(This is a new start. I am trying to reduce my writing lengths, but increase the posting frequency. It’s like microblogging, but for my personal experiences traveling abroad. It will take a little more time to make the entries meaningful, but I think it will be the highly concentrated-powder form on what matters in my career.)

Mini Tourag for the Carolo cup competition
Random Observation/Comment #182: I am very happy with the work ethic and helpfulness of the German research project system. Although I am limited with my view with this small scale research project, I can sense a level of transparency and collaboration. It may be premature to stamp this as a German style, but it’s definitely slightly different from the way I used to work. My opinions actually matter? Wait, really? You’re going to change the way you look at the problem because I mentioned something that you’re not taking credit for?
I hope this is a trend of working on more projects where I have somewhat more respect from seniority, rather than a regional discontinuity. Maybe I can get used to working under these conditions… Either way, I definitely understand the importance of management. I feel motivated and excited to continue working even if the subject is new. It could be the topic (practical applications of reinforcement learning), my desire to find a career focus, or a list of many other things, but all that should be important is the feeling of being part of a team.
My part is important because it will help the community succeed. Our smaller community is important because it will help a larger community succeed. The larger community’s advancements are valuable because they will help the world improve. One step at a time, and we will change the world.
A short answer to the “what do you study in Germany?” question: I’m applying reinforcement learning algorithms to industrial robots with hard-boundaries and continuous actions, in order to improve overall power and time efficiencies. I was applying it to race cars, but I think it would be better if I can maintain it for fine-tuning based on a standard, which will slowly improve despite the high dimensionality. Fascinating stuff.
~See Lemons a part of the team
(Time to write: 23 minutes)

mini DARPA?