is funny to me (it was very windy on the boat to Gozo):
Final Cultural and Technical Entry
As I discussed in my blog entry before leaving for Malta, my goal for this trip was to observe the exquisite architecture of Malta, and its impact on the modern day society. It was interesting to observe the daily lives of people amongst such a beautiful place. The capital city of Valletta was originally built in the mid-1500’s. As the capital, this city serves as the governmental and business center of Malta. This city is surrounded by fortifications and has a fortress (Fort St. Elmo) located at the tip of it. These fortifications were necessary then to protect the country from foreign invaders who attempted to seize the island nation. Today Fort St. Elmo is used as a police academy, and the fortifications remain as a memorial to those who fought so bravely to keep their country. In Mdina the local men and women live in homes that date back as early as 1200 CE. This is astounding considering that America wasn’t even known to most of the western world at this point in time. Remnants of Norman arches appear inside the homes showing the true age of these homes. The thought of owning a home with such rich history was beyond comprehension for me.
It was also interesting to observe how the driving culture has developed in Malta based on the initial design of streets within these cities. Since most of the cities were designed to confuse its enemies if they were able to survive long enough to reach the gates of the fortress, it is no wonder that the streets are very confusing. For this reason, traveling within the cities is very difficult and intricate for someone who does not know the city. Furthermore, since most of these cities were built before the automobile was even invented; the roads are also incredibly narrow. In the United States, many of these streets would be considered alleyways, not even large enough to constitute a one-way street. However, in Malta, the majority of these streets were astonishingly two-way roads. If two vehicles traveled down the road in opposing directions, they would have to maneuver, often times onto the sidewalk, in order to pass one another. The design of the cities have made for these drivers to be somewhat reckless, I even witnessed a car accident as two cars drove straight through a 4-way stop sign intersection. The narrow streets also lead to much smaller vehicles being driven. Most of the vehicles could not even be found in the US as they wouldn’t sell to our demographics, yet work perfectly in a Maltese environment.
Some of these once practical structures now provide an aesthetic value to the cities. Between Rabat and Sliema, there is an aqueduct that travels along the median of the main highway. This aqueduct was once used to bring water across to other areas of the island that did not have fresh water. Now, it remains, a beautiful structure separating lanes of traffic. This can also be seen as some cathedrals have been turned into museums, showcasing the architecture and intricate designs left by artists mandated by the Knights of the Order of St. John.
The most interesting architectural discovery for me was inside the cisterns. As the robot traveled down into the cistern, the development of the culture can be seen. As the robot goes deeper, the level of organization of the bricks change until the area is finally dug out. Seeing this is equivalent to traveling through time as each civilization developed. Malta was truly a sight to see, and nothing I say will ever compare nor truly capture actually being there to experience it.
The most interesting technical aspect for me in this excursion was the usage of the new micro-manipulator (or gripper) purchased from VideoRay. The purpose of the micro-manipulator is to pick up any interesting objects inside of the cisterns. While on the island Gozo, the robot without the manipulator was lowered into a cistern found outdoors. When the robot reached the bottom of the cistern, a large pile of pottery fragments was found. Once this was discovered, the robot with the micro-manipulator was placed into the well. At this point, we were able to pick up multiple pieces of pottery.
Using the gripper was more difficult than initially imagined. It required that robot controls be performed in the most delicate of manners in order to align and capture an object within the gripper. However, once accomplished, the feeling of picking up an artifact that could possibly be considered ancient is sublime. After some practice, it became easier to operate the micro-manipulator only taking a matter of a minute or two in order to pick up certain conveniently located objects. Some objects proved too difficult to reach with our equipment. In the second site at the Carmelite Priory in Mdina, an old glass bottle was found on a ledge inside the cistern. After several minutes of attempts, the bottle was too difficult to pick up. Given our limited time at each site, it was important to move on without obtaining the bottle. Though some pieces of pottery were easy to get at one location, the micro-manipulator is not necessarily a full solution to object retrieval in cisterns. Despite this, the micro-manipulator worked well overall for our uses. Furthermore, there are still many future applications that can be looked into with the micro-manipulator. These applications include the integration of gripper controls into the current robot user interface as well as possibly eventual autonomous control of the micro-manipulator.
Monday, April 13, 2009
ICEX Presentation
ICEX MALTA 2009 PRESENTATION: Application of Robotics in Archeology
Tuesday, April 21, 11am-12pm (Bldg. 20-128)
This presentation will cover the technological, archeological, and cultural aspects of the 2009 ICEX trip to Malta. ICEX is the International Computer Engineering eXchange Program, coordinated by Prof. Chris Clark (Computer Engineering) and Christine Victorino (Center for Teaching and Learning). Computer Engineering students and faculty will be there to present their photos, discuss learning outcomes, and provide opporutnities to get involved in future trips to Malta and Norway (2010).
Contact: cmclark@calpoly.edu or cavictor@calpoly.edu.
Tuesday, April 21, 11am-12pm (Bldg. 20-128)
This presentation will cover the technological, archeological, and cultural aspects of the 2009 ICEX trip to Malta. ICEX is the International Computer Engineering eXchange Program, coordinated by Prof. Chris Clark (Computer Engineering) and Christine Victorino (Center for Teaching and Learning). Computer Engineering students and faculty will be there to present their photos, discuss learning outcomes, and provide opporutnities to get involved in future trips to Malta and Norway (2010).
Contact: cmclark@calpoly.edu or cavictor@calpoly.edu.
Friday, April 10, 2009
A Fitting End
It has been almost 2 weeks since I have returned home to San Luis Obispo, California. On March 29, we left Malta and arrived in Rome. Due to some delays, we were given the opportunity to explore a little bit of Rome in the afternoon and evening, before heading to the airport early in the morning to "catch" our flight to New York. While in Rome, a few of us got the opportunity to see the Colosseum, the Forum, Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps.
