So it seems that getting shot in the face by a robot can actually pay long-term dividends.
By which I mean that after all the time I spent building and debugging hardware in the now-defunct Computer Vision and Robotics Research Group, I’m now one of the decreasing handful of people in the CS department who knows hardware. Which sounds odd from the outside I suppose – most non-computer people I know seem to think that anyone with a degree in computer science or computer engineering knows how to do anything and everything to do with computers. It doesn’t actually work that way, the same way that a neurosurgeon wouldn’t be able to deal with a pandemic; the field is specialised in both cases to the point where specialists aren’t interchangeable anymore, at least at the deeper levels of specialisation.
That’s not to say that there’s no knowledge of hardware outside of the few people who’re working on hardware-level research; it’s more that those working in (for example) formal methods would be misspending their time if they spent time building hardware. It’s got nothing to do with what they’re working on.
At any rate, because of this, I’ve been assigned to teach the CS7004 course, which is the introduction to embedded systems on the Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing MSc course. I’ve done a lecture or two before, along with six years demonstrating to various courses and three years TAing for two other courses and teaching commercial courses outside of college but this is my first actual post as a college lecturer. I’m rather looking forward to it.
And we’ve got some nifty hardware to use as a platform; we’re moving away from the chips we used to use (68000′s, 8051′s, PIC chips, BASIC stamps, SunSpots and so forth) and several … Read the rest
