Agent Plus Environment

In late July, a solicitation went out to all the Langley summer interns requesting that ten or so people write articles about their summer experiences. It arrived in my inbox alongside the usual selection of notifications, casual correspondence, and informative messages about upcoming activities. I almost passed it by, thinking someone else will respond. It occurred to me, however, that I know how to write. I could thread a story of my summer experiences into an entertaining and cohesive narrative of 500-750 words. So I did.

The article I wrote about my LARSS internship for the Langley Researcher News is up at An Intern’s Story: A Time to Test Flying Robots.

I encourage you to take a look!

A new sport

One of the difficult parts of playing a new sport is that I’m not good at it yet.

My lab played volleyball this summer. Every Wednesday after work, we trotted out to the grass behind the conference center, doing our best not to complain about the humidity and heat. We greeted the other two teams in the league (both of which had clearly played volleyball before–not just in gym class in high school, or, in my case, once during a summer program five years ago), we helped set up the nets, and we began bumping a ball around.

Volleyball was not where any of us excelled. Sure, by the end of the ten weeks, everyone in the lab had improved. We could do what might be called a volley. I could be in the right place at the right time to hit the ball, even if the ball then flew off in completely unintentional directions. When I served, the probability that the ball would both get over the net and stay in bounds was greater than chance (if I remembered to stand on the right, that is, because my serves always flew too far left). It was great fun.

It was also frustrating. I knew that given enough practice, I could be a half-decent volleyballer. Instead of the game being a matter of physical skills and pure luck, it could evolve into a complex, strategic battle, with us setting up plays and plotting out how to outwit the other team. But ten weeks isn’t quite long enough to get us to that point. (Sometimes, I’m impatient.) We lost just about every match played against the other teams.

Losing is hard to watch

My lab had split into two teams and recruited a few extra interns, so most days, the five or six of us on my team rotated through four spots on the court. This meant that some games, I stood on the sidelines during the game point.

That was difficult.

I had no direct control over whether we won or lost. I had to stand there, watching, as hands missed the ball, as the ball smacked the dusty grass, or flew too far out of bounds. I had no power over how hard my teammates tried (whether they desired to win enough to dive after the ball; whether they were tired and sweaty and just wanted it to be over). I could be a cheerleader, but I could not actively influence the outcome of the game.

That was new.

My usual sport is fencing: highly individual, always solo. When you’re on the strip, it’s just you. If you mess up, if you lose, you only have yourself to blame. Even in team competitions, you’re just adding up the scores you and your teammates have separately acquired. You don’t realize, unless you’ve been part of a team, how important it is to trust your teammates. And that’s what made volleyball difficult: because none of us were that good, it wasn’t easy to trust my teammates to be there, backing me up, putting in their best effort to win even though the games were casual and couldn’t be taken seriously given our level of experience.

The thing about trust is, most times, it has to be earned.

Trust and control

Fortunately for my lab, playing volleyball is not what we did full-time. When working on our summer project–establishing the Autonomous Vehicle Lab–I learned I could trust my labmates to have my back. We all cared about the outcome; we could trust each other to each do our part. Not being in control of every little detail (and occasionally standing on the sidelines) was okay, because I knew my labmates were trying just as hard as I was to debug their programs and get the quadcopters flying.

I guess the moral of the story is (besides the obvious “teamwork requires trust”), if you ever have the chance to play a new sport, do so. You never know what you’ll learn.

My labmate Jake and I are in the NASA Langley photo of the week!

The photographer talked to us at the summer intern poster session last Wednesday. He saw our videos of the quadcopters in flight, rightly decided that these particular aerial vehicles are awesome, and asked us if we would mind a quick photo shoot.

It pays to work with cool robots.

Summer’s end

Yesterday was my last day at NASA Langley.

As always, leaving is bittersweet. Working in Garry’s lab has been fantastic and it’s going to be hard to find a job next summer that tops it. But I’m looking forward to senior year–a good lineup of classes, my thesis, the fencing team.

If I was to pick a favorite part of the summer, it’d be this: seeing my lab transition from complete strangers the first day, awkwardly introducing ourselves over lunch, to operating as a close-knit team. Helping each other carry computers to the freight elevator, debating algorithms for autonomous quadcopter obstacle avoidance, laughing over mugs of tea in the evenings. I’ve watched group formation theories in action (such as Tuckman’s forming-storming-norming-performing theory). It may sound cheesy, but we learned to work with our differences, figured out how to combine our strengths, and the result was amazing. The amount of work we got done this summer setting up the Autonomous Vehicle Lab impressed a lot of people at Langley.

