Picture test

A map of our campus.

Reconnaissance

It is the weekend just after the chinese new year, so the campus is slowly starting to fill up with people. Me and Anton went for a walk in the nearby area (both inside and outside campus) in search for food and electronics. After some time, I found some dumplings and a 8GB SD card.

Now we have also managed to get Internet in our rooms (kinda), and our teacher has showed us around campus. He showed us the robot platform we will work with, as well as various student development kits (ARM, PLC,  embedded systems etc).

Arrival in Shanghai

After two flights, first Arlanda-Moscow and then Moscow-Shanghai, we have arrived at our destination. The flights with Aeroflot went very well (their planes were new and in good shape, they even had an entertainment system in the back of the chair in front of you on the longer flight).

Once in China, we were met up by two chinese students at the airport, and took a bus/taxi ride to campus. Our rooms are in an old hotel (pictures to come) inside the campus grounds. We spent the rest of the day doing various administrative work (the chinese really like bureocracy (we even had to give our passport numbers to use the Internet cafe I'm writing this from, go figure).

Once we are more settled in, there will be further posts (with pictures!)

I should be able to apply for a wireless connection to my laptop on monday, making my life much easier...

To Moscow I came seeking fortune...

Traveling time! Departure from Sweden went well (though not without certain problems). As I was riding the bus to the airport, I suddenly met a traffic jam. Damn, I thought, should have taken an earlier bus. Turns out, the traffic jam was caused by the earlier bus, which was now a smoldering husk by the side of the road (there was a problem with a fire, no one got hurt though). Sometimes you're lucky I guess...

At the moment I'm waiting for my connecting flight in Moscow, which departs in a few hours.

Moving

I'm currently in the middle of moving all my stuff out of my old apartment and into storage, as well as packing for the China trip. So far everything is going according to schedule.

A bit more about what will happen in China:

I will be leaving for Shanghai on February 17th, and stay there for roughly 20 weeks (one term). I will study at East China University of Science and Technology (Shanghai). During my stay, I will work with a classmate and two Chinese students on a robotics project, focused on vision systems. We will have a previously built robotic platform and control it by the means of a laptop running AI and vision system software.

Though it is not decided yet, most likely we will use hardware such as the Microsoft Kinect or the Sony PS3 eye (two) as vision system (or just two random cameras that work with the laptop). For software, we will use a Linux platform and the OpenCV framework. It will be exciting to see what we can cook up with this during our stay!

What?

The primary interest of this blog will be to discuss my various projects and activities, hopefully garnering some form of interest and feedback.

The first few months the main focus will be on a trip I and my classmate will be taking to Shanghai. For roughly five months we will study at East China University of Science and Technology, with the primary focus being robotics, AI programming and vision systems (exciting topics!).

More information to come.

Who?

In short, I am a student at a Swedish university studying robotics, with focus on programming and AI. I am an active member of a local robotics club called ARC, and of a local computer club/Internet Service Provider called MDF. Currently, I'm in my fourth year of study out of five.

My interests are primarily robots, programming and technology in general, but I also have an interest in art, and do a lot of sketching/digital drawing.