Weather: very hot, 33 °C. Not unusual at home either, but that doesn’t make it pleasant · Sleep: slept like a log, just a bit too long · Lunch: my stomach’s a bit unsettled, eating will be hard · Music: Neuroticfish, Nightwish, Glis
I’m very proud of myself. Yesterday I got my first task: I have to apply reinforcement learning with HyMeKo. It doesn’t seem so daunting — really it’s about building a grasping scenario. Although, of course, as I got going, the difficulties came up: the action/observation space isn’t right, there are errors in the mappings, and that’s exactly why the learning doesn’t converge but practically stalls in place. Luckily I’ve already made progress with this compared to yesterday; the situation is better today.
What’s thickened a little now is the work back home. A lot of administration and organisation landed on me that had to be smoothed over. On top of that, the perennial projects — some progress was needed there too. With one of them I managed to eliminate the problem quite well: it just needed retraining, and right away it detected the desired features better. There’s still one bug, but that can wait a little. With the other, though, I’ll still have things to do.
Research
I also discussed the matter a bit with Professor Galambos. In Hungary he’s pretty much unavoidable when it comes to robotics. He suggested a small simplification to test with: simpler, but just as striking, and it helps a lot in building a sort of “Hello world” program. This could be good, because it would showcase the basic idea well.
By the afternoon, naturally, some results had come. Not perfect yet, there’s work to do on it. Honestly, I do feel privileged to receive research tasks after a seminar. So I might say: let’s go, on to work.
Evening in the lab
Of course more calls and requests keep coming. But the way I see it, most of them are either home projects or tasks I can finish relatively quickly. So this is quite good right now. On one project, too, the tasks are going relatively well at the moment.
At the end of the day I chatted a bit with Sakuma about what he does. On one hand, teaching — he clearly puts a lot of emphasis on that. In his practical classes the students have to program a humanoid robot (a smaller one, of course). On the other hand, his research topic is, I think, really exciting: he works on affective learning. That is, how we humans can get ever closer to machines and artificial intelligence — so that it’s a relatively smooth relationship. This could help in design, for example. I wish him a lot of luck, and I’ll try to read his papers!
Evening
Of course it wouldn’t be an evening if it didn’t go, again, with me hunting for places around eight. On top of that, there was a quick briefing about putting out the rubbish: the young guy explained how to crush it and throw it out. Unfortunately I couldn’t put out the blue rubbish (the plastic) yet — for that I have to get up a bit earlier. But I finally found out where to collect the cardboard boxes, so at least that’s clear too. After the briefing I went to AEON City for food.
While the food really is delicious here, I have to admit I don’t feel like eating fast food every evening, the way I did back home in Hungary. But, to my greatest astonishment, there was a place where I spent a lot of money and, like at Wakashachiya, ate myself stuffed.
A new sushi place opened. At first, when they advertised it, I thought it had become some kind of fish sale — they advertised it so much with a tuna-slicing master chef that I thought it was a one-off event. But when I saw it was a restaurant, I knew I had to try it.
Again, as usual, I stood in front of the screen trying to pick out the Japanese characters, when finally a waiter came and ushered me in. When, in my great bashfulness, I asked where I could sit, he said “sure, you can sit,” gave me a card, and showed me my spot. In my great delight I sat down — and that’s when a minor agony began.
Because right next to me, on the conveyor belt, the ready-made sushi went by in a row. Surely everyone has seen this in films. All day I’d eaten a single onigiri. In the end I ordered a seasonal sushi and a shrimp udon (I keep saying it: shrimp bites are common in Nagoya). While I waited, the sushi paraded around me, and I already felt like in an Asterix comic — when they go on a diet and keep talking about roast wild boar.
Finally the food arrived, and it was very mouthwatering. As I mentioned, on one hand I ordered an udon with shrimp: it seems this will be my favourite food around here. On the other hand, the seasonal sushi: teriyaki fish, with a little soup, with egg. Of course I ate the whole thing, filled up, ate myself stuffed.
After that I just went to the shop for water and tea. Nothing left but to do a little more research.
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