What to teach young people in 10 years?

How-much-ever possible. Youngsters have the ability to grasp vast amount of information and develop many skills. The youngsters may not be "experts" very soon, but they should get a starting point on that particular field after teaching. Their future life will depend upon their ability to think. They will have to be prepared for "surface level knowledge in various areas" as well as "depth" of knowledge in certain areas. 

How the world will look like in 10 years. How the job market will look like in 10 years? What kind of skills people will need?

Permanent Human Needs (Till humanity exists)

- Farming 

- Cooking (Food industry/Business)

- Education

- Healthcare (New/Automated healthcare practices.)

- Security (Army/Navy/AirForce/Police)

- Justice (Lawyers, Judges)

- Communication (Quality communication with mobile, internet. We will have to maintain or improve the quality)

- Finance (Banks, Share Market)

- Support Jobs for Automation in any field. Be it finance/telecom/medicine/mechanics/electrical/civil anything. I mean, automation of processes will be complete (maybe in 10 years or so). We will only require "support" from time-to-time.

- Entertainment (Arts like paintings/music/films/plays) etc. I agree that robots can make paintings or music piece. But the importance of "human art" cannot and will not be denied. The person who is using "robots" for creating music or painting will be a human. So there will always be a "human touch" in Arts. 

- Astronomy/Space

Farmers, cooks, teachers, professors, doctors, nurses, army, navy, airforce, police, support engineers (finance/telecom/medicine/mechanics/civil/electrical), painters, musicians, film-makers, play-artists, glass-workers, metal-workers, wood-workers, construction workers (construct bridges, railway tracks, buildings, tunnels, airports etc), travel agents, transport agents, lawyers, judges

Temporary Needs 

- Creating or building anything (from bridges to robots) is temporary. But its maintenance or support is permanent. It applies for all God's creations also ... Like human body. It is created only once. But needs to be maintained for many years to come.

If you are squeezed, what comes out is hatred, anger

 Is the "analogy of an orange" good to judge a person? ... How do I analyze a person? ... "By giving some space" ... From a distance ... By giving him/her some freedom ... Definitely NOT by squeezing ... Is the analogy of "orange squeezing" right to judge/test a person? ... No ... Not at all ...

Movement of the Robotic Arm

Movement:

1. Keep a heap of dry garbage (a mix of plastic, paper and leaves) in a tray. The tray is rectangular and light grey in color. The tray is always kept at a specific position. Keep the tray in a closed environment  where the light source is from the left as well as from the right of the tray. The robotic arm is mounted such that it's left to right movement is parallel to the tray's longer edge. 

2. Start from the top of the heap. The "heap top" can be calibrated to the left-of-larger-edge of the tray and height as high as the robotic arm can go up in the air. This larger edge of the tray is closer to the robotic arm. 

3. Now start swiping the camera horizontally, parallel to the tray's larger edge which is closer to the robotic arm. While swiping pick and segregate the objects which are identified as "paper", "plastic" or "leaves". 

• The "identification" process is as follows. Keep swiping the arm and capture three photos with 50ms delay. If two of the photos give us the same predictions, let's say "paper", then classify the object as paper. 
• The "picking" process is as follows: Pause the robotic arm when you receive two equal readings out of three. Let's say the three readings are "leaves", "paper", "paper". Stop the arm. Open the gripper to half of its maximum. And bring the gripper down until it touches the object. (Assuming a touch sensor is attached to the arm). Pick the object and move it to the appropriate bin (plastic, paper or leaves). The bin coordinates will be calibrated in the beginning of the experiment. (Timeout, if the object can not be picked up in 2 attempts and move forward by lifting the robotic arm.) After picking one object, put it in the appropriate bin. Lift the robotic arm up in the air, to its maximum height and start moving to the right until it reaches the rightmost edge of the tray. Once it reaches the rightmost edge, move the robotic arm 3 cm towards the farther edge of the tray. And start traversing to the left from edge to edge. Continue capturing photos along the way. And keep the 2 out of 3 logic intact, to segregate the objects. Complete one traversal of the tray by moving 3 cm everytime from closest to farthest edge and moving from "left to right" and "right to left" of the tray. Like-wise repeat this traversal across the edges three times. Pick and segregate the objects. Count the remaining objects, the segregated objects and "time required" to check the efficiency of the robotic arm. Note the reason why the remaining objects did not get segregated? Is that due to time crunch? Or the three times traversal is less to pick all the objects? Is the gripper opening insufficient? Or due to objects overlay?

