iCub Project

I am working on the iCub project here at the Italian Institute of Technology, the robot in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USCKIiwareU

Currently in academia, most labs will spend time in the beginning of their project to develop their own hardware and then develop the code and controls to make it work. Some people say this is similar to the situation with computers in the 1980's, when many people developed their own platforms and made only incremental progress with their research, in large part due to the time intensive nature of that beginning phase. Things sped up once you had an operating system, like Windows or a Mac, and could jump right into developing higher level things, like Microsoft Word or an internet browser.

The idea behind the iCub robot is that you can start off with this hardware and dive right into the higher level research. So it is meant for things like machine learning, machine vision, and dexterous manipulation.

Right now the hand costs over $10,000 to machine out of aluminum. My job is to try and create it out of plastic, so you can 3D print it for much cheaper and the design would be much easier to modify. The only problem is that plastic is much weaker than metal so I have to play with things a bit.

Anyways, these are the models that I look at and alter all day in my CAD (Computer Aided Design) software. I've currently got a couple of fingers that I printed out, but broke since they were too flimsy.

 

Walking around Genova

I got to walk around Genova a bit by myself the first weekend here, though I mainly stayed around my apartment's vicinity and the city center. I live in a residential part of the city, which is nice since it isn't excessively busy or expensive. It is close enough to walk to the train station and get to places too. 

I am enjoying the weather here, it reminds me of California, especially because of the palm trees. I think it is interesting how Genova is moderately busy as a city but with a lot of architecture that looks like it has history behind it.

 Even where the shuttle to work picks me up, there is a giant arch in the middle of some greenery.

The Principe train station is the one closest to the city center. I was told that Columbus's house is close to the station but I haven't run into it while I'm wandering yet. There is a big statue of him though. I took the train over and made my way back to the apartment on foot through the city center.

I made sure to go through Via Garibaldi (formerly Strada Nuova), where some of the most historically important palaces/mansions were. From what I can remember from the signs, Strada Nuova was in its heyday during the late 1400's to maybe 1600's,  where the aristocratic erected these homes on this street. There were indeed impressive.

Wikipedia says that Charles Dickens once wrote this in his travolgue from Italy, which does it more justice than I can:

"When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and the Strada Balbi! or how the former looked one summer day, when I first saw it underneath the brightest and most intensely blue of summer skies: which its narrow perspective of immense mansions, reduced to a tapering and most precious strip of brightness, looking down upon the heavy shade below!"

I also made my way over to Porto Antico, near the aquarium (which is the largest aquarium in Europe but apparently still not as big as Long Beach). It was nice but very touristy. I did stop in a small seafood shop and buy some friend calamari with lemon and salt. They just scooped it into a small container, weighed itfor the price, and gave it to me. It was delicious.

I walked through a neighborhood with streets much more narrow than the one that I live one. This is what I imagined when I thought of Italy!!

I also cam across Piazza di Carignano., where you can see the church of S. Maria Assunta di Carignano. There is a bigger Cathedral towards the center of town that I apparently skipped over, but this one was cool too. You can see the bridge/street that leads up to it in this last picture of it here. 

Genova is also a very hilly city. There are many layers! Sometimes the streets are at the level of the tops of the other buildings. 

26 Hours in London

In order to get to Genova, Italy (which seems to be a smaller airport) I took two flights: a red eye to London and a 9:30am flight to Genova 26 hours after I landed. These were my first international flights!! I didn't get too much sleep on the flights but I wasn't too tired.

I stayed at a $12 hostel in London that I booked a couple minutes before I hopped onto my flight in Boston. There were about six beds (stacked three high) crammed into a room smaller than the size of my single at MIT. It was a little more cramped than a fraternity house but much cleaner so it was really all I needed for the night. The Queen Elizabeth Fulham hostel was located right above the Queen Elizabeth pub, though I didn't get a beer since I was trying to make it on the 40 pounds I had withdrawn (1.6 dollars = 1 pound). Half the people sitting around seemed like they were staying in the hostel and using the wifi that was available in the bar and half seemed to be locals watching a soccer game on the television.

I struck out into London for about five hours. You can buy a Travelcard that gives you unlimited access to the Tube (subway) , trains, and buses. I didn't have much time to plan out what I was going to do since I was rushing to pack everything before my trip so I used the 'London Citypack' book that Jim and Barbara had sent me off with, so it was very useful.

I made my way to Westminster Abbey on the Tube but ran into Big Ben right when I exited! It was tall and close to the Ferris wheel that is always shown on the Thames River in the shots of London. I pretty much took one picture of Big Ben just to turn around and take a picture of the water.

Afterwards I made the short walk to Westminster Abbey. Some couple took a picture for me and I took a picture of them. They made sure to get almost all of me in the picture and I made sure to not cutoff the top of the building so we had differing views of what was important to get. I missed the hours for actually going inside the church, but I was able to walk around some of the other parts of it nearby. There were some pretty nice arches and stuff around. 

All the streets did look like they belonged in London. There weren't very different from those in Boston though. 

I made my way to St. James Park. I think I was trying to get somewhere else this time again too, but I just went with it. There was a

Nearby was Buckingham Palace, down a long street lined with flags. This was as close as I could get. There were doing construction of some bleachers (for the Olympics?), so I wasn't sure if people could normally get a better look. 

This was at the other end of the street, it didn't have a specific name but it looked regal. 

Finally, I made my way to Covent Garden, which was the London equivalent of Quincy Market and Faneuil (in Boston). There were performers around, one of which was a string sextet that was pretty good. 

After the long walk, I made my way back to the hostel to sleep early since I was dead tired.  Getting to Stansted airport in the morning was an ordeal since it was an early flight, the charter bus I had to catch there had limited stop times at that hour,  it was raining, and the public bus that I needed to catch had been rerouted with a detour, but I eventually figured it out.