Things are going so far so good.

Word is that there will be a review panel meeting on Nov 3 to approve or disapprove of the grant we’re requesting. Fingers crossed that it will go through.

The other day, I came up with a new idea for the snake robot the group is pushing to make. I’m not going to reveal the brilliance, because it’s top secret. It’s so good that people might want to steal it. That is, unless the idea really is novel. I haven’t seen any papers or documents discussing the approach, but that doesn’t mean it’s not already out there.

Nonetheless, one of my supervisors thinks it’s pretty interesting. So, we’re going to see if we can make a simple experiment to serve as a proof of concept. Admittedly, I can already foresee a number of issues that the idea has, but this is not to say those problems should thwart us from moving forward. I was talking to one of the older phd students and he said that research on how things don’t work is still research.

I had another idea for the snakebot, but my supervisor didn’t seem to take as much interest in it than the first stroke of genius I had. At any rate, I am feeling rather good about myself, because I feel like I am finally making some sort of contribution to the group. Even if my ideas turn out to be complete dead ends, the temporary ego boost is still a good thing, since it’s giving me motivation to explore the topic.

As for the humanoid project, I haven’t been doing too much, since my energy has been focused on the snake bot. I have to prepare a presentation on the state of the art of my research topics. I sort of have to cover both topics, since it’s still sort of up in the air as to which project I’m going to be working on. As of now, the humanoid portion of my presentation is a bit empty. I’ll have to work on getting that filled.