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"a drunken stupor" - Stanford - intellectually engaging


26matrices 2 / 4  
Nov 24, 2009   #1
Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.

Frank drove in a drunken stupor. Weaving to the left, he could not stay on a straight course and crashed into a pile of bricks.

Luckily, Frank was just a robot car built from Lego pieces. I was on my school's First Lego League team: the first date that hooked me on robotics. But, just like marriage has its arguments, I have had my disagreements with robots.

One thing I have learned from four years of robotic experience is that robot cars cannot move in a straight line-especially Lego robot cars. Those studded axles refuse alignment and caused many headaches. Using a "keep it super simple" methodology, my FLL team relied on chance and nimble eyes to aim the robot away from the target; about 15 degrees to the right would do it. Little Frank had a 75% success rate doing this. With our "wing it baby" ideology, Frank flew past the regional competitions and made it to the state level, where we quickly found out 'robots' and 'uncontrolled' are two words that should never be combined. It is unreliable, and frankly dangerous.

After this frustrating experience, I put my relationship with robot on hiatus. A year later, I received the greatest revelation while getting my driver's license: regular cars don't go straight either. Car alignment is not a stable, static system, but a positive feedback system-people use steering wheels to keep their vehicles straight. I made Ruby, a robot car to traverse a model city. Going for a controlled system, I used light sensors as the solution, setting boundaries and parameters for her to stay between. Now if Ruby strayed too far right, the right light sensor would let her know that she was off the road, allowing her to adjust the wheels left-just like humans do.

The beauty of robotics shines most exemplarily when robots and I work things out-just like marriage.
meisj0n 8 / 272 2  
Nov 24, 2009   #2
really? I thought Mindstorm robots moved rather nicely.

interesting topic, for me at least. use another word instead of disagreements. I don't see really what you "disagree" on, maybe other than their uncontrollable-ness. Maybe since you want to mention more about why you figured the robot messed up, a more intellectual analysis of the issue. maybe mention how even computerized robots made mistakes and need better control's.

I'm assuming you used a R/C car? or was it something else?
damnsam 1 / 4  
Nov 24, 2009   #3
Wow this is very good.
I agree with the above. If you are trying to compare robots and marriage you could use more analogies :)
Just a suggestion but I'm not applying to Stanford ha

Could you please help me out it would be greatly appreciated!
EF_Kevin 8 / 13,321 129  
Nov 26, 2009   #4
You are my hero, this is some excellent writing. The first sentence, and especially: After this frustrating experience, I put my relationship with robot on hiatus. Ha ha, I don't know about the word exemplarily, though! Wow, that is a strange one.

You'll do very well, for sure. But seriously, don't use exemplarily, ha ha...


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