While in Rome we had dinner at a very nice Italian Pizza place. The food was great. Apparently, according to Phil's Pedometer, we walked over 10 miles that day. With all of the excitement it seemed like much less.
Before I close my final blog post, I would really like to talk about the one big cultural aspect and one big technological aspect that I took from my experiences in Malta.
In my blog before the trip, I mentioned that I wanted to learn more about the culinary aspect of the culture there. I would say that I more than accomplished my goal. While we were in Malta, Timmy Gambin, our local coordinator, set up a deal for us to have our dinners every night at this nice surf side Maltese cuisine Restaurant. Every night I experienced a new dish and got to experience a whole new style of food and ingredients. One of the most interesting observations I was able to make about the food in relation to US food was the use of oils. In our culinary culture we see mostly flavorless oils being used as a simple cooking medium and occasionally rich or enhanced oils for salads. In Malta, almost every dish I had was drizzled or cooked with oils that had such an intense amount of flavor, ranging from the most flavorful extra virgin olive oils to oils enriched with peppers, nuts, and even herbs. It was a shame I didn't bring a few bottles of infused oils home, as they not only complement the natural flavors of the food they were used on, but I could honestly make a meal out of it with bread and cheese.
As for my technical learning experience, I would like to talk about my experience with two different facets -- one related to what I learned about technology in Malta, and what I have learned from the work we actually performed there.
In my blog post about what I wanted to learn and bring to Malta, I talked about how our culture uses technology as an extension of our social experience in the US. While I was in Malta I spoke many times with Timmy and briefly with some of his colleges from the University of Malta about how technology affects their social lives. I found that there were actually quite a lot of parallels in our societies when it comes to our social link to technology. Apparently text messaging is quite big there, and quite a few of the people I talked to like to use MySpace, Flickr, and Twitter (apparently Facebook has not really taken off there). In terms of the raw uses of technology, I saw adds for some very impressive smart phones that don't even exist in the states yet, but the percentage of people with web-enabled (smart phones) seemed to be much lower than what I had been observing in the US before I left.
While doing our technical work, I occasionally picked up some very useful practices and facts about the programs and hardware we were using. In fact, I managed to actually see how things were working when we did our exploration and make changes to how the Malta Box operated to better utilize the time we had there. A slight modification was made to make it so that even if the serial ports were activated, they did not turn into a blocking state (blocks manual control from the control box) until the VideoRay software was activated taking control of the robot. Without even knowing it, I became well versed in the physical and software systems of the Video Ray ROV. It was nice to become so familiar with a specific product and its corresponding software, I feel that I could honestly consider myself an expert in the systems we used there.
Overall this trip was amazing. This was without a doubt the best trip I had ever taken. The technical and cultural knowledge I absorbed while I was there was priceless and I have become a much more well-rounded engineer. Thank you to all of those people who helped make this program possible.
While in Rome we had dinner at a very nice Italian Pizza place. The food was great. Apparently, according to Phil's Pedometer, we walked over 10 miles that day. With all of the excitement it seemed like much less.
Before I close my final blog post, I would really like to talk about the one big cultural aspect and one big technological aspect that I took from my experiences in Malta.
In my blog before the trip, I mentioned that I wanted to learn more about the culinary aspect of the culture there. I would say that I more than accomplished my goal. While we were in Malta, Timmy Gambin, our local coordinator, set up a deal for us to have our dinners every night at this nice surf side Maltese cuisine Restaurant. Every night I experienced a new dish and got to experience a whole new style of food and ingredients. One of the most interesting observations I was able to make about the food in relation to US food was the use of oils. In our culinary culture we see mostly flavorless oils being used as a simple cooking medium and occasionally rich or enhanced oils for salads. In Malta, almost every dish I had was drizzled or cooked with oils that had such an intense amount of flavor, ranging from the most flavorful extra virgin olive oils to oils enriched with peppers, nuts, and even herbs. It was a shame I didn't bring a few bottles of infused oils home, as they not only complement the natural flavors of the food they were used on, but I could honestly make a meal out of it with bread and cheese.
As for my technical learning experience, I would like to talk about my experience with two different facets -- one related to what I learned about technology in Malta, and what I have learned from the work we actually performed there.
In my blog post about what I wanted to learn and bring to Malta, I talked about how our culture uses technology as an extension of our social experience in the US. While I was in Malta I spoke many times with Timmy and briefly with some of his colleges from the University of Malta about how technology affects their social lives. I found that there were actually quite a lot of parallels in our societies when it comes to our social link to technology. Apparently text messaging is quite big there, and quite a few of the people I talked to like to use MySpace, Flickr, and Twitter (apparently Facebook has not really taken off there). In terms of the raw uses of technology, I saw adds for some very impressive smart phones that don't even exist in the states yet, but the percentage of people with web-enabled (smart phones) seemed to be much lower than what I had been observing in the US before I left.
While doing our technical work, I occasionally picked up some very useful practices and facts about the programs and hardware we were using. In fact, I managed to actually see how things were working when we did our exploration and make changes to how the Malta Box operated to better utilize the time we had there. A slight modification was made to make it so that even if the serial ports were activated, they did not turn into a blocking state (blocks manual control from the control box) until the VideoRay software was activated taking control of the robot. Without even knowing it, I became well versed in the physical and software systems of the Video Ray ROV. It was nice to become so familiar with a specific product and its corresponding software, I feel that I could honestly consider myself an expert in the systems we used there.
Overall this trip was amazing. This was without a doubt the best trip I had ever taken. The technical and cultural knowledge I absorbed while I was there was priceless and I have become a much more well-rounded engineer. Thank you to all of those people who helped make this program possible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
