In these days of Covid, travel is not an option. Instead, learning new stuff has been fueling our ikigai (getting us out of bed in the morning), and giving us plenty to talk about over dinner.
Until one of our dinnertime conversations, I thought grow lights were pretty straightforward. Apparently the cognoscente measure “photosynthetically active radiation” at the “quantum level.” So much for light and lumens.
I’m learning robotics, and tutoring GED (high school equivalency diploma). Meanwhile, Dwight is taking an online course on indoor plants, learning to write a journal, and learning yoga one-on-one with an instructor via Apple FaceTime.
Robotics: learning for the sake of learning
I’m spending many happy days learning about robotics via online research, text books, an online course, and actually building a working model of a six-axis industrial robot.
It started off simply enough, designing and building the first version of the robot using LEGO Mindstorms and Technic. I scoured the Web for ideas for Best Practices, favoring a minimal build: this is a model, after all.
I loaded the Linux operating system into my laptop and Mindstorms EV3 computer bricks, and started writing programs using Python. Python is one of the most popular programming languages, and has a wide range of applications, including robotics.
My goal is to build a robot that can identify different objects and their locations, then pick up one object at a time and group it with other, similar objects. Along the way, I’ve been learning how to formally represent robots, and how to translate the representation into a functioning robot. This is taking me into new areas, such as machine vision, and reviving stuff I learned in college, including matrix algebra and numerical methods.
Right now, I’m working on automated calibration. The robot contorts itself into various positions so it can calibrate the servo motors that operate each joint. The eventual goal is to set the angles between the joints so that a grabber (“end effector”) is in the correct orientation adjacent to an object to be picked up. The next challenge will be to automate the calculation of these angles (“inverse kinematics”), given the coordinates of the grabber. It’s not as straightforward as it might appear because there’s many answers for a given initial set of end effector coordinates.
GED tutoring: a two-way street
Learning can be a two-way street. Twice a week, I’m tutoring a non-native English speaker in GED Reasoning through Language Arts, one of the four subject areas a student needs to learn to pass the GED test and get a high school equivalency diploma. My student is a young adult who moved to the United States via a refugee camp in Kenya. She has a wonderful attitude and is eager to learn. I get as much out of each Zoom session as I believe she does.
In the past I’ve been an ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom assistant, and in recent years I’ve tutored ESL and citizenship in the basement of a Carnegie library. 100 years ago, the students in that basement were from Sweden and Norway; today, they’re primarily from Somalia. With Covid, the basement is deserted, so I work over Zoom.
GED is difficult. It’s difficult enough for a native-English-speaker who has to balance study with work and family responsibilities. For a non-native speaker there’s added complexities, such as cultural context and vocabulary. For me, the challenge is figuring out ways to chunk up the work and to provide focus on those things that are necessary to pass the test. With a GED diploma, my student will be able to acquire professional qualifications and develop a career.
Learning in action
Meanwhile, Dwight is putting his learning into action. Our racks of indoor plants are looking pretty fine, and the rack where we grow herbs and microgreens under grow lights is poised for a lighting upgrade.
We will not run out of things to learn.
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