Computers and Coal-coloured Canines

Despite being something I very rarely mention to all but a few close friends, I feel rapidly that I'm beginning to need more than one sole outlet for the single biggest obstacle to the completion of work in my PhD, namely, that for the last four years I've suffered from what most people call Depression, and what a different sort of Doctor would call Major Depressive Disorder.

There are plenty of excellent sources, valued reader, that explain the precise details of this condition far better than I could possibly attempt; and a short jaunt to your favourite search engine will surely confirm this. Nonetheless I feel compelled to add as best I can some particulars of my situation and how it pertains to my performance (or lack-thereof) in my research at this time. I include a few silly cartoons I made in moments of despondency. Make of them what you will– I appreciate some of them may seem almost narcissistically self-piteous, but I hope they might serve some purpose in explaining or allowing people to empathise with this condition.

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The popular comparison for depression is that of a black dog– the larger and more cumbersome the better– draping itself across your back or lap and sapping you of the energy and will to continue in the pursuit of daily things. I have mixed feelings about this analogy: for on the one hand it conveys the almost physically tangible "weight" of hauling around a brain deficient in serotonin and intent on ruining your day, while on the other it equates the condition to a creature many of our species find adorable and cute.

As such, in my own mind I've always preferred to imagine a more amorphous blob. A sort of sentient lump of tar malevolently swamping your work and your faculties of reason. While I appreciate it may be impossible for some to consider something affecting you very pertinently in your higher mental faculties, it is something worth keeping in mind whenever a friend confides in you that they have such a condition. It's still a physical ailment: Something in my brain isn't working properly, and it seriously affects my ability, in turn, to work. I would not dare to pass judgement on similarly afflicted friends, as I have heard some do, that suggests they are merely "lazy". In the same way a severed leg would seriously impede one's ability to run (unless replaced by a suitable prosthetic), an abnormal mixture of hormones in the brain seriously impedes one's ability to get anything done (for which, perhaps sadly, no such prosthetic can provide a cure).

This need not even be serious or important work. One of the reasons I feel privileged to know friends who can empathise with this rather stupid condition is that some days you really long to share with someone that you managed to brush your teeth, and are feeling distinctly proud of this achievement.

Ultimately, aside from lacking any kind of feeling of motivation to begin a task, I have found that one's own inner-monologue often confounds the matter. Consider a state of lowered mood, which has prevented you from achieving a pre-determined goal of fixing your buggy code by a given day. Now consider the feeling of failure gained from such a missed deadline, and quickly one can appreciate the sullen downward spiral of self-doubt and misery which results. Again, this may sound hyperbolic or even self-centred, but its veracity cannot be fairly doubted and is supported in lines such as that by the ineffably insightful Stephen Fry when he describes the "blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness". Notice the inclusion of the word 'lethargy'. 

In the event I alternate between feelings of vague contentedness with the progress of my Transfer Thesis and relevant research, and almost overwhelming negativity wherein I convince myself I am incapable of any significant achievement or completion of my Doctorate. For now, at least, here I remain: holding on to the hopes that I will succeed despite this encumbrance and with the support of those I can rely on, and that I will not succumb to the terrifyingly real prospect of having to stop what I'm doing and move elsewhere. 

I might have just wasted ten minutes of your time with this incoherent ramble, for which I apologise, or I may have provided a tiny glimpse into what I think about every day that I sit in this office. Either way, and whether or not I know you personally, thank you for taking the time to read all this and give me an opportunity to voice myself in this small way. 

2013 in ... one post?

Whoops. So it seems I've managed to neglect this blog for almost an entire year. Not intentionally of course, it's just other things seem to take precedent. Anyway a bunch of progress is being made both in my own tiny little section of the UAV-algorithm field, and with UAVs as a whole.

My Stuff
Post progress-report (not transfer thesis: that's next year) I've been thinking more about what first responders actually want or need in a disaster situation. I had set up a meeting with Rescue Global (a sort of... real-life International Rescue) but they had to cancel after needing to dash off to the Philippines. As excuses to miss meetings go, I think "biggest Typhoon in history" is one of the better ones. Hope all is well out there.

I honestly would love to know that work I've done could help in these sorts of situations. Source: Dailymail

Anyway, I came across this interesting assessment from the Red Cross which outlines a bunch of goals and implementations of what is done/what needs doing after a disaster strikes. This actually helped me solve a key question in my work, which goes something like this:

If you're REALLY sure that there's people, in a location, that need help, do you need to bother sending a UAV for imaging anyway?

Put another way: are we taking images for the sake of it, or to work out where people are? Because if it's the latter you can actually ignore parts of the map where you're certain there are people, since you know already.

It turns out, from the wording of the report, that there's merit in imaging anyway: the wording suggests emergency responders value being able to see and assess what situation the victims are in even if they know in advance where they are. That makes sense to me, since it might inform what sort of response is needed (helicopter? boat? ground crew?).

Anyway my ideal system for controlling the UAVs now works something like this: Given an area, with some sort of prior belief of where people are, and some sort of belief about what danger they're in (quantified as an expected death-rate), and given that taking images of these people will let them get rescued more effectively, what's the optimum route to travel around the space, taking pictures, with multiple UAVs, to minimise the overall death rate?

I think the main motivation for phrasing it like this—apart from the fact no-one has done it before and PhD (if nothing else) is supposed to break new ground—is that I'm keen on producing something which is actually practical and useful, and not just an interesting exercise in computer science. I'm increasingly convinced that the idea of discretising the needs of disaster workers into "tasks" is not particularly reflective of the more cohesive picture that can be painted of a disaster area.

Anyway the exact mechanism for this has yet to be decided, but it'll probably be some sort of Monte-Carlo Tree Search with factoring to account for UAV co-ordination. So here's hoping for a paper early next year.

Other stuff
Seems that UAVs have made the news in a few places recently. There's the RAF trying to soften their image as all-purpose killing machines in this BBC article for a bit of interest. Much more bizarrely, there's the recent revelation that Amazon are thinking of using UAVs to deliver packages:

In news next year: People now hunting for Xboxes using rifles. Source: Amazon

On our end, we've also had the Beeb round to film some of our stuff for an upcoming episode of Bang Goes the Theory. I'll post the link up here once it airs, and I might even be in the background. Somewhere. Very briefly.

Anyway there's more out there if you look for it, and it seems UAVs are going to be big business in years to come. Hopefully that'll mean more cheap drones for us to buy and test on :)


I promise I'll be better at updating in the New Year. It'll be a resolution. Or not, since those are so often discarded. Anyway until then, have fun and enjoy your not-yet-delivered-by-drone presents!