Senior Project Reflection

Due Date: The day after your block presentation by 8:00 A.M.


(1) Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Block Presentation and/or your senior project? Why?
Im extremely happy people said that my presentation was good, and some took a lot of interest in my topic.


(2) Questions to Consider

a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Block Presentation (self-assessment)?
    P  
b.     What assessment would you give yourself on your overall senior project (self-assessment)?
    P   

(3) What worked for you in your senior project?
My activity and my timing I met the time requirement , people said my activity was really good and they liked how I tied it into my best answer
 (4) (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would have you done differently to improve your senior project if you could go back in time?
I had Jon record me and I noticed I said um a lot and  I wish I didnt do that.
(5) Finding Value
I found alot of value in this project it was the best presentation and I think its over looked at some points
How has the senior project been helpful to you in your future endeavors?   Be specific and use examples.

This project at first didn’t really mean much to me in the beginning, I actually started to hate it because I wasn’t able to get a simple code to work. But as time progressed, I learned from my mistakes. Once I got my first code to work and a light to turn on, it was enough to get me to change my mind on my project and I started to like it even more. Now looking back, I’m happy that I did this as my senior project because the outcome has opened the door to many future jobs and opportunities that will benefit me in the mere future.

Mentorship

    Literal

·     Log of specific hours with a total and a description of your duties updated on the right hand side of your blog

·   Mentor: Ajay Bettadapura Cal Poly Pomona

    Interpretive

     What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

Seriously working in a team but also knowing my limitations as to what I can do, I was very cocky you should say when it came to group work, I thought I knew everything, but when i was on this team I was the one that didn't know anything and it fueled my mind to try to grasp what was going on around me. Personally a lot of opportunities have come my way i just wanna see where they lead me to in the future

   Applied

     How has what you’ve done helped you to answer your EQ?  Please explain.

 

This project was the foundation to my EQ, What my mentor did was he taught me from the ground up starting with binary and simple coding, to working on sophisticated prototypes. This experience has opened up many doors and opportunities for me in the future. When it came to having to choose what answer best answered my EQ I had to choose my third answer, every engineer should treat completed robots as sophisticated prototypes, which made sense in the end because its the end result that matters, yes programing and hardware are good, but it wont mean anything if it hasn't been tested.

*Please do not turn in your mentorship hours to the office.  After we collect the total list from all seniors, we will turn in one piece of paper with all hours for everybody.  It is counted as 50 hours of the 200 you need in order to graduate from I-Poly.  The 10 hours in the summer have already been added to your community service total.

April Blog post

aside from getting things first for the demonstration for May 31st, my mentorship has been really slow and ive been working on vhdl coding but thats about all Ill post pictures some time next week relating to what i have done.

Exit Interview

Content:

(1) What is your essential question and answers?  What is your best answer and why?

 EQ: How can an Electrical Engineer Best improve military use of robots?

answer 1: An Electrical Engineer can ensure software and hardware of surplus robotics.

answer 2: Designing precise sensors with advanced Targeting recognition.

answer 3: Electrical engineers should treat all completed robots as a sophisticated prototype

Best Answer:
Every robot design MUST go through a prototyping stage in order to have people invest into technologies. When prototyping, it’s essential to do multiples versions or iterations. You can never do too many because this process mitigates your risk when it’s time to commit more resources to your project.When you have a high-level prototype, it takes the guesswork out. You can hold it and see how it will look and feel. Not only can you use that prototype to get feedback from end users and investors, but you get more bang for your buck because a nice prototype can be used in promotional marketing materials.( Northrop X-47B, BAE Raven, EADS Barracuda)(US Navy News Release)

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

My answer came relatively smoothly and it came down to my mentorship. Ajay, my mentor, guided me from first working with binary, to working with FPGA, and last but not least prototyping. For the past two months Ive been working with the UAV team and throughout that time period we did a series of eight different flight tests to determine what was wrong with the UAV and how we could have fixed it. Even a few months before joining the UAV team I was on the UGV team and they were running tests on the avoidance and testing the lidar sensors.   Professor Bouschvich also helped develop a second frame the the UGV team to cut off 10 pounds in the weight which is very good.

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

Out of the whole year, my biggest problem was a tie between two conflicts. My first problem was losing my mentorship at Lockheed Martian due to the government shut down, and my second problem was trying to prove myself to the college students that I could do more than just the basics (seriously it was more of a competitive thing). When I lost my mentorship at Lockheed, I started to panic because I had no mentor and interview 2 was just around the corner. So in desperate need for a mentor, I went to Cal Poly Pomona to talk to the Dean of Engineering and she said they don't offer those opportunities to High School students, but as she said that, Ajay popped his head in the room and we started talking and I told him about my project and he liked the idea of everything so he introduced me to the NGC project and told me that I could stay in the project even after my project was over, and I plan on doing so. The other challenge was not really a problem, Honestly I don't have a problem with mentorship at all, its more of my personality. I strive to be better than others, but I always challenged the college students on tasks and Id always lose so I guess you could say it was a blow to my self confidence.

