Columbia, SC Linux Users Group - Seminar

Columbia, SC Linux Users Group will have a meeting Thursday, October 9th, 2008. Dan Lark will talk about encrypted file systems in Linux. If you are interested, please contact Dr. Jiang or you can be there directly .

• Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm, Thursday, October 9th, 2008.
• Location: 301 Main St. (the Swearingen Engineering Center on the USC Campus)
• Topic: Encrypted File Systems in Linux
• Speaker: Mr. Dan Lark
• Direction: The building is at the intersection of Main and Catawba. (Three blocks south of Blossom St.) Come in the entrance facing Main closest to Catawba & Main, and look for the Faculty Lounge. (2nd door on the right, next to the vending room.) Handicap entrance faces Catawba and enters to basement level. Take elevator to 1st floor and take two rights to get to the meeting room.

Slides & Pictures for Open Source in Education

Thank Mr. David Nalley for his wonderful presentation.
Please click here for presentation slides.
And pictures:

We are expecting to bring some Open Source ideas into our classroom and undergraduate research projects.

Open Source in Education

We invited Mr. David Nalley for a talk about Open Source at 9/19/2008, Friday, 12:00pm - 1:00pm, STARKS-I.
He has been a contributor to Open Source Software Projects since 2003, a frequent speaker at computer conferences and the occasional educational institution, and a frequent author for various computer magazines.
The title is:
Open Source in Education -- Why students and teachers should care.

And we plan to use open source in our robotics research in the future.

First Meeting of 2008 Fall

Dear STACIE members,
We will have a combined meeting with Group Mobile Computing, 9/12/2008, 10:00am. Let's meet at ALU313.
Look forward to seeing you all.

Potential Projects

• Robotics
• Robots in Education:
  Did you ever think about how to use robots to promote education at different age level or for different subjects?
  For example,
  You can program robot to teach kindergarten kids English or Math;
  You can design robot for teaching music;
  You can do a survey through all those area and write a review.
  etc.
  
• Robots in Our Daily Life:
  Did you ever consider how to use robots to make your life better?
  A good example is iRobot Vacuum Cleaning Robot.
  You can use robot to solve little problems in your daily life and each small problem can be a good research topic.
  
• Learn and Program iRobot:
  Focusing on individual algorithms in controlling iRobot, you can analyze an algorithm and try to improve it.
  

• Emotional Agents
• Did you ever think about bringing some emotions to robot? or making robot more like a human being?
• Did you ever think about how to build an emotionally intelligent agent or high EQ agent?
• Program emotional agents, and evaluate their performance in the competition of a game.
• Any good strategies in negotiation? Transform them to programs.

• Web Service and Distributed AI
• Learn and design your own XML.
• Learn SOAP and write your code with XML and SOAP.
• Learn WSDL and design your own web service.
• Study security in web service.
  

• Linux and Open Source Software
• Build up experience with Linux system, and learn how to set up a web server.
• Learn how to run a Linux server to support multiple users to work on same research project.
  

AI Landscape

Lecture Slides

The slides for Dr. O'Kane's lecture at March 7, 2008 can be download here.

The slides for Dr. Jiang's lecture at February 22, 2008 can be download here.

Upcoming: Future Directions for Computing in Robotics

Robots will have enormous impact on everyday life in the near future. This introductory talk will overview the current state-of-the-art and preview the role of computing in the future of robotics.

Time and Location: March 7th, Friday, 1:00PM at ALU 313.
BY Dr. Jason M. O'Kane

Dr. Jason M. O'Kane earned a B.S. degree in computer science from Taylor University in 2001, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005 and 2007, respectively. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include algorithms for robotics, planning under uncertainty, artificial intelligence, computational geometry, and motion planning.

Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory - Indiana University Visiting

I visited Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory of Indiana University on Feb 22. It's exciting to see different robots in teaching and research. I also gave a talk there, the topic is "From Rational to Emotional Agents". Hope we will have a kind of collaboration in the future.

IT Managers User Group STARTING in Columbia!

The first informal meeting is scheduled for 2/6/2008 at TM Floyd, Inc. (1800 St. Julian Place, Columbia, SC 29204). The first official meeting will be 4/2/2008 - First Wednesday of the month.
Interested students are invited along with other professors to the 2/6/2008 meeting. TM Floyd will host the first two informal meeting and all meeting after that will be hosted by USC.

Please RVSP by Feb. 1 (Verbus M. Counts at countsv@benedict.edu), as pizza will be provided and they need to now how many are coming.

The proposed agenda for Wednesday February 6, 2008 is as follows:

6:30 - Welcome - Ron
Introduction of committee members
Guest make self intros

6:45 Mission Statement - ?
Changes to mission statement

7:00 IT Manager's Challenge - Verbus
Cost, Time, Quality - You can have any TWO, but not all THREE for any given
project

7:15 Introduction to tonight's presentation - Verbus

7:20 Web Application Demo - Grady & Amy

8:00 Networking - All

8:30 The End

Welcome New Semester

Dear Students,
Happy New Year!
Team STACIE is going to have activities soon. Do you have any idea for expected activities? Or what do you like to learn and use what you learn to serve the community?
Please write down your opinions in the comments.
Thanks and best regards,
Dr. Hong Jiang