Over the winter break, I took a winter class and worked a little. I was working for a professor on campus making an autonomous imaging robot. The class went fine, but the robot faced a different fate. The professor was applying for a patent based on the imaging technique that was supposed to be implemented on the robot. As it turns out, someone else had a similar patent that was awarded last year, which became the death cry of that particular robot.

The new semester has started, and I’m taking 17 units. Four EEE classes, the last engineering classes I’ll have to take, and japanese 1B. Also, right after the semester started one of my professors was looking for students with hands on experience to work on some biomedical sensors. I was familiar with his work, so I took the opportunity and have started working with him. The particular project I’m working on will be the miniaturization and optimization of a sensor to detect when children with cerebral palsy fall, and records it to an SD card. I’m only making $11/hour, but it’s great experience and I’m sure it will look great on a resume(which is getting pretty packed now-a-days).

Also, the robot that initially died over the winter break has been semi-resurrected. Instead of using the robot to implement the experimental imaging, he now wants me to continue work on it with the goal of making a remote-controlled video platform. Since I’m going to be working with the other professor on the biomedical project, I’ve decided to bring in another engineering student to work on the robotics project with me. It should be fun, and will take a lot of the workload off me this semester having another person working on it.

Overall, it should be a pretty fun semester. I’m taking three elective EEE classes, including a graduate class that is pretty interested(non-linear control systems).