Last week's accomplishments

Objectives from last week:

Lab Stuff

• [0.5 hr took 1.9 hr] Make sure that the hmc.csuohio.edu offsite backup can be restored. -- Done: offsite website backups work and can be fully restored.
• [0.5 hr] Undo the review workflow on the website. -- Deferred: I asked Sabrina to take care of this.

Inverted Pendulum Parameter Estimation Source

• [3 hr took 15 hr] Flesh out the collocator class design more. Specifically how to add extra constraints and maybe even the objective. -- Done: I refactored all the code into smaller modules and created a ConstraintCollocator class that can take any general symbolic equations of motion and form the constraint function and the constraint Jacobian function that works with unknown parameters and unknown input trajectories.

Inverted Pendulum Parameter Estimation Paper

• [3 hr took 2 hr] Find and read papers on using DC for parameter estimation. -- Done: I found several on parameter estimation with multiple shooting and maybe some on parameter identification with direct collocation. There are quite a few people working with similar methods. Betts has a paper that may be what I'm doing, but I don't understand it all yet.
• [1 hr took 0.9 hr] Make a pass through the outline to define things better, i.e. like specific plots, etc. -- Done: Reviewed Ton's suggestions and cleaned up some some stuff. Will probably reduce the scope of the paper, leaving out single shooting and direct approach.

Bicycle Steer Torque Paper

• [0.25 hr took 0.1 hr] Check in with Mont about his review at end of week. -- Done: sent him a reminder email.

Bicycle Data Paper

• [1 hr took 2 hr] Finish raw data README. -- Done.
• [2 hr took 2.1 hr] Create calibration data README. -- Done.

I created a README in the BicycleDAQ repo that explains all of the data it produces:

https://github.com/moorepants/BicycleDAQ/blob/master/README.rst

The I finalized the raw data releases and made them public on Figshare:

Trial Data: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1164632

Calibration Data: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1164630

• [1 hr] Try to upload the davis instrumented bicycle h5 file (with raw and processed data) to Figshare. -- Done: I'm actually going to upload the file to Zenodo instead of Figshare because they don't have a prohibitive file size limit.

Software Carpentry

• [0.5 hr] Respond to Nick Hermez. -- Done.
• [1 hr] Decide on a date, confer with Ahmet, and let Software Carpentry know. -- Done.
• [0.5 hr] Make a list of tasks that need to be done so I can divvy them up. -- Done.

I decided to can the Software Carpentry plans because I'm leaving town soon and Cleveland doesn't seem ready for it. The others involved may do something with it.

Other stuff I did:

• Couple hours of SymPy dev with 2 PRs.
• The next IEEE Open Source Night is setup for this Friday, Oct 3.
• Told Ibrahim and Rashidi I could no longer teach Advanced Dynamics in the Spring.

Last week's issues

I got consumed with refactoring and generalizing my direct collocation code and spent 25 hours on it (with just a bit more work I should be able to solve all the problems that Ton has demonstrated with minimal coding). Thus I neglected finishing my actual objectives. This is a pattern I often fall into.

Inverted Pendulum Parameter Estimation Source

• [2 hr] Implement both process and measurement noise. -- I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Ton has also given me some insight, but I'm still not sure I agree with Ton's suggestions. See this issue: https://github.com/csu-hmc/inverted-pendulum-sys-id/issues/7 for some background.
• [2 hr] Implement a validation simulation on a portion of the data. -- Didn't get to.
• [3 hr] Setup runs to create the convergence and global minima chance plots. -- This is on hold till I get everything working properly again.

I updated the physical parameter values to be more human-like in size and mass. I think this has caused the optimization to have trouble converging, as I didn't see this issue until I did that update. But there could be a bug introduced in the giant code refactor that I'm missing. The gains are much higher now that the mass and lengths are higher.

I also have a lateral force as the perturbation input as opposed to specifying the acceleration directly. I'm having trouble picking a force (sum of sines) that gives appropriate motions.

Perturbed Walking Data Paper

• [2 hr] Decide on what will actually be the processed data and write script to produce it from raw. -- Didn't get to. I think I'm going to upload everything in one big gzipped tar ball to Zenodo but exclude the Cortex dumps.
• [3 hr] Add in the belt acceleration compensation to GTK. -- Didn't get to.

Bicycle Steer Torque Paper

I didn't get to these things.

• [1 hr] Change R plots to a prettier ggplot2 version.
• [1.5 hr] Improve the matplotlib plots to make them prettier.
• [1 hr] Figure out the best citation for Kageyama's design.

Job Search

• [2 hours] Draft a plan/outline for a new research statement for prof applications. -- I'm not sure I'm going to apply for professorships, so this is on hold.

This week's objectives

Inverted Pendulum Parameter Estimation Source

• [4 hr] Implement general time specific constraints, like x(0) = 0.
• [1 hr] Add Ton's pendulum example to the code.
• [1 hr] Add the pendulum parameter id example.
• [5 hr] Decide what to do about process and measurement noise and implement it.

Perturbed Walking Data Paper

• [2 hr] Read the Betts paper more thoroughly.
• [3 hr] Decide on what will actually be the processed data and write script to produce it from raw to prepare for a Zenodo upload.
• [6 hr] Add in the belt acceleration compensation to GTK.

Inverted Pendulum Parameter Estimation Paper

• [3 hr] Fluff up the intro with citations in the outline and rewrite it to discuss the issues with shooting and the direct approach.

Bicycle Steer Torque Paper

• [3 hr] Change R plots to a prettier ggplot2 version.
• [2 hr] Improve the matplotlib plots to make them prettier.
• [1 hr] Figure out the best citation for Kageyama's design.

Bicycle Data Paper

• [1 hr] Make a figshare data set for the additional trial csv file.
• [1 hr] Make a figshare item for the bicycle parameter raw data.

IEEE Open Source Code Night

• [2 hr] Prep materials.