All the weeks in January, I had marveled how it was still possible to ride my bike to the university and back. I should have known that I was pushing my luck as Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were below freezing most of the day. I managed to bike on Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday was icy enough that I decided to take the bus. But the temperatures had gone up and it looks like I’ll be able to bike my last few days here....
Week 15: Running Experiments
This week was all about working with participants through the experiments at Robot House. By the end of the week, we had 11 participants visit the house and run the experiment and a total of 30 participants overall! Having originally planned to have 30 participants as a minimum, and still having a week plus for more participants, I feel pretty good about how well this research trip has gone. And I hope that I can get a few extra people to show up before I leave....
Week 14: The Recruiting Drive
The long lines of cars on the road on Monday signaled that people had truly returned from the Christmas break. Zooming past the cars waiting in line, I was glad that I was back riding my bike again instead of taking the bus. This week ended up being pretty busy. At the beginning of the week Jim Tørresen, one of my Ph.D advisors, was visiting the University of Hertfordshire. Jim was there to talk about future opportunities to work together....
Week 13: Back to England
What happened to the updated from week 12? Well, if you read through the previous post, you’ll know that I said I was taking week 12 off. As you should have too. Returning to England this week felt like some of the later episodes of the Simpsons, where there would be an arbitrary break in time and then there would be a dialog or a cutaway to imply that lots of exciting things had happened, but you would never know what happened....
Week 11: The Christmas Rush
This week was the last week before the University shuts down for the holiday period. Although people are starting to head home, I have been lucky and had several participants show up. So, I am nearly halfway to getting the number of participants I need. I just hope the interest remains high in January. The week moved fast with lots of different things being tackled before the end of the year....
Week 10: Begin the Experiment
This week was filled with running experiments—the actual reason that I am supposed to be here. Given that the whole process has moved pretty fast, I guess ten weeks is an OK amount of time from starting at zero to working with participants. Unfortunately, since the experiment is still underway, and anyone can read this, I can’t say too much about it. I can say that recruitment has been going surprisingly well....
Week 9: Hustle, Hustle, Hustle
At the end of last week, my plan was to address the issues that were uncovered during the pilot study, start recruitment, and have participants by the end of the week. In a rare combination of events, that is exactly what happened. I was able to address the largest issues on Monday and Tuesday, try out things on the robot house on Wednesday and Thursday, and run one participant through on Friday....
Week 8: Pilot Study!
This week marks the half-way point in my stay. Well, technically, since the university is closed over Christmas, I’m over half-way point. But no time to think about what has happened with time. Let’s instead look at what has happened this last week. Here are some highlights. First, I was cast in a video to help show the potentials of Care-o-bot 4 in caring situations. It was very different working together with a robot as compared to other actors....
Week 7: Things Start Coming Together
A good part of this week was spent trying to get Fetch up and going again. This first involved getting a new image of the software and a new SSD (easier said than done in both cases). Once we had access to these items, it was also trying to get the image to boot on the robot. It also required us to take apart Fetch until we could get access to Fetch’s SSD and install our new one....
Week 6: Fine Tuning, Early Recruitment & Hitting a Snag
This week marked the end of week 6 and the halfway point of November. That means I’m only here for 10 more weeks. Yipes! Regardless, this week saw some progress and a little bit of a set back. Overall, positive though. A lot of time this week was spent working on the navigation code for the slow in and slow out movement. At the end of last week, I thought I had cracked things....