Lab Pictures

The lab view from my desk.  The 2 robots are Wabian and Kobian (Kobian has no head right now)

Wabian

Headless Kobian

The old and new Kobian heads.  The old one is on the left.

You can't tell from the picture, but the old head is twice the depth of the new one.

Adventure 1

Went on an exploring bike ride with some old friends today.  Went to the coastline of Chiba (kind of a gross beach, but it was a really pretty, misty day, and worth seeing), and saw a lot of earthquake damage.  In fact, I fell into a crack at one point because it was covered in grass and I didn't see it.  Only one leg, but all the way up to the hip, and still no bottom.  Got a few cuts and scratches, but nothing bad.  Mostly I was just really shocked by the huge crack in the earth.  Kept going, stopped by a used stuff store, and then biked back.  On the bike back we went through a park, in which many of the paths were cracked, elevated by differences of around a foot, and tilted steeply to one side.  It was a kind of frightening, but at the same time kind of beautiful in the twilight.  I wish I had a nice camera and a few hours to take pictures of all the stuff I saw today.

Intro Day

I had my first day yesterday, or my intro day, rather.  I showed up at 2:30 for what I thought was a meeting, and was quickly handed off to a grad student to give me a tour of the facilities, because the professor in charge of the lab had to go listen to the proposal for what was going to be done in the coming months.  So I saw all the different kind of robots, which you can see on their website if you want (http://www.takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp/top/index.htm), and got a brief presentation by someone in the lab.  Everything was in Japanese, but fore the most part, except some technical jargon, I was able to understand, which felt good.  Then, after a few hours of touring, I went back and caught the end of the meeting, which was much harder to understand, because the students were being extra polite and using lots of big words, again, all in Japanese.
    At the end of the day, though, when I asked what I would be doing, the professor didn't tell me I'd be working on a little, relatively unimportant task befitting an intern.  He asked me which labs I found interesting, and I said the bipedal robots and the one working with this sensor jacket (WB-3).  And then I said I wanted to work in whatever I'd be most helpful to the lab.  So now, I'm working in the bipedal robot lab, on this guy (http://www.takanishi.mech.waseda.ac.jp/top/research/wabian/index_j.htm), trying to incorporate the sensors on the jacket into him so they can measure his bio-mechanics (gait and whatnot) compared to those of a human.
    Quick blurb on Wabian, the robot I'll be helping with, turns out that the reason it's so special/different (better?) than other bipedal robots like ASIMO (a well-known robot built by Honda) is that Wabian has a fully functional pelvis,and so is a much more accurate representation of human structure, gait, and capability.  By having a pelvis, the robot looks much more human in it's movements (albeit, still robotic).  The purpose of the Wabian structure is for human-robot interactions.  There's another robot I might help with as well, called Kobian, which is the Wabian body, with an expressive face, and that's one more step in human-robot interactions.  Anyway, starting next week I should have better details as to what I'll be doing, but most likely it will be various smaller tasks that will help the more permanent students with their tasks.  I think this will be good, because it will allow me to get practice in a bunch of various skill sets, as opposed to getting a lot of experience in just one area.

Arrival

Got into Japan yesterday afternoon.  Lady Gaga was flying into the airport as the same time as me, so when I came out of the gate, there were TV cameras, people cheering, it was pretty awesome.   I don't have any pictures (unfortunately), but super cool.  She was all in green with green hair (kind of like me?).

    Had no problems getting my train fare and catching the train out of the airport.  I was super exhausted by that point, and all I wanted to do was sleep, but I was so tired that I couldn't sleep.  I got to my apartment, found the key my friend had stashed for me to get in, and just crashed on a bed for a few hours.  In that sleep at some point one of my friends came in to say hi.  Apparently I greeted him, but it's all kind of hazy.  The good news is I woke up at 8:30ish, stayed up until midnight, and then made it until 5:30 this morning, which is a lot better than how I did the last time I came.  Hopefully the jetlag wears off quickly.

    Today I plan to go visit the school I studied at in the fall, say hi to my friends, and to thank the lady who helped me with the business japanese in basically all the e-mails I wrote to the lab where I'll be working.

   Coming back to Japan was really weird.  It had the same feeling as flying back to the US or Chile in that when I get there, I know how everything goes, everything's easy and comfortable, and I just kind of coast.  I'm not going to say I wasn't a little shocked again at how many asians there are here, but nothing, not even the language really threw me this time, which was strange, because last time it was just so foreign.  That being said, hearing the kids going to school outside my window right now speaking Japanese, I was a little surprised when it was in Japanese.