Day 5 (7/14/23): It's robot competition day! After working on our robots for a while, we launched our battle robots and were put into an arena to fight each other's robots by popping their balloon. The competition featured many different types of ingenious robot "fighting weapons" including arms to reach for balloons, "moveable" cages that would go up and down to protect the balloons, as well as "rammers" to ram into other carts to destroy their cages & pop balloons. Overall though it was hella fun and cool, seeing our work finally pay off while having fun as a cluster. Afterward, we had our COSMOlympics presentation! Our presentation was about Barbie robots (it matches our theme (cluster 10: robot inventors)) revolting at a "Barbie demonstration" and taking over the world. Although we didn't win (it was rigged lol), we still had a ton of fun performing our skit and watching everyone else's super interesting skits.

Day 6 (7/15/23): Field trip day!!! Clusters 1-7 went to the San Diego Zoo and Clusters "everyone else" went to the beach. The trip there was pretty cool. At the beach we had three main activities: going to the ocean, exploring the nearby stores, and staying at the tent and mooching on snacks/napping/playing spike ball & other sports. To swim, you needed a swim waiver, which had to be completed before COSMOS. While we were given prepackaged lunches, many people went to nearby restaurants such as "Sushi Mori" or "Dough Mama" (pizza restaurant👍). After heading back, we had some programming that included karaoke night, slime-making, and a paper airplane contest.

Day 7 (7/16/23): On Sunday, we had much more free time to ourselves in our dorms. The RAs gradually took us out throughout the day to do our laundry. In the afternoon, some of us went to Geisel Library to work on our ethics essays, while others went to the Sixth College rooftop for a picnic.

Day 8 (7/17/23): Today was the first day we were allowed to walk to class without an RA, though we still had to check in for a headcount first. Instead of starting the morning with a lecture, we went straight to the lab to work on our robots. This week's challenge is to have our robot autonomously solve a maze using colored tabs for directions. After lunch, Professor Curt gave us an introduction to electronics, where we learned about Kirchhoff's current and voltage laws as well as Ohm's law. Professor Michael Yip, a former Cluster 10 professor, then came as a guest speaker to talk to us about projects in his lab, including his snake robot. We learned about how robots can be applied to almost any field, from surgery to space exploration.  After class, we participated in nightly programming activities like ceramics, karaoke 👌, and exploring UCSD. 

Day 9 (7/18/23): Our morning started off with a discovery lecture by Professor Benjamin Smarr from the Bioengineering Department. He talked about his research with sensors that monitored different parts of the body, which led to new data that hadn't been seen before. Because of his research, he was invited to measure how COVID affects body temperature, and he advocated for later school start times. Then, we walked to the Geisel Library to get a quick view from the silent eighth floor and work on our ethics essays. Just before lunch, Professor Nick gave us a lecture on feedback and P-I-D (proportional-integral-derivative) control and introduced us to some concepts and code we could use on our robots. During the afternoon, we spent working on our maze-solving robots, which integrates color detection, motor, and camera. During inside time, some of us went to Yogurtland and Target with RAs. Nightly programming activities included watching the sunset, and playing board games, playing basketball, and running in the afternoon with Jay.

Day 10 (7/19/23): We got to visit one of the MAE computer labs today during Professor Nick's CAD lecture. He lectured us about freehand sketching and spatial visualizations, which included experience on OnShape (CAD). Some of the vocabulary words include: orthographies, hidden lines, assemblies and isometrics.  Then after some practice, we headed back down to our usual classroom to attend a guest lecture by Xiaolong Wang, a professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering department who specializes in Machine Learning in robotics, specifically in robotic hands and legs. Just before lunch, we went to the MAE sign in front of the EBU2 building so that we could take a photo with the Cluster 10 instructional staff. For the rest of the afternoon, we continued working hard on our projects because we would not get any lab time on Thursday.  For the rest of the night, most of us crammed our ethics essays, which are due on Friday. Some did the night's programs such as: UCSD Tour, Basketball, Chess, Karaoke, and Ceramic City!