YONG CHENG:
Time is running out and we are nearing Friday which is the last day when we can water jet cut our 3D print our designs. Till now, the mechanical part of the robotic arm we made has been completed. What now remains is to find out if the base is appropriate or not, and how to place the several servos that we will require for the robot to move.
Ok, enough about the technical details... There is just so much to do each day and so little time. Our team wants to finish everything as soon as possible but we meet problems every time we try to solve one. I guess this is the learning process. What is written on paper usually does not help when facing the practical aspect. There are a lot more things to consider which you will sometimes ignore in the planning process.
Our daily breakfast... There are a lot of choices available!
We had lunch with John Desforge today at the E=mc2 restaurant. We want to thank him for treating us to dinner since he was going to take a flight to Singapore at 4pm but still managed to pull some time out for us. I’m not sure why, but I am slowly becoming less able to eat large servings of food as the days go pass. The general serving of each meal in US is a lot bigger than compared to Singapore because they usually will have appetizers and desserts before and after main courses respectively. In our usual lunch packs, we have our sandwich, salad, dessert, drink and fruits. The food here is really good though but I think my body is trying to tell me to eat less because I am not exercising.
John Desforge bringing us around.
A random picture I took on the street
It was followed by work in Pappalardo Lab again in the afternoon. The hours passed by very quickly and we had to stop work at 5pm. It was not enough as we still had more to do. Shao Hui then brought us to the other side of the Charles River to walk around and have dinner at a restaurant of our choice.
Group photo of us at the Harvard Bridge, overlooking Charles River.
Notice the jam on the right road. Boston’s traffic is a bit like but not as bad
as New York where you can hear horns sounding all the time.
One of the most famous MIT hacks: The police car that was on the dome was
moved to the Stata Center. It is the same car that was used for the hack.
Dinner was followed by work in Studio 7 again. Dan Frey actually arranged for soccer to be played at 8pm, but when we went over to the field, it was already occupied by some MIT students for training. We and the Brazilian students agreed to play on Saturday instead.
Ok for now, I am hoping to achieve the tasks that I have typed on my checklist. It’s already going to be Friday and the seeding contest will be done next Thursday. It may seem like there is still a lot of time left, but it isn’t! We still have to test and troubleshoot the robots after completing the design and manufacturing. For now, its good night to everyone (:
Sunset time...
EDWARD:
I knew precision was important. I just never knew it had to be immaculate.
The frame we constructed for the start had to be flawless down to the last micrometre, in terms of dimensions. Unless we harness the help of machinery, the manual cutting, bending, drilling and riveting will not bring us anywhere close to the perfection we want. Unfortunately, for this particular task, the water jet is not able to perform bending or jointing and the 3D printer can’t do something that big. Maybe we can seek the expertise from the central machine shop tomorrow and hopefully they can assist us with this fabrication.
We are, of course, prepared for Plan B - to construct the frame, with many more standards of measurements, careful cutting, accurate jointing and a whole lot more painstaking effort. As long as it can pull off what we want it to do during the contest, it’s worth the time and effort. But till then, this issue will be dwelling at the corner of my mind.
JIN KAI:
It's easy to forget how lucky I am to be here. Barring communication difficulties, being in contact with like minded people who enjoy tinkering and figuring out mechanical challenges has been a blast. I look forward to the days ahead and I know that this will be an unforgettable experience!
KELLY:
A full day at the lab today – we spent most of the time fine tuning the first robot and trying it out with the controller. It seems that the robot does not work as well as we thought it would as the arm was a bit jerky and hard to control with precision. However with a few adjustments it turned out pretty okay.
For dinner, we went across the Charles River (nice wind and scenery!) to Boston and settled for some Greek cuisine. We noticed how American waiters/waitresses were much friendlier than Singapore ones (for e.g. they would begin by introducing themselves and asking "how are you today?"). I thought that was rather nice as it made us feel more welcomed.
At night after spending some time at the studio, me and 2 of my other teammates, Loc and Shengchao, went for a walk and also to get Loc some cup noodles from 7-eleven. It was nice talking to them and finding out more about the different cultures in different countries.
HEI KERN:
Today I have this intense urge to talk about the food culture here in Boston and maybe America. There are many things here in America that differs from Singapore in terms of food. If there is one thing I would say that I have trouble adapting to; that would be food, because other then the weather, Boston feels pretty much like Singapore.
