A few updates

Hello, world! I have a few things I’d like to share with you.

First, I graduated from UT Dallas a few days ago with my B.S. in Computer Engineering.

Me with my family Me with my sister and parents.

Second, I’ve wrapped up my four-year-long autonomous driving project, Nova. I started that organization with absolutely no knowledge and a great deal of arrogance. After a few setbacks and many, many long nights in the lab, my team and I were able to create hardware and software that could drive our car on an actual road for 4 miles with almost no intervention. I did have to help it press down the brakes a little as we approached intersections, as the brakes on our car are quite weak.

I underestimated how hard self-driving is, which goes to show just how arrogant I was at the start. I told my lab boss, Dr. Ruths, that I could just download and run some open-source software and we could be at Level 4 autonomy within two weeks. That was dumb. Anyway, we got something working at last! See below.

Finally, I’m happy to say that I’ll be studying at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute as a masters student in Robotics Systems Development! I’ve dreamt of studying at CMU my whole life, and I feel so lucky to have this opportunity. CMU is simply the best place in the world to study robots, and so I feel like I must embrace the next two years with all my heart and soul, to learn everything I can while I’m there so that I can make the most of this fortunate gift.

I seriously considered PhD programs, and I was lucky to connect with some awesome robotics labs around the country, but I decided that I’m too impatient to spend another five years (minimum) in the lab. I’d like to put my robots out in the real world as soon as I can. But to all the people who opened their doors to me for PhD opportunities, thank you for your time!