Mind Garten

Accepted! I finally received a letter in the mail confirming my admission to the University of Southern California. I was accepted as Masters student. I was rejected as a Ph.D. student, but all the credits I earn as a Masters student can be applied towards a Ph.D. if I get admitted later at the same school. It certainly was a great deal of stress on my part. They were the last school to make any notification about my status. I was calling the department office about 3 times a day trying to get into contact with someone. No one seemed able to answer the phone, and when they did, I got promises of information that never materialized. My future was uncertain, and I didn't know if I should follow up on the offer I received at University of South Florida. I was neglecting it because I would have rather attend USC instead. Now I get to attend a university that's very strong in robotics. I'm very excited about going, and I can't wait to meet some of the profe...

Ideas for My Graduate Thesis Work These are some ideas I've been throwing around for a while that I might choose to do my graduate research on. Many of them are just superficial ideas that may or may not have much depth to them. All of them are related to robotics and AI. Modular Reconfigurable Robotics : This involves collections of robotic units that are all interconnected. With a collective effort, they can metamorph themselves into complicated and useful forms such as snakes, walking legs, chairs, velociraptors, etc.. The challenging part of this new field is how does the robot make decisions on how to move its parts around to achieve these new forms? Additionally, if some of these individual parts would break or go bad-- as they are guaranteed to do if you have units up into the thousands-- how do you deal with these dead limbs? Do you treat them like tumors and eject them from your body or do you just work around them? Robopsychology (or Robotic Psychological...

Mid-Spring Term Wow! It's been a long time since I wrote on here. Approximately 3 months. Well, you're probably all wondering what the heck I've been doing lately. For one, I'm finishing up another year of school. The interesting thing about this year is that it hasn't been an incredibly important set of classes. About half of the classes I took this year wont count towards any degree I'm pursuing. A partial reason for this is that I changed my mind halfway through the year about what I was going to do. I had fun though! I don't regret taking any of the classes I did, and I learned so much. Next year I'm going to graduate school to begin my pursuit of a Ph.D. in computer science. Specifically, I am going to study robotics. I've been accepted to the University of South Florida and I am waiting to hear from the University of Southern California. Though I was rejected for the Ph.D. program at USC, it is very likely that I will be ac...