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

aside from Mentorship: 

1. Behavioral demonstration of a somatosensory neuroprosthesis Berg JA,  Eng, 21(3):500–507 (2013)
In the very beginning of the Journal, Berg and his colleagues reference a lot to the prototyping stages and the development of ones project. what I got from this is,  robot is never really complete until is labeled decommissioned. Berg talks about how he learned from similar Behavioral studies to see what they did and he would perfect it , every robot regardless of its age and capabilities has its share of improvements weather it be a simple battery issue or a computing issue, there is always areas for improvement. Take prosthetic for example, at John Hopkins Lab in 2012, an engineering team no bigger than 40 members had developed a very successful version of a robotic prosthetic, but it wasn't perfect. After hundreds of tests they created another prototype of the first one to create a better prosthetic. Although the robotic prosthetic is still in testing, people are reporting that the arm works well with minimal defects.

2. J.G. Verly, R.L. Delanoy, and D.E. Dudgeon. "Machine Intelligence Technology for Automatic Target Recognition." MIT Lincoln Laboratory Technical Report, June-July 1999. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

-For design research, prototypes serve as props to help yield more authentic feedback from end users. We know that the brain’s ability to comprehend a concept benefits from as many sensory inputs as possible. This is especially true when a concept is something novel or a departure from the norm. Putting a tangible prototype into the hands of an end user gives their brain something physical to engage with, in turn helping us get clearer insights as to the user’s preferences. This source was a major step forward, Verly, Delanoy, and Dudgeon all discuss the idea of how throughout the process of development, they accepted others criticism whether it was good or bad, and from there they would branch more ideas as to how to improve the target recognition. Even when it came to the post prototyping stage, they shared their ideas with other engineers so they could also base ideas off of what they had originally created, thus leaving more room for improvement and sparking new ideas among engineers.

Be prepared with evidence and specific examples to support any response.  It is also significant to cite sources as you explain.

Blog 19: Independent Component 2

Content:  

LITERAL
(a) “I, Noah Nakielski, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
 
(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component
 Ajay Bettdapura
Ethan Ito
Akira Hied 
Kevin La 
NGC Project
Physics book
 
(c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log.

 
(d) Explanation of what you completed.  
- What I did for this, well my mentor told me to put this 
1. UAV is now capable of automated communication entry with GCS as demonstrated by Ethan Ito and Akira Heid yesterday.
2. programmed in a telemetry data rate divider, so different stream rates are possible and selectable through ProtoNet (based on division of the FCS to VMS stream rate).
3. Internal autonomous payload release messages have been coded, so the SMS (Stores Management System) application will now send a release message to the MAVLINK application.

4. The communication entry message is broadcasted whenever the MAVLINK heartbeat is sent. This way, it is possible for the ground station to know when the autopilot is online or offline based on system status.
5. Basic vehicle authorization request and response has been coded in, and a communication state data structure has been added, along with locking for protecting shared memory. Eventually, this will be moved over to a parameter table so multiple applications can query the data.
6. UAV drop test algorithm and test beds.

 
INTERPRETIVE 
Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.  
 
 
 Flight tested the Sig-Kadet  for autonomous way point navigation; still needed more gain tuning.
 
 messing around as well as working in the lab!




 These two pictures i used last time but this was the first Northrop convention I went to to meet developers and executives.

 


 
 Image shows a graphic of the UAV moved from the start position at 0,0 to 34.0575057, -117.8204004 (Cal Poly Pomona). Graphics can be moved via WSD (A used to move graphic to specified lat/lon).

APPLIED
How did the component help you answer your EQ? 
This independent component helped me come up with my Best Answer.  This part of my component I was able to meet a lot of executives and developers as well as be present while the UAV test flights were in prototyping stages, It was very helpful and it lead me to my best answer, and helped me clarify my second answer a bit.

Grading Criteria 

• Log on a digital spreadsheet
• Evidence of 30 hours of work 
• LIA submitted to blog

extra blog post

This month was really slow. From mid terms to spring break, my mentors were swamped with work and I decided to just read books to compensate for the absence, but is what it is I will resume mentor ship this Thursday

Blog 18: Third Answer

EQ: How can an Electrical Engineer best improve military use of robots?

Answer 3: Electrical Engineers can run a series of tests/prototyping to improve it later along the line of production. (THIS MUST BE SHORTER)

details: NCTR functions are usually performed with no cooperation from the target concerned and in most cases the target is not aware that is being identified. Air Force reconnaissance platforms, like AWACS, and JSTARS, and Air Force combat systems like the F-16, F-22, and F-35 have NCTR requirements for their sensor systems to identify threatening targets with high reliability beyond visual ranges in order to perform their full potential and to achieve high levels of operational effectiveness.

The results obtained from our experiments suggest that such an emotional system which has been successfully implemented in other application areas, such as security (facial recognition) and medical (blood cell identification), can be also efficiently used

in military target identification, in particular considering the fast performance of the system in terms of training (learning) and decision-making times. 

Sensors might offer new features that could be exploited by new characterization algorithms. And New algorithms might be developed with the ability to combine measurements, at the pixel or feature level, from different sensors.

Sources: not mla formated

http://www.dodsbir.net/sitis/archives_display_topic.asp?Bookmark=37544

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.229.3453&rep=rep1&type=pdf

please let me know if you have any questions. thank you.