Week 4 Post 1

Creating my own dataset turned out to be a hustle for me. I did not expect to struggle with it so much. The task itself sounded pretty simple and straightforward. The task was to record different types of hand movements using deep learning techniques. However, the obstacles were meeting me on each step of that task. At first, I had issues with various installations. There were a lot of packages, libraries, dependencies, and upgrades that I had to install, and every single one of those installations didn't go smoothly. I can still say that I am proud of myself because I eventually figured it all out. I had to use catkin to create my own workspace virtual environment, and it helped me understand ROS more. Eventually, I got to record my own videos, and the code, written with OpenCV and Yolo, worked just fine. I learned how to read, write, and show various video types. However, I faced another problem after recording the video. I am now not sure what to do next because the videos that I recorded of my hand gestures cannot be opened on any video player. The error that it throws seems out of the ordinary. That is when I got frustrated. Facing the errors all day long and finally executing the code seemed like a big step for me, but it still was not enough to produce my own dataset, as it was not working. I recorded quite a lot of videos, and none of them play. I stayed up late at work until the late evening and what I got were videos that did not seem to work. My frustration got out of control, and I got very disappointed. I was mad at myself for not being able to finish the task until the end, but rather giving up and going home. I am not used to giving up, but today I felt like I could not make any more progress, so I just called it a day and left work. I did not expect that from myself, but I think today showed me the other side of the research. I realized that it would never go according to the plan. Being involved in the research, exploring new questions, and finding solutions to them is not a linear path. It is about learning, growing, and accepting both progress and failures. The road to academia is going to have its ups and downs. Whenever I feel like this, the only thing that cheers me up is knowing that tomorrow is going to be a new day full of new opportunities to express my creativity and problem-solving skills. That is why I am still excited about keeping up with the work.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 11 Post 1

This is the last official day of my internship, according to my internship proposal. I decided to come to the lab just to get into this environment full of creative people one last time. Honestly, I am going to miss this lab, the project that I worked on, the people in the lab whose creativity inspired me to strive for more, and the atmosphere of this place in general. This is one of the best schools in engineering in the country, and I am very grateful for having an opportunity to work with such amazing and experienced professionals in the field of Robotics and AI. My journey here was not flawless, and of course, I had some obstacles and challenges on my way throughout this internship. However, those obstacles and challenges did not stop me from accomplishing my goals and proving to myself that I could become who I am meant to be. I feel so much more experienced and knowledgeable after this internship because I had never thought that I would be able to work on such novel for me things...
Read more

Week 9 Post 3

I start realizing that I am coming to the end of my journey at the Collaborative Robotics Lab. It feels sad because I am used to working on something that I am passionate about and being independent in what I am working on. Also, I am sad because I am used to the creative people around me, working on projects that have never been explored before by other people, which daily gave me the inspiration to pursue my passions in AI. It feels like I always belonged to this lab and worked here for years, instead of two months. I do understand though that it is not the end because I might have an opportunity in the future to join this lab as a graduate student or a Ph.D. student. On the good side, I am getting progress on my kNN algorithm. I was able to fix the bugs that occurred last time, and I started getting the clustering that I needed. It seems like it is working; however, I am not sure if that is what I need exactly. The way I see the project, it goes exactly how it is supposed to go, but...
Read more

Final Reflection

  It has been two and a half months working as a research intern in the Collaborative Robotics Lab at Purdue University. Words cannot describe how grateful I am for the experience and knowledge gained during the internship. When I first started, I could not possibly imagine that I would be able to go this far in understanding, analyzing, and researching the hard concepts, structures, and algorithms in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. As I worked mostly with AI, I have a lot to say about the progress that I have made as a researcher in this field. Starting off with the first few weeks in the lab, I can say that I felt overwhelmed and frustrated with all the new information and tools that I needed to comprehend and implement. I was hoping to work in a team of other research interns so that I would be able to collaborate and solve problems with other people. However, I had to work by myself as all the interns were assigned to different projects. At first, it scared me because I w...
Read more