Hello World!

Who Am I?

I am not a writer.

Actually, that should more accurately say, I am not a writer yet. But this site is part of my effort to change that.

I am, however, a robotics scientist. I work for a research lab that explores autonomy for very unique and challenging environments. Because of these environments, a lot of existing robotic applications will not work. So we explore new or adapted methods so the robots can complete their missions. I’ve worked in this field for about 7 years and have loved every minute of it. Since that time, I have risen up through the team and now lead the entire lab. We are relatively small, consisting of only about 8 people, but the entire team is great to work with. Despite taking this leadership role, I still actively engage in research and keep my technical chops up.

Additionally, I also just recently went back to school part time to obtain my PhD in robotics! I’m fortunate enough that my employer will fund my research and tuition. So this makes it pretty convenient for me, and I’m excited for this phase of my career.

This PhD path brings me back to why I claim to not be a writer yet. When starting out, I read The A-Z of the PhD Trajectory by Eva O. L. Lantsoght. It is a fantastic book. I highly recommend it for anyone obtaining a PhD. In it, she highlights how “Writing is often considered as [a researcher’s] most important academic skill.” This makes sense, since writing is the primary form of communication for new scientific ideas. Additionally, Patricia Goodson in Becoming an Academic Writer stresses the view that academics need to see themselves as writers through continual practice.

I would rate my writing abilities as just okay. I can get the point across, but my writing is nothing special. I would consider writing my weakest out of all my academic skills. From what I’ve read, I’m not alone on this either. So I am very interested in ways to improve this. One idea mentioned in Dr. Lantsoght’s book is maintaining a blog or other online presence. It offers a way to practice outside formal papers. It has the added benefit of allowing me to develop my academic identity and participate in the community as I go through my PhD. That has me convinced, so here we are! This site aims to do just that.

Goals

I have four primary goals for this site:

1. Practice My Writing I believe I have gotten the point across on this one above.
2. Share My Progress As I continue through my PhD journey, I’d like to share some of my experiences. While I have a rather unique situation, there are bound to be things that are useful to share with others pursuing their PhDs as well. If I can help someone else, all the better.
3. Share Information This will include a range of content that I find useful. Some of it might be reviews of other resources out on the web. Others might be tutorials on using certain tools or features.
4. Document Projects Occasionally, I somehow have time to work on projects for fun. I try to always make sure to thoroughly document my work, including READMEs and tutorials. This site will highlight some of those works.

While I would love to commit to a certain posting frequency, I also know what my schedule is like. Especially during exam weeks, it is unlikely that I will be able to update on a consistent basis. However, I already have several ideas queued up, so there should be some good content coming down the pipe soon.

Who are You?

I am primarily targeting this at other members of the autonomy and AI community. I have other interests outside of robotics, I swear! But this site will primarily focus on items of interest to the community, specifically those conducting research There may be a tangent or two if something strikes my interest.

Because I am focused on the robotics research community, I tend to assume some familiarity with the field and related skills, such as programming. I always try to explain things clearly, but I am going to skip a lot of introductory material. You won’t see an overview of how neural networks work or anything like that.

If you have any recommendations for content to include, please let me know! I’m always interested in new ideas and discussions with the community. But either way, enjoy the site! I recommend checking out my other posts or some of my tutorials first.