Coaching Questions Group 7
To help your group and the teachers prepare for the tutor meetings, we would like you to answer a few questions in between sessions. The following paragraphs list the questions for each of the weeks, please write you answers directly underneath the questions.
After the kick-off - Week 1
- What are you expecting to learn during the Robots course?
To work together in a small group of enthousiasts and really focus on a subject that is of interest to the group.
- What kind of coaching do you expect?
Weekly meeting with tutors telling us what not to do, instead of trying to guide in the right direction
- What kind of coaching would you prefer?
Feedback about how to reach the goal more effectively and if we are on the right track
- What will the coaches expect of you?
A driven mindset and professional behaviour as a group
After the first tutor meeting - Week 2
- What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
We learned that there is an expert on protheses in Holland (Arie Rommers) who we might be able to interview. Next to that, we learned that we need to be more specific in choosing our goals.
- How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
We already contacted Arie Rommers, and we are gonna make an appointment with him. We are also making our goals more specific.
- What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
Eva: Contacted Spierings, a company that makes prosthetics, to see if we could use their material. Furthermore, I looked into EEGs to understand what we are going to measure.
Jurre: Contacted Prof. J. Bergmans, who works with a EEG machine. I looked into EEGs aswell.
Karsten: Contacted Arie Rommers with a positive response. I learned that being proactive can get you alot more than you might expect. Furthermore a CAD-model of the wrist mechanism has been started. The condylar joint (as present in the human wrist) is modelled with placeholder dimensions. This taught me something about how the human wrist is working and how to represent this in a schematic way.
Steven: I went through multiple papers on how it is actually possible to calculate a direction vector using information obtained from the brain. I also started with machine learning in python, which started with learning how to actually make code in python. After this I tried to find debugg some of the gradient descent algorithm.
Thijs:I started learning about machine learning in python with an online course (https://www.kdnuggets.com/2015/11/seven-steps-machine-learning-python.html). Doing the first part of this course, I refreshed my grasp on the syntax of python, and in the second part, so far I managed to make a gradient descent algorithm in python. Also, Steven, Eva, Karsten and I went to the lunch lecture 'Learning from the Brain' by professor Bart ter Haar Romenij on wednesday, and we asked him for the powerpoint, which he gave us. I have the impression that this powerpoint will be a useful inspirational source for our project.
- What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
We discussed what we want to ask for the next meeting, and prepared some additional less important questions individually, if needed.
After the second tutor meeting - Week 3
- What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
- How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
- What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
Eva: Went to Spierings, talked about wrist prosthetics and got the address of a person working for Touch Bionics, which makes bionic prosthetics. I also looked into different studies of EEGs, especially wrists. It turns out that EEGs are difficult to use; not very accurate. I have also looked a bit into the dynamixels we got to model the wrist.
Karsten: Harrie van de Loo gave us two dynamixels to simulate movement of a wrist. Got in touch with Marco van Nieuwenhoven, who is also conducting research in hand prosthetics. Arie wants to help the project too, so if we get our hands on EEG equipment he wants to help us collect data.
- What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
After the third tutor meeting - Week 4
- What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
Dynamixels use a communication protocol to send/receive commands.
- How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
Studied what the actuator's use to communicate from web literature.
- What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
Eva: Contacted Donders institute to ask about their EEG-equipment, but didn't get a reply. Also looked into the Dynamixel software, to understand how to control them.
Karsten: Assembled the physical model. Learned the way to send commands to the actuators, They use RS485 protocol. Made basic software to communicate to these actuators.
- What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
Come together with the group before the tutor meeting, to discuss what we want to ask during the meeting.
After the fourth tutor meeting - Week 5
- What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
- How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
- What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
- What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
After the fifth tutor meeting - Week 6
- What is the most interesting thing you learned in the coaching meeting of the previous week and why?
- How did you incorporate coaches' feedback of the previous meeting in your project?
- What new activities did you undertake during this week? What did you learn from these activities?
- What did you do to prepare for next week's meeting?
After the final presentation - Week 7
- What are the major steps of the project? Please list
- What is the most important thing you learned in this project? (e.g .about design or working in groups, etc)
- What do you wish you had spent more time on or done differently?
- What was the most enjoyable part of this project? Please explain why
- What was the least enjoyable part of this project? Please explain why