“Parkour Cars” – real-time autonomous vehicular acrobatics

Nima Keivan’s research project is incredible. It involves an autonomous toy car that navigates through an array of obstacles, including loops and enormous jumps. It uses an open-source physics engine (Bullet) to project forward in time the result of taking multiple actions and uses the results to make the optimal move (e.g. what will happen if I turn left .5 degrees, or stay straight, or turn right by .5 degrees).

Learn more on the project page or check out the PDF for more details. Thanks to Jack Morrison of Replica Labs for the link.

“How to write a great research paper”

“How to write a great research paper”

This is a great overview of writing a research paper. I haven’t written many papers, but having read some, the following jumped out as being particularly good advice:

• Move the related work section to the end rather than right after the introduction. I like this idea; when the related work comes early in the paper, it distracts from what the problem and solution are in the first place. I think it makes more sense to see how others have tackled the same problem after I have a good sense of the problem. (p. 23-24)
• Write the paper before doing all of the research. (p.5). I see a parallel here with test driven development – just as writing tests first helps steer the API design of a library, writing the paper first:

* Forces us to be clear, focused
* Crystallises what we don’t understand
* Opens the way to dialogue with others: reality check,
critique, and collaboration