Ocean-Hopping: Summer Travel Plans

I've been spending a lot of my energy looking into the future, both short-term (graduation, summer plans) and "long"-term (moving to Virginia, starting a job, travelling to Ghana).


This is great, because I love knowing what I'm planning and being able to look forward to it.


However, this also means that I'm feeling torn between the present and the future. It is not quite a roller-coaster of emotions, but more a simultaneity. I'm both excited to be leaving soon and start this next crazy chapter, but also bitter sweet about my final weeks left.


This weekend is Carnival, the spring Homecoming of CMU, and a few of my alum friends are headed back. In that way, it is comforting that I won't completely disengage once I leave campus... CMU will always be my alma mater.

The boat we'll be staying on in Stockholm!

This post was originally going to be about my summer plans, but it turned into an introspection. I guess might as well throw the plans in now too:


May 20th to June 5th: Denmark, Sweden, and Norway with Alisa


June 5th to June 19th: Scotland and London with Alex


June 19th to July 18th: Seattle with the family (though I might drive down to Portland)


July 18th to August 4th-ish: Italy and other western Europe with Mom and Valerie


August 4th-ish to August 7th-ish: North Carolina for a wedding


August 7th-ish to August 19th-ish: Family vacation around the South-east U.S.


August 22nd: First day of work at APT in Arlington, VA!


(and for good measure)
January 4th-ish to January 11th-ish: Volunteering in Ghana (delayed from Spring Break)

Orchard Robot: My Senior Human-Computer Interaction Design Project

So I think I mentioned something about my senior project a while ago in my "list of things to blog about." And since I have some fun pictures from that, might as well give you an overview.

So I'm double-majoring in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction. I explain the second as a combination of design, user testing, technology, and psychology. "Human factors" and "user-centered design" are also thrown around in describing it.


There are four groups with four to five people each, and each has a client we are serving. Our client is the Comprehensive Automation of Specialty Crops group within the Robotics Department at CMU. There is this vehicle thing that can drive down the rows of trees in an orchard by itself. So they are putting a lift for people on the back of it (so the people don't have to drive), and we are in charge of creating controls to modify the settings.


In the middle of March, we had a great day out at Soergel's Orchards, testing the vehicle and controls with the "Wizard of Oz" method (meaning that we just pretend that the controls are changing the settings of the vehicle when actually it was just our advisor steering.)


After a few times back and forth down the line, and a few times using different controls, we got the data we wanted, and began our next iteration. Right now, we are in the final week of a final design (that is actually going to control the vehicle!) There are a few technical snags, but I'm feeling pretty confident.