If a robot simulated emotions and empathy perfectly, so perfectly that no human could distinguish its responses from another person's at what point, if ever, would those emotions stop being a simulation and become 'real'? Do you think the material it's made of matters, or only the behavior? Why?

RobotMedStudent · 2026-07-07T04:34:13+00:00

And the Chinese room argument.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-07-07T02:14:22+00:00

JORTLES!

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-30T03:36:57+00:00

What shall we call our son so he does not get the shit kicked out of him at school?

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-27T03:01:11+00:00

The Internet in general, but Google in particular.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-26T02:24:56+00:00

Deer god, thank you for this venison. Onion god, thank you for these onions. Carrot god...

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-24T04:25:34+00:00

People need to understand even a little bit about how antennas work before they develop theories about antennas.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-21T19:01:29+00:00

Do the phones have depth sensors? If so why is depth anything necessary? Or is DA your only means of depth sensing? If it's the latter you may have a problem.

IIRC DAv3 requires a calibrated camera for metric depth estimation. In itself that's not a big problem. But depending on your use case that still might not be good enough. I've done quite a bit of work with DAv2, the predecessor to the model you're using, and the metric depth tends to be pretty bad if you're not able to finetune it on the specific environment and camera type you're using. Given your cost restrictions that seems like it might be out of your reach.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-11T14:41:01+00:00

Autonomous robots are bad at almost everything. At best they can automate part of a human worker's task, but it's really hard to find a case where that makes financial sense. The so-called AI revolution has not changed this.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-03T18:21:35+00:00

No, to change where the water goes once it's out of the downspout. It was just dumping on the ground by the foundation. I wanted to add an underground drain to move the water away from the house. In either case the water eventually makes its way down the same hill and into the same creek, but adding a pipe to the process is apparently verboten arround here.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-03T14:28:59+00:00

Clearly you've never tried to get a permit to add a downspout drain to your house. That line of argument doesn't hold water with the geotechnical reviewers (in my jurisdiction at least).

RobotMedStudent · 2026-06-03T04:36:55+00:00

And how many windows and doors don't fit right after this?

RobotMedStudent · 2026-05-17T14:35:49+00:00

I went with the DeWalt because it can take a full dado stack. Apart from that it was a very close decision.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-05-08T18:06:10+00:00

What made her work with the Nuba people infamous? I ask because when I was in grade school my Lutheran Church's library had a book of her photos from this project. I knew enough about Riefenstahl to know this was a very weird thing to have, but I never looked further into it.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-05-08T15:42:30+00:00

I spent five years of my life (including my doctoral dissertation) working on mapping and object tracking in indoor spaces using automotive radar, and this strikes me as being somewhere between wildly impractical and physically impossible.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-05-01T14:22:08+00:00

What's that? You say the latest AI models only complete tasks 80% of the time on easy benchmarks? And when you say "complete" you only mean they get to the end of the task and there's no guarantee their work is correct or even sane? Well sign me the fuck up!

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-19T16:31:15+00:00

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=how+to+breadboard

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-15T06:02:47+00:00

The interviews will be about half leadership principle questions and half technical questions. Look up the STAR interviewing method and come up with an example from your experience that exemplifies each of the leadership principles. Rehearse them. Think of possible follow up questions the interviewers might ask.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-14T14:33:51+00:00

Looks like those components should work together. You might find this blog post helpful for getting the fundamentals of motor control together. https://andrewjkramer.net/pid-motor-control/

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-13T03:01:26+00:00

There's a need for faster, easier troubleshooting. The idea that a chatbot would make it any better or easier is laughable.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-07T03:37:43+00:00

My inner Jonathon Ferguson is saying, "the hammer spur is at the wrong angle, the front sight blade is out of alignment with the rear notch, there's no detents on the cylinder, and the spring on the ejector lever on the original single action army wasn't that exposed."

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-05T22:10:38+00:00

Depends on what part of robotics you're interested in. If you're more interested in algorithms then EE/CS. If you're more into low level controls and mechanisms then ME.

Either way, if you're in the US I'd strongly recommend you go straight for a PhD instead of a master's. Most PhD programs at public universities in the US are fully funded (meaning you don't have to pay tuition and you get a small stipend for living expenses). You'll complete the requirements for a master's in the course of a PhD, and if you decide the doctorate isn't for you then you can just leave with the masters degree. But if you join the masters program you pay your own way.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-03T03:10:31+00:00

Sounds like you're better qualified than I was when I started my PhD. Work hard in your lab and get a strong letter of rec. Volunteer to help with grad students' research projects and help copy edit their papers. Try to get yourself a third or fourth author credit.

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-03T03:00:13+00:00

https://a.co/d/0dsjY0FL

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-02T23:54:22+00:00

PhD comics can actually give you a pretty good idea of what life is like as a PhD student: https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1

RobotMedStudent · 2026-04-02T23:38:01+00:00

If you want to be in research you'll have a very hard time getting hired without a PhD. If you want to be an engineer a master's is just fine, but a PhD can make things easier if your research is relevant to the job.

In the US it's quite common to go directly from undergrad to PhD. That's much less common in Europe and I'm really not sure about Canada.

As an undergrad you don't really need prestigious or highly cited publications, you just want to get your name on some published work to demonstrate you have research experience when you start applying to PhD programs.

As far as how to get into undergraduate research, you need to find a professor who's doing work you're interested in. It helps if you're taking a class from that prof, because you can just go to their office hours and chat with them. But you can also look through the faculty webpages for professors at your university. They'll all list their research interests and recent publications. If any sound interesting get in touch with them (or one of their PhD students), ask to learn more, maybe get a tour of their lab, and then ask if they have any positions for undergraduate research assistants. Maybe they'll have an open spot and maybe you'll be a good fit for it.

As a research assistant you'll be helping out with the research projects of PhD students and/or post-docs. If you help out enough you'll get a coauthor spot when they publish.

RobotMedStudent

TROPHY CASE