This photo is actually from our third week at Hubo Lab, but it has been a while since I took pictures in a weekly meeting. I want to write about this picture now because I made huge progress on my research this week, and it has made me think about my academic life here.
I was thrilled when Dr. Jun Ho Oh introduced me to Cheol Son as a mentor/partner in the lab as someone who could both use my area of expertise (psychology) and help me to apply it to robotics. It turned out to be perfect that he had just begun a project aimed at creating personality in robots by programming them to react with specific emotions in different situations (for example, a crowd of ten people versus only two). He explained that he needs more research to support the more subjectively known characteristics of body movement specific to each emotion that he wants to express in the robot. My research paper, therefore, is most like a body language key; I combined and distilled a lot of prior research on the subject until I had the most quantitative, specific, and supported description of each emotional expression written up in a table.
When I had completed that request with Cheol, he created a simulation program through MATLAB and let me simulate the emotions myself. It was rewarding and challenging work, and I really value what I feel is a collaborative relationship of mutual respect with Cheol. In fact, I feel like all of the students in the lab and especially Dr. Jun Ho Oh were welcoming and willing to help whenever I needed materials or an answer to a question. Sara, Liz, Peter, and I were given a separate room (formerly a storage room) with a large desk and its own AC unit to work in, but we were given access to all other working areas of the lab and to the weekly meetings where students present their work progress.
Of course I felt like an outsider, being a Western undergraduate woman in a lab of all academically elite Korean males, but I was treated as a valued member of the lab. The real barrier between myself and the students of the Lab was language. Although they spoke a good amount of English, which, luckily for me, is the current language of academia in Korea, it was sometimes very difficult to ask questions of Cheol without creating misunderstandings. Weekly meetings were also alienating because the members of Lab presented in Korean; however, the slides were in English, which allowed us to follow at least the subject and objective of each presentation, and, if my topic of research is worth anything, also gave us context for the body language and tone of voice cues that we could still read.
I was thrilled when Dr. Jun Ho Oh introduced me to Cheol Son as a mentor/partner in the lab as someone who could both use my area of expertise (psychology) and help me to apply it to robotics. It turned out to be perfect that he had just begun a project aimed at creating personality in robots by programming them to react with specific emotions in different situations (for example, a crowd of ten people versus only two). He explained that he needs more research to support the more subjectively known characteristics of body movement specific to each emotion that he wants to express in the robot. My research paper, therefore, is most like a body language key; I combined and distilled a lot of prior research on the subject until I had the most quantitative, specific, and supported description of each emotional expression written up in a table.
When I had completed that request with Cheol, he created a simulation program through MATLAB and let me simulate the emotions myself. It was rewarding and challenging work, and I really value what I feel is a collaborative relationship of mutual respect with Cheol. In fact, I feel like all of the students in the lab and especially Dr. Jun Ho Oh were welcoming and willing to help whenever I needed materials or an answer to a question. Sara, Liz, Peter, and I were given a separate room (formerly a storage room) with a large desk and its own AC unit to work in, but we were given access to all other working areas of the lab and to the weekly meetings where students present their work progress.
Of course I felt like an outsider, being a Western undergraduate woman in a lab of all academically elite Korean males, but I was treated as a valued member of the lab. The real barrier between myself and the students of the Lab was language. Although they spoke a good amount of English, which, luckily for me, is the current language of academia in Korea, it was sometimes very difficult to ask questions of Cheol without creating misunderstandings. Weekly meetings were also alienating because the members of Lab presented in Korean; however, the slides were in English, which allowed us to follow at least the subject and objective of each presentation, and, if my topic of research is worth anything, also gave us context for the body language and tone of voice cues that we could still read.
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