Outings

After a week of delays, Ryoma and the rest of his cohort visited Daejeon with the intent to hike across Gyeryongsan, the site of one of the twenty national parks in South Korea. However, such an endeavor could not be done so suddenly, and the cohort spent that Saturday exploring Daejeon, having breakfast at the famous Sungsimdang bakery, then visiting the National Science Museum, and crossing the Expo Bridge to reach the Arboretum.

A bread statue in front of Sungsimdang.

A Naro-1 Rocket on display, alongside other rockets. On the left was an atmospheric reentry simulator for reentry vehicles, and to the right was several of South Korea’s experimental maglev trains.

A (bad) picture of a replica of KOMPSAT-2.

On the third floor of one of the buildings was a collection of displays from medieval Korea. Other displays included a water-powered mechanical diorama of a village, full-scale recreations of medieval houses, blacksmith workshops, and other displays of life in that era.

A rather large map of Korea from the Joseon era.

The first night was spent in what turned out to be a sex motel (the cohort was not aware of this until after they left). An awkward exchange was had between the cohort and the front desk clerk.

The next day, the cohort embarked on their hike.

One of the first landmarks in the trail was Cheongnyangsa Pagoda, which neighbored a cliffside temple.

One view of the trail. It was more impressive in person.

Sambulbong Peak, the first peak the cohort reached. Fortunately, the slopes that would appear later on in the path were much gentler than what came before. On the other hand, there was two-thirds of the trail left to take.

Gwangeulbong Peak marker. Getting here was exhausting.

While the sights of Gyerongsan were indeed worth it, the trip lasted about three hours longer than he expected and had to rush to his bus. Unfortunately, Naver maps lied to him and led him to the wrong bus terminal. In truth, the real bus terminal was an additional 50 minutes away by public transportation and therefore he had no chance of getting there in time to begin with.

Work

Again, Ryoma spent the week learning the tools that he will be using, mainly ROS. He also got the depth camera he will be using to work.

An output from a D435i depth camera. On the left is the 2D RGB image, typical of a conventional camera. On the right is the depth map, where closer points are colored blue and distant points are colored red. The camera obtains these distances by comparing the inputs of two cameras (also called a stereo camera system).

The output of the same camera rendered in 3D Space. The color pixels (from the RGB camera) are placed a certain distance away (as seen in the depth map) to yield a 3D reconstruction of the camera input. The voids are either areas outside the camera’s field of view, or are areas blocked by objects in the foreground.