This week most of our efforts would be in finishing up our presentation for Origami Robot course and probably eating rice dumplings since Dragon Boat Festival is a public holiday here in China.
This week’s cultural experience was to visit the manufacturing plant of Geely in Taizhou. Since it was a 5 hours ride from Hangzhou, it was quite a long journey and most of us chose to spend the time meeting 周公. When we visit the factory, the size of the factory really shocked me and to be honest I didn’t even know the Geely brand before I came to Hangzhou so after the tour that they gave us and the presentation on the history of the company, I was impressed by their commitments towards becoming the biggest automaker in China and beyond. Besides, their own brand, the acquisition of Volvo in 1999 and the acquisition of 9% shares in Daimler AG which has brands such as Mercedes Benz in it further encapsulates the ambitions of Geely Holdings.
Fun aside, after building the foundations of our origami robot, we reach the final part of the course which is to allow the robot to interact with the users by adding sensors and track any changes to its environment.
Besides getting the sensors, the interaction aspect is also a key factor in this final showcase where we need to have a realistic scenario where each action the user makes, it is properly translated into the program that is linked to the robot and the robot does the appropriate actions. Since we were asked to create 25 different movements last week, the most important part is to create a logical and interactive action-flow such that the user can understand the actions done by the robot and the robot can picked up the correct conditions that the human action.
Finally, we have our theme meeting regarding on the design problems and solutions was done this week as we went to the Cainiao Delivery Centre to scout for potential design problems that we can solve and further improve the service. As we met on Friday to finalize on the big picture, we mainly thought of the efficiency ad security of the packages as these are the 2 most important aspects that the customers would want when receiving the purchases. Although we are not clear on the exact date, we are visiting the main warehouse of Cainiao in Hangzhou to inspect and discover further issues in the delivery process.
Since being in Hangzhou for almost 1 month, I start to get more used to the food and the classes. However, since the weather would only get hotter from here on, that is probably the only thing in China that I am not looking forward to.