Below is how the Robotic Arm will look like, with mobile phone on the clamp and the gripper.

Goal - Integrate with Arduino uno, to capture images from Arducam Mini 2MP Plus, and save it on the computer. 

Step 1:

Wiring Connections - Arducam Mini 2MP Plus (OV2640) to Arduino Uno

VCC: Connect to 5V on Arduino Uno.

GND: Connect to Ground (GND).

CS (Pin 10): Connect to digital Pin 10 (SPI chip select).

MOSI (Pin 11): Connect to digital Pin 11.

MISO (Pin 12): Connect to digital Pin 12.

SCK (Pin 13): Connect to digital Pin 13.

SDA (A4): Connect to Analog Pin A4 (I2C data).

SCL (A5): Connect to Analog Pin A5 (I2C clock).

Step 2:

Official video streaming sketch - ArduCAM_Mini_Video_Streaming.ino. Upload it on Arduino Uno.

Step 3:

Arducam's PC host software via USB - "Arducam EVK SDK" to save the images programmatically on to the PC. "Arducam EVK SDK" trigger to capture a photo when the gripper is at a specific position , after every one second programmatically using python, C or C++. 

Step 4:

Think about the display of photos. [TBD]

Flow for Core Training and Incremental Training and Predictions using the above setup

1. Arducam EVK SDK triggers the camera to capture photos when the gripper is at a specific position after every one second. 

2. A previously created core segregation model is then used for prediction of objects "Leaves", "Paper" and "Plastic". According to prediction, a signal is sent to the robotic arm to move the object into "Leaves Bin", "Paper Bin" or "Plastic Bin".

3. When the number of objects go beyond 10, an "incremental training" process is triggered and the 

"segregation model" gets refined. And further predictions happen with this model. And the objects are segregated in a refined way. 

 

A block diagram for high level programming of "Predicting Robotic Arm With Camera" is given below.

 

 

Discussions over prototyping and sellable product:

• We need to envision what our prototype looks like. 
• Can we get a camera directly connected to the Computer, rather than the camera going to the Arduino and the Arduino going to the computer?
• Initially in the prototype phase, we will just have one layer of garbage. It will not be a heap. But the question is, the stake-holders might find it very basic. I mean, it is demonstrating only "classification", which is already demonstrated using mobile app. The real challenge in Garbage Collection is to sort out a "heap" of garbage. The option of touch sensor is good. Whenever the gripper of the robotic arm touches the garbage, the object will be picked up and sorted.
• We may pick the object up and when it comes closer to camera, we can capture a photograph and classify it. Rather than first capturing the photograph and then picking the object up. 
• out of box - can we design a filter through which only plastic can be separated or only paper can be separated. Currently we are thinking of separating the garbage along the lines of "processing done by human being". Is some different approach feasible?
• To reach the final product, it will be a three step process - 1. Have only one layer of garbage and sort it out 2. Have a heap of garbage to sort it out 3. Collect remote objects, make a heap and sort it out
• "speed" is going to be a crucial factor here. 
• We can capture a photograph of the heap and move the robotic arm wherever there is plastic in the photograph. Pick all the visible plastic in one go. Then capture another photograph and pick all the visible plastic. But the problem with this approach is, whenever an object is picked up from the heap, the surrounding objects will move. And the previous photograph will no longer be valid.
• In real life, there will be millions of objects to be sorted out in one day. So sorting the objects one by one, does not seem to be feasible. 
• How to calculate the efficiency of robotic arm "objects/hour"?
• Another approach to segregate is to divide the whole tray into a grid. Start from the peak of the heap. Which is mostly in the middle of the tray. Start classifying objects from this middle-top position, with the help of camera and touch sensor. Slowly come down classifying the objects. 
• Why can't we have mobile attached to the robotic arm? - We need to do the following processes - Capture an image, inference it, move the robotic arm as per inference. We can capture the picture and inference it on mobile. Can't we use the same mobile attached in the robotic arm, to give appropriate instructions to the robotic arm after inferencing? We will save the price of an additional GPU with this setup. And the whole setup will be compact. 
• We need to do inference on the laptop and give the final segregation instruction to the robotic arm. We can not dispatch "the robotic arm along with the laptop" in production. In future we might need to make the robotic arm working with GPU (instead of a laptop) and sell it. 
• We also discussed T shaped mounting positions of the Gripper and mobile. The camera can capture further pictures, meanwhile the gripper will pick the object and place it in an appropriate bin. But for this to happen, the part of T which carries the gripper should be flexible enough. Such that it can move without moving the camera. 

