Today was my first day working with Dr. Hauser and PhD student, Shihao Wang at Duke University. Surprisingly I was able to navigate my way from the Bryan Center parking garage to North Hall without getting lost, but I am pretty sure I took the long way there. I met Shihao in his office, and he gave me a tour of the Duke robotics lab. In the lab, they were working on two different robots. One robot is for use in hospitals. It is to be used to treat patiences with very contagious diseases such as Ebola. The robot is operated by a person outside of the room so that no one else has to be in the room with the sick person. The students are currently working on giving the robot the ability to remove its own hazmat suit so that robot itself does not become contaminated with the disease. The second robot they are working on is a disaster relief robot. This robot is being designed to go into an area that has experienced a natural disaster and go places where it is too dangerous for a human to go. This robot is built, but does not yet function.
After exploring the lab, I went straight to work helping Shihao with a project of his own. He is working on a robot, only about 2 feet tall and in a humanoid form, that can catch itself with its arms when pushed over. The arms were not working quite right, so he had me remake them so that they would be able to stop the robot from falling. To do so, I had to take the existing arms apart and remake them the way Shihao wanted them. I also had to take out the battery and replace it since it had gone bad. Once I fixed that robot, I went back to Shihao, and he gave me another task. In the coming days, I have to take apart another one of his robots which he modified from a robot he bought. He then wants me to rebuild it back to the original robot he bought so he can return it. Overall, it was a fun first day working at Duke.
