New member to-do list

Things to do when you join the HIRO group

Contents

The following is a list of things to do if you are new to the Human Interaction and RObotics [HIRO] Group. Please consider this as a non-exhaustive cheat sheet that is modified over time. As such, feel free to let us know if there are any changes you would like to suggest.

For Fall 2024, we will be holding group meetings ECOT 831 on Tuesdays at 9.30 am. Feel free to stop by if you want to have a chat!!

1 Preliminaries

Prospective new members of the lab (e.g., undergraduate students or master’s students looking to work on an Independent Study) should take the following steps before moving to the next section:

  1. Find a project. There are multiple ways to find a project to work on, including the following (in chronological order):
    • Read about our main research threads here. The page is still under development, but it could be a good start to quickly gain high-level knowledge.
    • Take a look at our previous published work available here. Identify some papers that you are interested in, read them, and try to come up with ways to potentially improve them.
    • Reach out to our PhD students and ask them what they are up to—see here. Feel free to do so via email or by joining our lab meetings. This is also a great way to find a mentor!
  2. Find a supervisor. Every junior student works under the supervision of a senior student; this allows the lab to gracefully scale in size, but most importantly it allows you to gain necessary exposure to research with close supervision from somebody who is already experienced with it. It is a fundamental step on the path to research independence!!
  3. Once you and your supervisor have agreed on a project, communicate with Prof. Alessandro Roncone with details of it. This is your first opportunity to practice talking about your research—an important skill!
  4. Lastly, you should consider attending one of the robotics classes that we regularly offer in the academic year. This will dramatically accelerate the process of picking up the necessary robotics/AI skills needed to perform research in the HIRO Group! Courses frequently offered include:
    • CSCI 3302: Introduction to Robotics
    • CSCI 4302/5302: Advanced Robotics
    • CSCI 5322: Algorithmic Human-Robot Interaction
    • CSCI 5402: Research Methods in Human-Robot Interaction
    • CSCI 7000: Physical Human-Robot Interaction
    • CSCI 7000: Deep Reinforcement Learning and Robotics

2 New Members

Once you are done with the preliminary steps above, follow the instructions here to finalize your membership. You are expected to complete these tasks within 2 days of joining the group—these should not take you more than half an hour of work!

2.1 Slack, GitHub, Shared Calendar, and Mailing List

  1. If you don’t already have a GitHub account, create one.
  2. Send an email to Anuj Pasricha and Ava Abderezaei with Prof. Alessandro Roncone in Cc. Include your:
    • GitHub username
    • Your firstname.lastname@colorado.edu email alias for our Slack and mailing list
  3. Anuj and/or Ava will add you to our Slack workspace, GitHub organization, shared Calendar, and mailing list.
    • Make your membership to the GitHub organization public.
    • Say hi in #general on Slack! Do mention who you’re working with, and a brief description of what you’ll be working on.
    • Please install Slack on your machine and phone as well as on your phone. This helps you to easily keep up with what happens in the group, and you’ll also be less likely to miss important messages.

2.2 Lab Agreements

  1. Carefully read the lab agreements. There are currently three documents available:
  2. Following your previous email, Ava will also send you a DocuSign link.
  3. Follow the link to sign the agreements. Prof. Roncone will be automatically notified to sign it after you have signed.

2.3 Lab Access

  1. Write an email to the CS Front Office with Prof. Alessandro Roncone, Anuj Pasricha, and Ava Abderezaei in Cc.
  2. Ask to be granted access to ECST 322, ECES 116 and ECES 111. Please include the following information:
    • Name
    • Student ID
    • Buff OneCard number
    • CU login name
    • Email

2.4 Group Website

  1. Do a Pull Request [PR] on this repository to add your data to this file and a picture of you to this folder. The picture needs to be square, and not bigger than 400x400 px.
  2. If you’re not familiar with the PR workflow, you can refer to this guide.

3 Optional Steps

  1. To access research papers off-campus, set up the CU Boulder VPN client on your machine. Alternatively, drag the following link to your bookmarks toolbar: CU Proxy. Whenever you come across a paywall, simply click on the bookmark to access the resource through the University Libraries proxy.
  2. If you’re serious about a career in robotics, you are highly encouraged to subscribe to the robotics-worldwide and euRobotics mailing lists.
  3. If you plan to perform research with human subjects, please be aware of the policies for doing so and do the CITI training for Social Behavioral Research Investigators and Key Personnel. If your project requires IRB review, please be prepared to do so on a timely manner as submitting an IRB Protocol (and having it reviewed) takes time.
  4. If you need storage for data, request an account with CU Boulder Research Computing on this page. After receiving your RC account, await further instructions from RC to set up Duo two-factor authentication.
  5. If you are an undergraduate student joining for the summer, please subscribe to this list.