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Week 1: On Your Marks, Get Set, Ready, Go!
Monday 7/7/25
Our first day began with our cluster resident assistant taking us on a twenty-minute walk to the building. We enjoyed the walk, as we received our first glimpse of University of California San Diego’s beautiful campus. However, the air was chilly and we regretted not bringing warmer clothes.
We were greeted by a warm smile from Dr. Jack Silberman as he opened the door for us to enter our classroom. He briefly introduced himself and our other instructors: teacher fellow Mr. Mike Tritchler and aides Jingli, Daniel and Madison.
We watched a lab safety video before Dr. Silberman briefed us on what we would be working on for the next week. Racing teams were also formed.
As Dr. Silberman explained the content of this course, we were a bit intimidated by all the things we would be learning over the next month. Dr. Silberman sensed this, advising us to take the program week by week and to focus on delivering on the next objective in order not to get overwhelmed.
Nevertheless, we were excited to tackle these new challenges and learn from each other.
After lunch, Mr. Mike Tritchler also gave us a brief lesson on computer-aided design using OnShape, where he guided us on designing a simple case for a Jetson Nano. Afterwards, we participated in skit-making for the COSMOlympics.
Today, we were introduced to our first project, setting up the Donkey Sim. Donkey Sim is a racing game in which you drive a car around a track. Your driving is then used to train an AI which will learn how you drive and imitate it. On Friday, we'll do a twitch stream of every student's AI car racing! As cool as this all sounds, it's also a pain to set up. Students had to install VMware and Ubuntu to set up thier virtual machines in order to run Donkey Sim, but we encountered many bugs that persisted well into the week.
A 3D printer uses PLA filament to print a Jetson Nano case. Teams created cases to protect their Jetson Nanos, which would later be attached to their RC cars. Photo | Liz Liu
Cluster 11 huddles in a circle to brainstorm ideas for their skit. Each cluster would perform a two minute skit, competing to create the best skit. Photo | Liz Liu
An example of one of the many errors students faced when running Donkey Sim and trying to set up VMware.
Students from Team 1 discuss potential designs for their Jetson Nano case. Many teams opted to modify existing Jetson Nano designs found on the internet instead of creating their own from scratch to save time to work on their cars. Photo | Liz Liu
Tuesday 7/8/25
Morning!
Today was another exciting and productive day in Cluster 11! We started off the morning with a Zoom session where we got instructions for our upcoming Ethics presentations and competition. Each group will be tackling a real-world ethical issue in science or engineering, and the team with the best presentation will win COSMOS swag. Everyone is already thinking of creative ideas and working hard to make their presentations stand out.
More and more Work!
After the Zoom session, we spent most of our class time working on our Pacman-themed robots and running simulations. The simulations focused on how our cars would perform, but many of us ran into some technical difficulties while installing the software. Still, we figured things out by helping each other, and the CAs were really supportive and patient throughout. It was a great reminder of how important collaboration is in engineering.
Lecture: CADing with Mr. Mike
Later in the day, we had a CAD session with Mr. Mike. He has been guiding us through the basics step by step, which makes it easier to understand even if we are new to it. We are continuing to build parts of our Pacman designs, and it has been really cool to see our ideas take shape in 3D.
COSMOlympics
To finish off the day, our cluster got together to start planning our COSMOlympics skit. We continued building the storyline and fleshing it out to include characters, dialogue, and some fun moments that tie into the theme of Cars. Everyone contributed ideas and helped shape the plot, and we’re starting to get a clearer picture of how the skit will come together. It was a fun and collaborative way to end the day, and we’re looking forward to rehearsing and bringing it to life.
On Wednesday, we learned the basics of python. We had a lesson on everything from "Hello World" to functions and classes by our wonderful CA (Cluster Assistant) Daniel. After the long yet interesting lesson, we worked in our teams to complete our ethics projects, build our cars, and continue trouble shooting the VMs. For some people, the Virtual Machines were working and they were ready to begin collecting data for the AI to start training. But for others, they were still having issues with setting up VMware or getting Ubuntu to install. Wi-Fi Speeds were slow and installing Ubuntu could take as long as 4 hours!
