New Readers

Wow, I have received 200 hits today. Not sure why the blog is exploding right now, but thank you to all the new readers! Hope you enjoy the adventures.

10 days to go!

Budapest

Last weekend, I went to Budapest with 8 SSP friends. We took a 6am train which arrived at noon. We met up with my Ukrainian friend, Olya, who showed us the town. First we went to a Greek restaurant which was very tasty. Then we dropped our bags off at the hostel before Olya took us on a tour of the city. First we climbed the citadel which had an amazing view. Then we walked through a castle. There was a Renaissance Festival inside! After that we had a quite delicious Hungarian dinner. The next day half of us toured Parliament and the other half went to visit the bath houses (spa). Parliament was incredible! After a fantastic Italian lunch, we met the other group at the train station for the trip home. Here are some pictures of the trip on facebook and below.

Internal Review and Last Culture Night

I honestly cannot believe how fast time flies here and at the same time when you think back to a previous day it feels like it was months ago even if it was just last week. Last Friday, August 26, the 3 teams presented an internal review to the whole SSP (similar to an interim review). Each team presented for about 35 minutes and then answered follow-up questions. TP Water went first, then TP Robo (my team), and finally TP Small Satellites. I thought our presentation went really well. We had a dry run (practice) the previous evening. Our chair, emerging chair, and TA gave us some really helpful feedback which made all the difference the next day. We received more feedback that afternoon from the SSP directors and other reviewers. Everything is coming along nicely!

Four people presented from TP Robo - Friedrich, me, Chris, and Jeff (below). Check out our cool shirts! Here are some more pictures.


After the presentation we had some down time. It felt amazing to just relax for a bit after a busy and productive week.Then we had the sixth and final cultural night! Here are some pictures. The contributing countries were China, Chile, Iran, Romania, Germany and Spain!

Heads Down

This is it.... the final push for SSP 2011! We just finished the second full team project day. How to describe a team project.... it is an all-out, intense, frenetic, energetic period that lasts roughly 3 weeks. In teams of 40, we are trying to assemble a 100-page document with corresponding letter of intent and executive summary to address a given topic. Once again, this is our mission statement:

It is the mission of the Cooperation of Humans and Robots for Mars (CHARM) team to propose a model for effective human-robot cooperation and apply it to Mars exploration scenarios for the time frame between 2015 and 2035.

We have accomplished an incredible amount of work these past 2 days. Our team is really starting to gel and we have so many amazing people. Of course, we have put in close to 400 hours in the 2 days as well. We have completed all the background research and are well on our way with developing the model.

I just wanted to get a quick post out because I can't promise you'll hear from me again before this is over.

There isn't much time to come up for air!

I am on the internal review presentation team, the executive summary team, and I'll be helping the editing team. Here is a quick look at our tight schedule:

• Aug 26 - internal review, last cultural night
  
• Aug 27-28 - weekend trip to see my friend in Hungary!
• Aug 29 - cover art due
• Aug 30 - last day to generate new content - editing begins
• Aug 31 - get my cast off!!
  
• Sept 3 - final report due
• Sept 5 - executive summary due
• Sept 8 - final presentations
• Sept 9 - closing ceremony
• Sept 10 - fly home to my very patient husband!

Meanwhile, little by little, our TP room is turning into a little slice of heaven. We have 2 white couches with pink pillows, smooth jazz music, and a fireplace video loop. We also have glorious air conditioning, which is completely necessary since it is hotter than the surface of the sun outside.

Hopefully this won't be my last post, but I'm not making any promises!


The Robo Team Equation for a cozy, stress-free work room:

This:

Plus this:


Equals this: