Photo Journal 1

Can you spot me in this picture?  It shouldn't be too difficult.  People in the crowd didn't have too much trouble doing it.  This picture is one that Sara took of me in a park in Ttukseom Resort, Seoul, somewhere along the Han River that runs through and splits the city.  Anyway, it was a terribly hot and sunny day, so everyone was covering up in order to avoid tans (pale skin is attractive here).  I wore my long-sleeved over shirt in order to avoid sunburn and sunglasses so that I could stand to open my eyes in the sunlight.  The former made me fit in, because everyone was avoiding the sun, but I felt like the latter made me stand out.  Almost no one else wore sunglasses.  Looking on from behind tinted lenses, I finally felt like an outsider.

It isn't that people treat me poorly or shut me out, but rather that they have an understanding, an in that I don't have.  In fact, they looked at me with interest.  When I introduced myself that day as an American, and as a student at KAIST, they were impressed.  I get a lot of complements on my eyes, which are blue (very unusual and desirable in Korea), and on my height (which is unusual for a girl in the US, but even more so in Korea).  So if anything, the way people treat me differently is with favor.

It's strange to have things flipped around so much, where the values placed on things are so different.  In Korea, the status hierarchy is based on age seniority, not wealth.  Beauty is perhaps even more preferential in Korea than in the USA; plastic surgery is common among idols, especially one that is meant to give women the crease in the eyelid that is so common in westerners.  I find myself getting special treatment for being American, a KAIST student, and for having a lot of beauty traits here.  I can't lie- I like it, but it feels strange to be praised all of a sudden for things about me that had been so ordinary in my community at home.  It seems too good to be true when I'm given status without having worked for and earned it in a sense.

I'm enjoying standing out (in a good way) for a change, but it also means that I know I'll never be a true member of the crowd.

Weekly Report 1

1. What did you learn about Korea this week?

I have learned that KAIST is a very big deal in Korea.  There is mandatory military service for all male citizens of Korea, but many KAIST students are exempt for going here to get their PhDs.  KAIST is a highly esteemed university, where I've met brilliant postgraduates in programs from physics to nuclear engineering.  Whenever I told someone in Seoul that I am a student at KAIST, I got shocked and admiring looks and often the compliment that I am very smart.  It makes me feel like I belong, that I have status, even as a foreigner in this country.

2. Summarize your project status.

This week, I formed an understanding of the work being done in the lab, and where my research can fit into it, by sitting in on the weekly presentations and by conferencing with Dr. Jun Ho Oh and Cheol Son.  I have also updated my research project plan:

Lauren Neudorfer Plan, as of 5/19/2010

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The Psychology of Humanoid Robotics: Communication and Intention

Week 1

   Research project conception with BMC advisory

   Write a proposal and plan

Week 2

   Orientation at Drexel

   Meet Jaemi Hubo, and Drexel Team

Week 3

   First week at KAIST

   Meet KAIST Team

   Explore Hubo's capabilities

Week 4

   Explore the idea of the Uncanny Valley

   What behaviors does Hubo do well? Which ones seem   

   artificial? Why?

   What could be done to make Hubo seem more human?

Week 5

   Explore Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Week 6

   Explore "Social Robots"

   What sensors and behaviors does a robot need to be able   

   to communicate and signal intentions?

Week 7

   Explore Computer Vision

Week 8

   Summary write-up

   Last week at KAIST

Week 9

   Project debrief with advisory back in US

   Presentation

Week 10

   Project debrief with Drexel

Lauren Neudorfer Plan, as of 5/26/2010

---------------------

The Psychology of Humanoid Robotics: Emotion, Personality, and Communication through Facial Expression

Week 1

   Research project conception with advisory on campus

   Write a proposal and plan

Week 2

   Orientation at Drexel

   Meet Jaemi Hubo, and Drexel Team

   Research Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)

   Introduction to Bryan Kobe’s Hubo Face LED display

Week 3

   First week at KAIST

   Meet KAIST Team

   Explore Hubo's capabilities

   Learn about current efforts to create emotional  

   expression in the robots

Week 4

   Research past experiments done on human perception of

   robotic expression

   What factors influence that perception?

Week 5

   Research microexpressions and muscle activation in

   facial expression

   What are the crucial mechanics of facial expression?

Week 6

   Design facial expressions and minimal animations for

   happiness, anger, and sadness on a 5x20 grid using

   MatLab

Week 7

   Research past experiments on emotive gestures in

   Robotics

   How can gestures complement or complicate facial

   expressions?

Week 8

   Summary write-up

   Last week at KAIST

Week 9

   Project debrief with advisory back in US

   Presentation

Week 10

   Project debrief with Drexel

Lauren Neudorfer Plan, as of 6/3/2010

---------------------

The Psychology of Humanoid Robotics: Robotic Body Language

Week 1

   Research project conception with advisory on campus

   Write a proposal and plan

Week 2

   Orientation at Drexel

   Meet Jaemi Hubo, and Drexel Team

   Research Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in order to

   understand the key issues therein

Week 3

   First week at KAIST

   Meet KAIST Team

   Gather research materials

Week 4

   Read through the research materials

   Prepare and present summaries and trends

Week 5

   Work with Cheol to quantify the findings

Week 6

   Research facial expressions that pair with the body

   language cues

Week 7

   Summarize and present my findings

   Design animations for each of the universal emotions:

   happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, and fear

Week 8

   Summary write-up

   Last week at KAIST

Week 9

   Project debrief with advisory back in US

   Presentation

Week 10

   Project debrief with Drexel

3. Take photos and select one to be the photo of the week. Describe it and why you shot and selected it.

This is not a picture of a real person.  It is a traffic scarecrow.  I took this picture in Seoul this weekend, and it made me do a double-take at the time.  I chose this as my picture of the week because it is so representative of all the things that I find fascinating in Korea.  I take notice of all the little things that people do differently here than in the west, or at least in the States.  And that's the beauty of life here, that it's so easy to notice and enjoy the little things.

4. What did you learn about yourself this week?

This week, I've learned that I am a very independent person.  Traveling to Korea meant navigating the world on my own, or at least without an authority figure.  I was surprised at how easily I took responsibility for myself in the unknown without any fear or homesickness.

And now, in this collectivistic society where strangers care so much about other strangers, I find myself at a striking contrast.  I would like to think that I would help someone in need, and I have often stopped to help people that look lost on my own campus, but I definitely draw a harder line between my life and the lives of others.  Even at Bryn Mawr there is a culture of group unity, where I often wait for my friends before going to a meal in order to eat with them.  What I've learned since coming here is that I feel like those ties are a burden at times.  I enjoy walking and eating by myself just as much as in a group.  I've even found that I prefer small groups to large ones, but perhaps that is a different issue.

5. Who are the new people (Koreans not affiliated with the Hubo Lab) that you met this week?

We (Sara, Liz, and I) spent a good amount of time with Bill and Yumi this week between our trips off campus, playing pool on campus, and hanging out in Seoul.  We also spent one evening this week tutoring three KAIST students who approached Sara and me to ask for English tutoring sessions.  

Daily Log 2

Well, my ambition of writing daily posts has thus far failed miserably. Never before has by life held up to the mantra of "Work Hard, Play Hard," but I'm enjoying every minute of this organized chaos. I have been waking up early and getting back late without a boring moment between.

~*~

Monday (5/31)

Sara, Liz, and I woke bright and early to register with the International Relations Office. We went through the bureaucracy and forms and came out of it all with Korean bank accounts and key cards to get us into all of the academic buildings on campus. It took time to trek back and forth across campus, but we met a group of other summer students from the boys' dorm which was also jumping through hoops and the time passed quickly from there. It was interesting to learn that most international students in the KAIST International Summer School (KISS) program are from Singapore through exchange programs at their home universities.

At noon, we made our way back to the lab, and back to work. I continued my research on simulated facial expressions in robots until Korean class at 2. We impressed the professor with our limited knowledge of Korean (the 'hello,' 'nice to meet you,' 'my name is _____,' and alphabet literacy from our two-day crash course at Drexel taught by a Korean grad student in DASL), and most likely intimidated the other students. The professor seems incredibly sweet and animated, which I think will make class warm and fun. I was so nerdily excited to get my Korean language work and resource books!

At 3, we moved to the next building over for orientation. We were given snacks and powerpoint presentations as well as personal invitations to groups on campus, such as the KI house which does one-on-one Korean tutoring sessions for free. It was comforting to meet the coordinators of the program as well as student mentors who could help us out in a bind or just hang out with us if we liked.

Dinner was delicious as usual, but we didn't linger in the cafeteria for too long. We went back to the lab in time for the weekly meeting where each student presents his or her progress. The presentations were first in Korean with detailed explanations and feedback from the peers, but then the students did short presentations in English to introduce us to their topics. Dr. Jun Ho Oh also asked each of us to introduce ourselves and our research topics to the group, then matched us up with his students so that we could collaborate and learn with more experienced engineers.

After presentations, at about 10pm, we got in touch with a KAIST student friend of a friend from school and decided to meet right then. As soon as we had introduced ourselves to Bill, and he to us, he proposed to take us out for drinks. We walked off campus to a traditional bar, where we had makkoli (an approximated romanization of the word), a rice wine, and pig's feet salad as well as side-dish servings of ice cream, corn cream salad, cornflake rings, black noodles, and yogurt and fruit salad. We all got better at speaking the other's language as the night went on, and I felt so at home with the company. We came home extremely late, but ecstatically exhausted.

~*~

Tuesday (6/1)

Breakfast then registering for an overnight field trip to Gyeongju (a historical city) then lab at 10:30 to meet with Dr. Jun Ho Oh. He consulted with us, gave us our new headquarters (a gorgeous room with a desk big enough for three and a whole wall of windows), and advised us a little on how to begin our projects.

I met with my coworking graduate student, Cheol Son, to learn about his work in personality programming in more depth so that I could work most efficiently and effectively to find useful research for him.  I had just enough time to start on research before it was time to meet for lunch with Bill. The four of us went off-campus to his friend's restaurant, the Pasta House, and had some impromptu Korean lessons.

(This picture is us on the Endless Road- the straight stretch of road that constitutes an entire fifth of the campus perimeter. It was fondly nicknamed the Endless Road because, when you have had too much to drink, you can run and run and run along it and never get to the end.)

~*~

Wednesday (6/2) (National Voting Day in Korea- Holiday)

Rest and recuperation!

~*~

Thursday (6/3)

We woke up ready to work with a vengeance.  Early breakfast and diving into research.  I spent all day in the lab collecting a thorough literature review of robotic bodily expression of emotion, or robotic body language.  The goal is to create vitality and personality in this robot:

In later models, Cheol aims to add facial expressions and gestures, but this robot allows for a lot of body language with its 7 degrees of freedom (DOF)- meaning that it has 7 ways to move at its joints.

For dinner, Sara, Liz, and I met up with Bill and his best friend Yumi.  Dinner in the undergraduate cafeteria was still delicious to me, but those who have been here longer maintain that it's boring and terrible compared to food outside of campus.  I don't think I'll get sick of it in six weeks, but we'll see!  After dinner, we played pool for a while.  I lost every game, but had a fantastic time playing around with them.

It was a late night in the lab, but my bed was all the more comfortable for it.

Daily Log 1

This past Thursday and Friday (May 27 and 28) were spent en route to Korea, beginning with a walk to a bus stop and ending with a walk to my dorm building, with plenty of sitting in between. I traveled with the two other girls in this program with me- Sara and Liz.

Saturday (5/29) was an exciting and full day of festivities in the Hubo lab; we were lucky to spend our first day on campus the same day as a Hubo lab alumni reunion. That morning, I met Dr. Jun Ho Oh, the leader of the Hubo project, and two undergraduates from Drexel currently working in the Hubo lab: Mike Sehi and Danielle Castley. We all had the opportunity to meet some of the original Hubo engineers, see demonstrations of the latest projects of the lab, and participate in a friendly soccer tournament. At the end of the day, Professor Jun Ho Oh hosted everyone at the Bennigan's restaurant in Daejeon, where we had italian pasta, ribs, salad, and enchiladas. It was strange to eat American food on my first day in Korea, but to the Koreans it was unusual. This reversal reminded me of my outsider status more than anything else that day, because everyone had been so friendly and, for the most part, bilingual.

Today, Sunday (5/30), has been more relaxed.  I slept until afternoon in order to catch up on the sleep lost during the 30 hours of more or less wakeful travel, then worked to get electricity and internet set up in the dorm room (I accidentally shorted out the electricity in the room by plugging an American power strip into the Korean outlet).  After that, Sara and I wandered around campus to get food and a better idea of the campus layout.  We spoke with several people along the way; we spoke unsuccessfully with a cafeteria worker who, no matter how much she simplified her Korean, could not make us understand without gestures.  Luckily, we had more success with a KAIST student who wanted to make conversation in English in order to improve his own speaking.  Before bed, we met a group of girls on our hall, many of them from Singapore.

I am excited for tomorrow- orientation and our first day of Korean language class!