Once we left class at 4 pm, we headed back to our dorms for an hour of cool-down time (although the walk from class to the dorms is 15 minutes so cool-down is more like 30-40minutes). Then it was time for Cosmolympics! We collaborated to make several props for our Cars movie recreation: wheels, steering wheels, flags, and a foam finger. We had by far the most props. We painted the props and got paint on ourselves, but we had made amazing progress.
CA Daniel teaching the class - Photo by: Sana
Lecture: Learning Python
The class was focused on learning Python. It was very interesting to hear him teach. Using Google Collab, we all were able to have hands-on experience about concepts like if statement and loops! Today, the last quarter of the class was dedicated to fixing and optimizing our models.
Lab/Workshop: AI training
We worked on our AI models using the VM and creating data using the Donkey Sim program for our models. Alongside that, we worked on designing our physical RC cars. Carlo from Team 1 was the first person to get under 20 seconds on his AI model, which was on the main track! Others aren't far behind though.
(Above) Photo by: Teacher Fellow, Mr. Mike; (Below) Photo by: Sana
COSMOlympics Prep
Today, we worked on making props for our skit. We are going with the theme of Cars. The group divided into different sections to work on the props: some on the cars itself, while the rest worked on decorations!
(Above) Photo by: Caleb,
(Below) Photo by: Sana
Hi again! It was a hectic day today. Our Cluster was so focused for the upcoming race tomorrow. So, we mainly worked on our AI simulator! It was still a bit chilly here in San Diego. Besides that, we also delved a bit into our ethics presentation and printing parts for the RC cars. Some of us were already contending for the 1st place with times of 13-15 second runs inputted into our AIs, while others were still trying to figure out how to make our cars work. Before the beginning of lunch, Mr. Mike took us to the Geisel Library to explore and use the time for ourselves, which had 7 floors! Most of us were able to take a relaxing break before heading to lunch. After our last class of the day, we worked on our COSMOlympics skit, finishing up props. And, we were able to have finished most of the props and left the rest out to dry.
Mini Trip: Geisel Library
Unfortunately, floors 5 and 8 were unavailable at the time we visited. But we able to see the cool resting places and study halls. As the farther up you go, it gets more and more silent as students and other visitors came over to use the library. There was a total of 8 floors in the library! Good place to study and chill. Like the person in the image. I might want to come back later :> Photo by: Caleb
Learning: Laser Cutting!
In the image on the right, CA Madison (left) shows Jibran (top right) and (bottom right) the previous students work on laser cutting! We were able to have hands-on experience on using Fusion laser cutting machines. Many of us started to shift into more laser cutting since the 3D prints were getting taken up. They were able to use materials like wood or acrylic to fortify their components on their cars!
Photo by: Caleb
Yeah. Today was the day of the race. We didn't have much time to spare because we focused the first part of class on getting our trained models to work on the server. Before the race, Professor Silberman gave a mini lecture, explaining the electronical components of our RC car kit. And, we had CA Daniel have a lecture about the style of Object Orientated Programming (OOP) and OpenCV, for the detection system. He explained about different Color Spaces used for OpenCV as well as Edge Detection. We used Google Collab, or Jupyter Notebook, for our own example and hands-on. And after lunch, we had our races on the external server, which resulted in Team 1 winning the competition! During the race, the whole cluster was stoked about the race, paying attention to the screen until the victor was decided. After the chaotic and exiting race, we went straight into building the RC cars, which were expected to be finished between Monday to Tuesday of next week. Most teams were able to get some progress done on the RC Cars, but not so much on Jetson Nano setup. We are using Jetson Nanos, which are tiny, compact computers that will be used to run our autonomous vehicles! The process was very slow for the setup, but people were able to get pretty close to the next step.
Mini Lecture: Prof. Silberman
He taught not only the components of our teams' kits but also taught about how the our simulations will work on the external server! It was a lot to take in at first with the insurmountable tasks ahead of us today, but we were able to learn and overcome these new ideas.
Photo by: Mr. Mike
Lab/Independent Work: Building
After the races, most of us dived straight into finishing our construction of our teams' cars! We were able to apply Prof. Silberman's lecture of our electronic kits into building our cars!
Photo By: Mr. Mike
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