Start to feel like things are happening.

To be honest, I was little excited this week. After a bunch of preliminary work, and 2-3 years of CS Graduate School, I finally got to the point where I am working on what I consider one of the core parts of SEAR-RL. Specifically, most of this week I focused  on an idea I had for a more efficient way to analyzing the 3D from the Structure Sensor. It is works then the running time of the algorithm would be less then O(n) [where n is all the points coming from the scanner]. That in itself should help, since I want to make this a real-time application.

The most troublesome parts so far actually haven’t been anything to do with the idea, but how to debug it. Specifically, I been trying to create a visual overlay to the data views I receive from the sensor. This is so I can see that the points I m scanning are the correct points I want to scan. To do this I have had to dive into iOS GUI code once again on how to present the data. However, this task has not been that ominous as I feared as Apple’s introduction of the XCode Playgrounds have been a significant help. The Playgrounds are Apple’s REPL system to just experiment with code. They have been a help because I have been able to quickly experiment with the iOS GUI and see the results. It helped me focus on this specific part of my project, and not worry about accidentally breaking another part. But even with Playgrounds I have to say getting answers from Apple’s Documentation is not the best. I feel like I am having to search the interweb to cross-reference how to do something in Apple’s documentation I feel I should not have to.

But aside from that, yes there are still a few little issues, but the fact I am finally getting to see if this idea will work soon has got me excited. I just find it funny, that it seems that everything from Linear Algebra to Algorithms has been helpful in figuring this one problem out, so I guess coming back to graduate school was not a terrible idea.