Major difference no. 1:
The portion here in America is off the charts. At least that applies to me. For the record, I have yet to completely finish a meal by myself ever since I stepped foot on American soil. For example, lunch served includes a sandwich (which in Singapore would be my whole lunch), a salad, some fruits (which mean more than one!!) and a dessert! I try to consume as much as possible though. Since then, I have learnt and therefore, in America, everything is to be ordered in the smallest possible size. Like for the ice-cream I had, Peng Hui and I had the kiddie scoop. Image doesn’t matter anymore, personal well-being overrides everything!!
Major difference no. 2:
The food in America is super Rich!! If you have lived in Singapore for a number of years and have adapted to the Singapore food, you would most probably find the food here in America more flavourful then what you normally eat. Please don’t get me wrong. American food definitely tastes awesome!! *Can’t really forget the taste of the beef hamburger*
IAN:
This is my team, Lucas Franceschini, I and Takashi Chiba, minus Ravi. (left to right) This was taken before Ravi came in.
The day started really slowly. Ravi continued to fix up our first robot, a robot that is built to dispense balls. Takashi was staring into the Arduino console in his laptop, rapidly switching screens between two incomprehensible languages, Japanese and C++. Lucas attempted to start building the arm of our 2nd robot. I was trying to figure out the length of the arms required for our 2nd robot on Solidworks.
Ravi is the one on the left.
Hardly any progress; we were back to the old pattern. Before long, it was already lunchtime (Lunch hour was unusually early today, at 11am, for reasons I do not know.).
Today, we had a first:
Our first Singapore group lunch outside! We always had the same kind of packed lunch in MIT. It was good to have something different. I will share more about food in MIT, and our group's wonderful daily dinner adventure in future blog posts.
We ate at mc^2 in Boston Marriott Cambridge. They have awesome fries and tortilla chips, which we all shared. Yum!
I came out of the hotel really full. In fact, after every meal since coming here, I find myself extremely bloated after meals. Well, the meal portions here are HUGE!
I won't be surprised when I weigh myself after I return to Singapore.
We visited the Stata Center to see the history of MIT Hacks. For more information, look at http://hacks.mit.edu.
They display the iconic MIT Police car here!
Having to step back into Pappalardo Lab to continue building our robots dampened our spirits a little. Building stuff is fun, but making "firsts" is more fun.
The afternoon passed by quickly and soon it was 5pm.
Here comes another first:
We crossed the Charles River and stepped into Boston!
What a beautiful place to take pictures! The constant cool breeze was awesome too! But we had to watch out for the endless stream of cyclists and joggers plying the pavement route of Harvard Bridge. In fact, no matter what time of the day it is, cyclists and joggers roam the streets of Boston and Cambridge.
We ate at:
A nice Greek restaurant that we found while walking randomly along Newbury Street, the shopping heart of Boston (http://www.newbury-st.com/Boston/History). Service is top-notch too.
Then off to delicious ice cream at J.P. Licks! Their kiddie size is the size of our usual scoop in Singapore; it is what Yong Cheng is enjoying over in this picture below.
All great things came to an end. I went back to the studio in MIT after dinner to do more work on my team's robots till 11pm. Things are starting to look rosier for my team as we are finally about to complete our first robot and are finally starting on the robot which will place a MIT Police car on top of the MIT dome. We also started to design our 3rd robot, the robot which pulls the Caltech cannon. Tough, yet very interesting work is ahead.
GUAN XUN:
Just to let you guys (or whoever is reading this) know, if my section contains less photos, it's because I'm not one to view a beautiful scene and then pause to pull out a camera to snap a photo. I just continue looking at it. So please do pardon my lack of photographs.
Right, okay, Day 5! As before, my group made tremendous progress, making the essentials of our second robot. Perhaps one more hour in the lab tomorrow and the robot would be finished! I love the feel of creating something and I'm glad that IDC Robocon has provided this opportunity for us to just get out there and create stuff.
In the midst of a discussion
I think that much of our progress is attributable to Richard, the student from MIT who's in our group. He's has a way about people in the leadership sense, and also anticipates problems we may face in the coming days and works on them, reducing the number of problems we encounter along the way, making our work very convenient. He has, I feel, greatly improved the efficiency of our group. Of course, he's done a class that's very similar to what we're doing at Robocon, so we're very lucky to have him in our group.
