Week 15 (5/7/2013) and (5/10/2013) Spring Semester

Week 15 (5/7/2013) and (5/10/2013) Spring Semester

This is the last week of the semester. We had two meetings this week - on Tuesday and on Friday.

On Tuesday Rob Escriva '10 (and a current graduate student at Cornell University) talked about HyperDex  http://hyperdex.org/ and his Github repsotiry is in  https://github.com/rescrv/HyperDex Hyperdex is a nosql key value store which supports atomic transactions, consistency, atomicity and durability. Rob gave a lucid presentation and topped with a demo. Rob also demonstrated the high performance of HyperDex on sample data sets and queries. Rob's talk was well attended and students asked a number of pertinent questions.

On Friday we had student presentations giving their second rounds of talks.

  

1) Jordan Yamada, Bharath Santhosh - Alfred - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/alfred/

2)  Andrew Karnani, Vera Axelrod , Colin Steifel - YAExS - Yet Another Exam Scheduler http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/yet-another-exam-scheduler-yaexs/

3) Alex Freska, Ian McLoughlin - Flowur http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/flowur/

4)  Joshua Makinen, Steven Hammar - Resistance Color Scanner - http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/resistance-color-scanner/

5) Austin McGuire, Kevin Fung, Tianyi Chen, Daniel Fellzardo - Rate My Stream

http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rate-my-stream/

Jordan Bharath and Kyle talked about the current status of Alfred and their progress on it. One of the group members will be working during Summer to complete.

Andrew, Vera and Colin talked about their progress and problems in YAExS. One of the difficulties was with the library they used and the other was getting the relevant data.

Alex and Ian talked about Flowur. They had some minor problem with Layout. Alex is planning to work during summer to release a version. Ian will be working with RCOS on ThreeD layout.

Joshua and Steven talked about resistance color scanner. They spent time in learning development tools for Andoid. They also developed a prototype Python program to get the resistance color scanner working. They learnt about openCV (thanks to Bharath) and they plan to develop Android application during summer.

Austin, Kevin Daniel (and) Tianyi talked about RateMyStream project. Since they divided their project they resulted both useful ad hurt their progress. Resolving an authentication bug took some time. They learned a lot in doing this project.

We had a fantastic semester. I might have learned more than what students might have learned.

It was a great semester and a learning expereince.

Week 9 (3/29/2013) Spring 2013

Week 9 (3/29/2013) Spring 2013

Semester is going in full steam and the seniors are eager to graduate and the rest are thinking of their summer internship. As usual all of them want to finish their exams/projects and working hard towards that.

We have our usual talks. The following students presented their talks

1) Rachael Redner, Nick Timakondu and Asher  Glick Zadatak http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/zadatak-scheduler-app/

2) Scott Silber, Stephen Perkins RPI Mobile http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/rpi-mobile/


3) Alex Freska, (Ian Mcloughlin - where are you in Observatory dashboard) FlowUR  http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/flowur/

4) Jordan Yamada and Bharath Santhosh Alfred http://rcos.rpi.edu/projects/alfred

Rachael, Nick and Asher talked about Zadatak. Rachael is working on a new GUI for their application (in Android). She showed a nice demo of that. Nick is working on scheduling (back end) - He ran into some difficulties (algorithmic) and he has found a way to overcome. Asher is working on the interface between front and back ends. They expect an alpha release by the end of this semester.

Scott and Stephen talked about their RPI Mobile. They are progressing along well. They plan to include events. Steve is working on the server side (extending James McM's contribution).  UPE has promised to provide the servers for hosting their persistent data.

Alex and Ian talked about FlowUR. Their project is going smoothly. Alex s working on the algorithms for lay out. Ian is working on making this as a 3D appl.

Jordan and Bharath talked about Aflred, a beverage serving Robot. Jordan (and others) are working on the mechanical design and their implementation  They have completed the design in paper and they have started their implementation. They have thought through sensor problems and tires, breaks etc. Bharath is working on the software side (working with a tablet on Alfred). Alfred is supposed to be used on April 13th on accepted students day. Hopefully everything will work out.

Again an impressive talks and useful sharing of knowledge and suggestions made my day!