GPU + Camera + Arduino + development cost or future support cost per kit

4500 + 2878 + 340 + X

Work Styles of Men

 Explaining or Asking for Explanation by "Ripping Off"

   - Pointing out person's extreme needs at wrong time

     Example - 

     - If you do not extend your resignation time, I will call your next company to cancel your offer

Explaining or Asking for Explanation "Humanly or Straight" 

    Examples - 

    - You are meticulous, 

    - He understands code at a glance

    - It does not make any sense to pair, there is nothing to pair on this card, constantly listening to negative responses just puts me off! 

    - You are a jealous woman

Explaining or Asking for Explanation by "Humor"

   Examples - 

   - Japanese person commits suicide, if the train arrives late. 

     Indicates Japan's dedication to punctuality

Explaining or Asking for Explanation by "Pulling Legs"

  Examples - 

      TBD 

Explaining or Asking for Explanation by "Criticizing"

    Examples 

    Constructive Criticism 

   - Some tasks men can do better

   - You are probably right  

   (indicates a vague style or a style lacking of data)

   Destructive Criticism

    - You smell bad

    - You are lazy

    - You are slow

Explaining or Asking for Explanation by "Sarcasm"

    Example - 

   - O, Really!

Explaining or Asking for Explanation by "Exaggeration"

    Example - 

    - Micro-Manage, Nano-Manage

Feminism And Childless-ness Creates Unhappiness

Well, I do not know what all aspects come under the umbrella of "Feminism". However over a period of time, one thought gets underlined in my mind about "Feminism". It is a little bias or softness shown towards women by men, to compensate for the mistakes man-kind has made over successive years towards women. The mistakes like "not educating the women", "not allowing women to work", "not giving women the right to vote" etc. However, when it comes to my own values, I define "feminism" as getting equal towards "men's values". Values like "equality", "freedom", "peace", "work-ethics" etc. 

What do I mean by "equality" in men's world? If you observe "how men work", you will find, there is a certain strict time to work and certain strict time to play or to have fun. They follow a certain strict rule not to step onto each other's feet. They value each other's "freedom" a lot! There is a certain space, yet there is closeness. They understand each other and each other's work-style perfectly, even though they rarely speak to each other. I think it's a matter of "understanding " rather than being "outspoken" about it. Men are more "direct", women are "indirect". 

Men's world has always amused me, probably because ours is a girl's family. The other reason is there is a hidden expectation to be in "girl's group" in India. And the third reason is not many girls follow academics so closely and being good at academics is cherished in India. The "Engineering" discipline is such that there are very few girls. So many of the times, I used to have a thought in mind, "I study a certain topic in a certain way, how guys think about the topic?" 

If you observe the difference between a father and a mother's interactions with kids, most of the time father is "impartial" towards kids while mother gets little partial towards the kid who helps her the most or willingly. Mother is partial towards "soft" personality kid, while father is impartial irrespective of the kid is "soft" or not! Many women still find an "angry or hard" kid difficult to manage. And they prefer to stay away from him/her and hence certain distance gets created between them since the childhood. 

These men's values which I prefer girls should adapt if they want to be equal to men. Expect no pampering, no spoiling, no reservations... Only merit ! Only competitive spirit ... It should be just like sports ... The right person putting the right efforts wins! There should not be any difference between men and women when it comes to values. 

Now regarding "childless-ness". That hurts when we become a part of "society". The "society" starts questioning deeply. And those questions hurt. No one asks "what position he/she is securing at work?" ... People ask how many children he/she has! Society follows a different success criteria at a family level. If we are away from society, "childless-ness" is strictly a personal issue. It is completely a couple's own desire to get into parental role.