Yes, I’m nostalgic already.

I met a plethora of great people and learned so much. I have more stories to share, of course. You’ll continue hearing about my LARSS summer in the coming weeks.

The problem with most advice is that it’s too general. So I thought I’d share a few of the specific and fascinating words of wisdom I’ve picked up during my LARSS summer:

1. Don’t fall in 2Gs. One of my labmates got to ride the vomit comet because of a science project he worked on, and not falling was one of the recommendations while aboard the plane. The rationale was this: If you fall, you’ll fall too fast. You’ll try to bring your arms up to catch yourself–it usually works, but here, your reflexes will be too slow. Your face will hit the ground and your nose will smash as your arms are still moving up to catch you.
2. Astronauts have to be a certain kind of person. My mentor, Garry D. Qualls, told me about a colleague of his who became an astronaut. Evidently, they take a certain type of person. Gregarious, outgoing. Dedicated. The kind of person who, upon receiving a task, will be content doing that task day in and day out to the very best of his/her ability–astronauts have to practice the tasks they’ll be doing in space for a long time beforehand. The kind of person who can speak reasonably well to large groups and who enjoys meeting all kinds of people, since a huge part of the job is public relations.
3. Always double-check baud rates, port numbers, and IP addresses. Save before recompiling, have a common ground, make sure to use charged batteries, and give your program the right input arguments if it requires them. Installing the referenced libraries usually helps, too.
4. Stick with your federal/government job for at least three years. At the grad seminar, held in June with the goal of providing student interns with information about post-baccalaureate options, one of the speakers commented offhand that if you do become a fed, if you stick with it long enough, you’ll get reinstatement rights. I did a little googling to see what kind of rights those are: Evidently, it means you can reenter the fed workforce without competing for the job with the general public. It doesn’t mean you automatically get a job offer. There are obviously some restrictions, but regardless, good to know! That page also mentions that if you don’t work a government job for three years, you get reinstatement rights for only three years after you leave.
5. Ask about details when investigating grad schools. The grad seminar included a panel of three students (graduate or just finished) who each spoke a bit about how they had gotten to their current place in life. One of the students offered advice on good questions to ask the professors at schools you’re considering: If you’d get to do research, what would the specifics be? Not just the topic, but how much time would be spent sitting in front of a computer? reading papers? attending conferences?

I’ll continue sharing stories about what I’ve learned this summer, so be sure to check back soon!

You may have noticed the new tagline on this site’s header. If you were exceptionally observant, you may have noticed that the tagline, for about a day, said “… one girl’s interactions …” rather than “… one woman’s interactions ….” It only struck me later, after seeing the word “girl” at the top the webpage, that I had chosen the wrong word.

As I’m sure you’re aware, “girl” tends to be used to discuss younger female people. When does one switch to referring to those females as “women” instead? Certain criteria appear to be in place for the new title: an age requirement, a threshold level of maturity, specific biological changes. One might hold different standards for oneself than for other people, requiring a particular amount of self-assurance that one is, in fact, mature.

So, out of curiosity, when did you start referring to yourself, in your mental dialogue, as a woman rather than a girl, or as a man rather than a boy?

For me, “girl” would have still been the wrong word a year or two ago. Why did I initially select it anyway? Perhaps I’m still getting used to the idea that I’m growing up. Isn’t the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood a fascinating place to be?

Not your everyday summer job

This summer, I’ve been working for NASA as an intern in the Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars Program. In a one-sentence summary, I’m working with a systems engineering team to develop and integrate the software and hardware needed for both indoor and outdoor tests of autonomous, unmanned multi-vehicle flight control.

But what does that mean, in terms of what I actually do?

It means the past seven weeks have been spent laboring over keyboards, switching between C, C++, Java, and Processing. I’ve carried my lab’s miniature Parking Lot Exploration Rover outside in 105ºF weather to test a navigation algorithm. I’ve learned about PID controls, GPS sensors, and radio communication. I’ve evaluated ground control station software, delved into the depths of an open source flight simulator, and discovered how tricky network protocols can be. I’ve written software for 3D data display programs, data parsers, and communication links. I’ve learned that when you’re one of a team of ten interns, all tackling pieces of the same large project, communication is crucial.

I’m enjoying this internship immensely. Vassar News just released an ego-boosting article about me and my summer, which I suggest you check out.

You’ll be hearing more from me on this subject. Stay tuned.