Hi, my name is Vivian Trommer, and I am interning at Colorado School of Mines. I am working with Professor Petruska, two of his PhD students, and a master’s student this summer. We are working on making a self-driving, electric race car using an RC car (the Super Baja Rey 2.0). I am staying with my half sister, Shawnee, and her husband, Drew, in Lakewood, Denver.
This week was similar to the past two in that I continued working on SolidWorks and designing mounts for the car, while also gaining insight into the computer science side of the project!
On Monday, Eugene, one of the PhD students, brought in his own 3D printer because the ones we were using in weeks past were located all the way across campus. He uses a Prusa 3D printer, which is slightly different from the ones I’m used to using, which are Bambu Lab Printers. Once I was set up with the Prusa, I started my mount design for the IMU, which will help with the GPS of the car. It needs to be as centered as it can and in a protected area so it will not get damaged from dirt or rocks. I can tell I’ve made a lot of progress with SolidWorks since I started because I was able to finish making the IMU mount in one day, when the same task would have taken a whole week when I first started.
Eugene’s Prusa 3D printer printing the IMU mount
I was also able to go back to the math class I went to in my first week here. It was just as interesting and just as confusing as it was last time. The class is on Gaussian processes, and we looked at how best to represent the data gathered from Gaussian processes.
the notes I took in the math class
This week, I also put the sensor mounts onto the car, and they worked! We will reprint them later with a more durable material, but we have the design done and finished.
The sensor mounts finally on the car!
As I mentioned, I also got a look at the computer science side of the project this week. I started learning about Raspberry Pi because we are going to use one to run our self-driving program. I have never worked with Raspberry Pi before or anything similar, so it was a new experience for me. I started by working with a Raspberry Pi 4 and getting that set up for practice. I began by downloading the Raspberry Pi Imager onto my computer and then flashing the OS I wanted onto a micro SD card. This was a little difficult because the micro SD card I was originally using wasn’t working, and by the time I figured that out, I was far into the process. Once I had a working micro SD card, I put it into the Raspberry Pi 4 and plugged it into my monitor. The HDMI ports were broken, so I had to find a way around that. I ended up working on three diffrent Pis this week. We are going to be using a Raspberry Pi 5 on the project, which will arrive on Monday, and I will repeat this process then. Overall, I am happy that I learned the basics of Raspberry Pi, and I am sure I will be working with it a lot more in the upcoming weeks.
Another thing I did this week was go out to lunch with Professor Petruska. He invited me out to eat on Tuesday, and we talked about how I was enjoying my internship so far and how, now that I am at the halfway mark, if there is anything else I’m interested in working on. I told him I was interested in the computer science of the car, which is why I started working on the Raspberry Pi. We talked about college as well, and just life in general! He took me to a Latin food restaurant, and it was so good that I went back with my sister later in the week.
What I had to eat when I was out with Professor Petruska
I also came in early on Thursday to help give a tour of the lab to a group of highschoolers. I t was a lot of fun and it was nice to be around kids my age for a little bit. I got to exaplin the car project to them and they all thoought it was very intresting and asked good questions.
The final project I worked on this week was adding cable protection to some of the mounts so the cables are safe from debris.
Outside of the lab this week, I hung out with my sister a lot. On Saturday, we took a day trip to Boulder and did some hiking in the Flat Irons, which were so pretty, then went shopping on Pearl Street. We also went to lunch together on my lunch break on Friday, and as I mentioned before, we went to the same place Professor Petruska and I went to because it was so good! We also went to a Thai restaurant one night and tried Thai shaved ice, which I really did not like. We also continued watching the third season of The White Lotus and Ted Lasso, and both of them are so good. The best thing I did outside the lab this week is when my sister, her husband, and me got to go see Film on the Rocks at Red Rocks. We got ot see Pirates of the Carribiean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and it was so amazing!
The view my sister and I had hiking!
I also was able to hang out with and get to know the other people working in this lab more this week. For example, I learned Eugene speaks fluente Russian and the Seth loves Sufjan Stevens.
This week was the most challenging yet because I did many things I was not familiar with, but it was still so amazing!
It is so much fun to see you learn new things, and especially love that you got to go to red rocks!