Tate (ta-te, 2 syllables), the Japanese member in our group, is working on another robot (its structure is supposed to contain a mechanism to fill a balloon with air, the source of air being a bottle of compressed air). He's building it entirely on his own, albeit with occasional input from us group members and based on the design that we had discussed previously. I think he's just great in showing that (stereotype alert!) hardworking Japanese spirit and making sure that his job get done, and gets done well. And he's almost done on that too!
Yong Shen, from Shanghai, China, got lost today! He was headed for the washroom (which was at the ground floor) on his own from the labs where we were working (which was at basement level) when he got lost in the MIT corridors (it can easily happen if you're unfamiliar with the place). Fortunately he managed to find his way back and was gone for maybe about 30mins only. So he's safe, don't worry! MIT also has a network of underground corridors that connect its many buildings. It's hard to know where you are unless you're familiar with the place, since it's all underground and there aren't any landmarks to refer to.
So other than getting lost, Yong Shen has been a great asset to our group. He's a great machinist, who always does precise measurements and markings when we're working at the machine shop. In fact, I dare say that he did the most building today.
And I did some building and some programming. The program for one of the robots should be working now, so that's finished. In the coming days I'll tackle the other robot's programming. Not bad for someone who picked up the interface just a few days ago!
Alright, that's it for today, till tomorrow!
PENGHUI:
It’s another day of slogging through battlefields filled with sawdust, screws and washers. We came, we saw, we hammered and cut. And, well, today I managed to take some pics of what we’ve been doing for the past 3 days! :)
Anyway, this is my breakfast!
And oh the cool thing is my camera has an “intelligent mode” where it kinda senses what kind of picture I want to take. So it’s not me having pro camera skills, it’s just that my camera is idiot friendly and it makes me look like a wannabe-pro. No wonder it cost like $1.3k.
Oh anyway I found out that MIT students read MAXIM too! O.o.
And you have been warned – this box is now alarmed!
Anyway, to our work proper after all the random stuff. Oh on a side note we had lunch with John, an SUTD/MIT dude who’s working on a bit of a things here and there (never really got what he was doing, he made it sound pretty complicated) for both MIT and SUTD. Yeah, cool dude.
So this is our workstation:
And... some of our finished/semi-finished products...
Sebastien Patour had at work. He’s da boss.
Working on the robot parts with my team mates:
Anyway, we had a great dinner at a Greek restaurant. The shish kabob was fantastic.
If this carries on, I’m gonna grow F-A-T, fat. This is not good.
TAT LEONG:
Decided to stop planning today and get into making the robot as we need to confirm our theories. After that, we realised we wasted our past 3 days modelling. We have to edit almost all the dimensions. It kind of taught me that no matter how well we try to plan, there will always be some problems that we will only encounter when doing the hands-on task (especially when we have not much experience in building robots).
Working with my team mates
Today was also the first time in my life I got to use all those cool tools in Pappalardo Lab. The staff in the lab were really really really helpful. One of them even got his finger cut quite badly just to help me cut a steel plate – felt really bad after that.
It was a really refreshing experience to get down and make something tangible by yourself instead of just planning ideas on paper (like the selection competition and the SUTD-ZJU Design Workshop) but not building them. Somehow reflects the flaws in the Singapore education system, like how they place so little emphasis on practical skills, separating people into JCs and Polys when MIT is like a fusion of both.
During the afternoon in Pappalardo Lab, I learnt a handful of things which I could never find in the textbooks, e.g. an aluminium strip when bent lengthwise to a right angle, is much stronger than an unbent steel strip. Actually, upon reflection, I think it’s the same as how you fold paper into a fan shape to increase strength (but that effect wasn’t manifested that much as compared to bending the metal strip.
Everyone is hard at work in the labs and the atmosphere is intense.
Here are some random photos:
One is how MIT decorates the spaces in their building. So basically they just place some super huge black boards (for discussions) and other random pictures on canvas sheets or wire meshes, along the corridors. Jin Kai and I were thinking that we could do the same for our campus too. Maybe put some inspirational pictures, aesthetically pleasing pictures or thought provoking pictures.
Then there’s also the picture of an asymmetrical bench with 4 legs on one side and 1 on the other (probably there’s some reason behind that design). So maybe we can have quirky furniture too that displays some engineering brilliance (like the Baker House’s rocking chair).
Another picture is about the MIT Hacks and probably we can have some culture to define SUTD too. Probably have to be really crazy, like how Baker House had the drop day and they dropped a piano from the roof (sponsored by MIT :P). I’m not kidding -> http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/7377-2010-baker-house-piano-drop.
Click to see enlarged version