Day 1 (7/10/2023):  Our day started with walking to the Aerospace Engineering Education Library where we met our teacher fellow Johnnie Lyman, who has a Ph.D. in oceanography. Johnnie Lyman, and our other teachers Curt Schugers, and Nick Gravish introduced us to each other via ice-breakers and fun lectures which introduced us to Raspberry Pi, a controllable, hardware computing device. For those with no experience in Python, we had a brief overview of the programming language. 

After lunch, we went to Floor 3 of the MAE building to go inside our lab to work on our project: balloon poppers. The project consisted of creating a robot to manually move via gamepad to pop other robots' balloons. However, the coolest part so far was melting brass into plastic with a soldering iron!

After dinner and outside, we decided to have a Barbie-themed skit for the COSMOlympics (a cluster vs cluster skit/presentation competition), since the Barbie movie would come out on July 21st! RA Layla inputted the idea to make robots turn into evil and take over the world. 

Clusters began to disperse through activities, which RAs have planned for us to socialize and become friends with one another. Some cluster members went to a Target Run while others painted their nails! But despite how the activities were meant to destress and have fun, it was still a tiring day.

Day 2 (7/11/2023): Our second day started with another breakfast at Canyon Vista. We were then introduced to our upcoming Ethics Essays, where we'd argue for a side over a controversial robotics-related issue. These essays would also be entered into a campus-wide competition. The best writer for each cluster would receive a $25 gift card. We brainstormed ideas and created research presentations on them where we explained the pros, cons, opinions, and sources. We used sources such as google scholar and were in groups of three. Right before lunch, we had some time to work on our robots. Since most of us were almost finished building the robot, most of the work period was spent programming the robot. Two groups actually managed to complete their robot and were able to drive the robots around. After class, we all got some inside time to ourselves before dinner. Afterwards, we practiced our Barbie skit for the upcoming COSMOlympics competition.  During our nighttime activities, some of us went on a Target trip while others did activities such as basketball or study hall in a "lofi-cafe" with snacks. 

Day 3 (7/12/2023): On our third day, we had a short "review lecture" on Finite State Machines. Afterward, we made a class roster (on the right), and we practiced writing code (via Finite State Machine format) for  Picobots. We had to program Picobot to "cover" the entirety of a couple of different "maps" via algorithms. A few of us got past the 2nd map, but our professor Curt completely destroyed us by completing the code for basically all the maps in just a few minutes. We were able to get a lot of lab work time which allowed many groups to finish coding the servos (rotating thingies) and building the robots. People also started strategizing about possible strategies for popping and defending their balloon from other robots (ex., walls blocking other robots from using arms to pop the balloon). After class, we had dinner and outside time, where some of us played cards while others played bowling on Wii, which our Cluster 10 Residential Assistant Jay had brought out. After outside time we worked on COSMOlympics, and with some discussion, we were able to finalize our plans for our presentation. To end the night, we had fun activities such as dodgeball, spike ball, volleyball, tennis, crocheting, lanyard and bracelets maki g.

Day 4 (7/13/2023): On our fourth day, we started off by listening to a research talk hosted by two UCSD librarians. We then continued presenting our possible topics for our ethics essay. After deciding to write about robots in law enforcement, we researched for our Ethics essay outside in the Engineering Building Unit II courtyard. When we went back inside, Professor Curt gave a lecture on image processing using the Python Numpy and OpenCV libraries, which we will be using for our project next week. During the lecture, he demonstrated cool filters using BGR value manipulation. Finally, we continued working on our robots. Jay, our RA, picked us up after class and took us on a Starbucks run. We were finally able to get a full run-through of our COSMOlympics skit, so we're almost ready for tomorrow! Our nighttime activities included an afternoon/evening run with Jay, bracelet making, a Target run, and a tour of the UCSD Warren mall area.

Canyon Vista Food Review

Day 5 (7/14/2023): Competition day! We can't reveal too much or we'll spoil too much for next year's students, but it was pretty exciting :). Our teacher fellow, Johnnie, took photos of our robots after the competition.

Daily Meals!