My first small step towards being a cyborg (next step: chainsaw arm)

This week, I controlled a robot with my brain.  I’m gonna say it again, so it can sink (and cause I like saying it).

I controlled a robot with my brain.

This final project for my Neural Engineering lab.  A lego robot, controlled by neural signals (we’re using EMG), that has to be able to navigate a maze.  The EMG circuitry is connected to the computer and our software (labview, expect a separate post on that at some point) checks for spikes indicating neural signals being sent to the muscle.  The amperage of the computer’s output is too weak to actually drive the robot’s motors, so we use the signal to flip a transistor that’s hooked up to 9 volt batteries that actually drive the motors.  This happens every time the system sees a spike.

On Wednesday we had our first live test (using real EMG signals instead of a recording).  We set it up to drive both motors at the same time (we haven’t worked out driving the wheels separately yet).  Every time I flexed my muscle, the robot would scoot forward.  Well, not quite.  Our system is nowhere responsive enough to feel that transparent.  You had to really work to get the spike high enough that the motors would run, and sometimes they’d keep running for a while after you stopped flexing.  But, man.  It.  Was.  Awesome.

Industrial Design Class Blog

The title says it all, really.  My industrial design class has a blog, and I just made my first post.  Enjoy!

A Good Start

The new semester is looking pretty good (and we’re already 3 weeks in!) so I thought it was about time to write a post about it.  It’s a slightly smaller class load than I’ve had in the past (which I am looking forward to dearly).  In addition to having less hours overall, I managed to accidentally create a schedule with no classes on Fridays!  In no particular order, I’m taking:

Natural Language Processing (CS)
Neural Engineering (BioE)
Industrial Design I (for real this time!)
Networking (CS)

NLP is taught by a smiley Italian professor who’s working on a computer tutoring system.  I’ve volunteered for her research a couple of times, and when I last tried it out ( a couple years ago) it was working pretty well.  The class has been slow moving so far, mostly talking about the inherent ambiguity of natural languages and Finite State Transducers, but the pace is starting to pick up; we just started covering the use of probabilities for resolving ambiguities.  I’m not sure what the projects for this class will be yet, but previous classes have done cool things like Text-to-Speech programs and machine translation, so I’m sure it will be something fun.

The class I’m probably most excited about this semester is Neural Engineering.  It consists of a lab and a lecture (which are actually considered separate classes by the university) taught by two different professors.  Dr. John Hetling, who teaches the lecture class, does research on retinal prostheses.  Neural Engineering is such a new field that there isn’t a textbook for this class yet, so instead we read seminal and cutting edge papers in the field.  Allow me to repeat myself.  I’m taking a class that is too baller for textbooks.  Two of the papers we’ve read so far are co-authored by Dr. Patrick Rousche, who teaches the lab class.  Unlike previous lab classes I’ve taken (where you get spoon fed instructions), the assignments only give you a general guideline for completing your assigned task.  Right now we’re building ECG and EMG circuits.  I sure if I would take the lab (it fits awkwardly into my schedule) until I found out about the final project.  We haven’t been given all the details yet, but the final project will in some way involve controlling a LEGO Mindstorm car using brainwaves.  That’s right.  Driving a car with our fucking brains!

The Networking class is taught by Dr. John Bell, who runs the the Virtual Reality Undergraduate Projects Laboratory.  I’ve been excited about taking this class since I started at UIC, and so far it hasn’t disappointed.  Yesterday we got an in class demonstration of e-mail spoofing using telnet.

Industrial Design.  This is the class I tried to audit last semester after being unable to enroll in it legitimately after 4 years of trying.  The auditing plan failed, but we managed to make a big enough stink about it that they let me in without a fight this semester.  It’s being taught mostly by my friend Siobahn (who I know from Gardening Club), and it’s been fun.  So far it’s been fairly basic exercises, but we’re starting to get into more advanced stuff soon.  Part of the class includes documenting your work (something I’ve been trying to get better at) so you’ll probably see a decent amount of my work for this class on here.  I’ve also volunteered to run the class blog (where everyone will be documenting their work), so there might be a couple cross posts.

All in all, it’s shaping up to be an exciting semester.

UIC Sucks Sometimes (or Attack of the Red Tape)

Ugh.  I just wrote a long post on what happened, but for some reason hitting ‘publish’ deleted what I wrote instead.  Great.

Long story short, I tried to take an Industrial Design class for the 4th time and got screwed by UIC beuracracy and the Art Department’s elitism.  If I work up the time and energy I’ll try to rewrite what I had.

A new semester

I just started a new semester at UIC and, with one notable exception, it’s starting off well.  This is my last full semester at UIC, so I’m almost finished with my Computer Science requirements and starting to shift into my BioE classes.  The classes I’m taking are:

Artificial Intelligence (CS)
Object-Oriented Languages and Environments (CS)
Neural Modeling (BioE)
Discrete and Continuous Signals and Systems (BioE)
American Civilization Since the Late 19th Century (Gen Ed)
Industrial Desing I (auditing; fun!)

The AI class is taught by an Eastern European joker who sounds like Ah-nold and goes by Piotr.  He’s got a hilarious teaching style, but comes to class ~10 minutes late every time.  I’ve been told that the teaching style gets old at some point and that this class is kind of disappointing, but for now I’m enjoying it.

I took the OO class less out of interest than schedule fitting, but now that it’s started I’m starting to get excited about it.  We’re learning Smalltalk right now, a programming language that’s pure Object-Oriented (everything is an object!) that I’ve (idly) wanted to learn for a while.  One of my interests is Physical Computing, and it seems like a pure OO language might be ideally suited to that sort of interface.  We’ll see if I still feel that way once I actually start writing code in Smalltalk, but for now I’m hoping to do some sort of experimentation in that direction.

The two BioE classes are what drove the shape of my schedule this semester.  If I want to complete my minor I’m going to have to let it control my schedule until I graduate, more or less.  The Neural Modeling Class is taught by Dr. Jim Patton who also teaches at Northwestern and has a lab at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.  Last year he gave me a tour of his lab and they’re doing some great research on brain plasticity and learning (and they’ve got some great toys!).  We’re going to spend most of the class learning how to model neurons in Matlab.  Needless to say, I’m really excited for this class.  The Signals and Systems class looks to be another mildly interesting ECE class.  It’s the first one that really incorporates differential equations, so I’m interested to see how much of that math I’ve retained in the intervening year.

American Civ seemed like a pretty decent way to fill a gen ed requirement and flesh out my knowledge of American history and politics.  The  prof is blustery old man who seems pretty full of vim and vigor despite the fact that he’s retiring this year.

I’ve been trying to take an Industrial Design class almost since I started going to UIC, and as you might have deduced, it is the notable exception I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  It is so notable in fact, that I’m going to have to devote an entire post to it.  All I’ll say for now is that I’m drowning in red tape.