Critical Reflection

The goals that I set for myself at the start are to relearn all the materials that Professor Brad is teaching and improve my oratorical skills through observing Professor Brad's teachings, making him a role model. I achieved my first goal by relearning all the materials that was taught. At the start of every lesson, I ensure that I join the class with an open-mind to listen and understand what was being taught so that I can process and accept it. Some of the materials that I relearned are the framework and structure when writing a summary. Before this, I was taught a different method of writing a summary. However, I listened and understood how to write according to the framework taught. I paid attention to all the comments and feedback given to every student during every lesson. The most significant and impactful lesson for me was the presentation tips and advice. I believe that this advice is best given when observing mock presentations. Common mistakes that have become a habit such as using Singlish, slouching, and improper handover of presentation can only can observed when carrying out the mock practical itself and viewing others to notice our own mistakes.

Hence, with an open mind to relearn I am able to gain more knowledge to unlearn the mistakes and to relearn and to learn to increase my knowledge.

I achieved my second goal of improving my oratorical skills with Professor Brad as my role model. I observed the eye contact he used to engage with the audience and he engages students in his class by giving them the opportunity to share their thought, ideas and giving them the opportunity to present simple topics every lesson. I also learn how to use the appropriate tone and to project my voice according to the crowd through observing Proffesor Brad's teachings. Hence, I was able to apply and improve my oratorical skills through observing Professor Brad as the presenter and myself as an audience. I find his lesson very meaningful and engaging, and this is the type of impact I want to leave on my audience.

To build on my communication, I find role models whom I can learn from, such as Professor Brad. I also use the opportunity in class to present be it small topics or presentation projects as this allows me to practice. When Professor Brad keep changing our seats, I use the opportunity to speak to my classmates whom I have not spoken to yet.

To improve on my communication skills, I will continue to learn from sources such as TedTalks, I will be opinion and feedbacks of my communication from anyone, and learn from it, and I will read more books and articles as these reliable sources are made of proper sentences, grammar, and vocabulary.

One focus of my research project is teamwork skills. I believe that this skill can only be learned and improved through experience as knowledge from books and advices from people can never be enough. Every human is different, therefore, our teamwork skills can never be sufficient. Everyone will definitely face difficulties and challenges. I learn that everyone have got their own opinions and ideas. At first, I believe that if my idea was good enough, there is no need to discuss to others as it is a waste of time. However, as i listened to others ideas, I feel like it made me smarter as I gain so much from their strengths. Besides that, although my idea was used for the project, my teammates opinions and ideas were the ones that enhanced and made this device more realistic and effective. I learned to be open-minded, have listening ears, and patience. Without these teamwork skills, my group could have possible encountered arguments and we might not accomplish to produce our desired product for the final project. This teamwork skills is a key takeaway for me as it allows me to adapt in new working environments and it allows me to be more knowledgeable as I learn from everyone.

Draft 3

 Title: Artificial Intelligence, Robots

According to an article titled 'How Artificial Intelligence, Robots Enhance Forest Sustainability in Finland' by Scott McQueen (2019), wrote that the majority of the forests maintenance tasks in Finland’s forests are being performed by robots. Mcqueen mentioned that this ambitious idea came about by the forestry experts, the Finnish Forest Centre who is in charge of overseeing this massive area for Finland's forest, which covers three-quarters of the country's landscape. Manual harvesting is definitely inefficient in the long run to meet up with demands and with the lack of manpower. There is a depletion lack of interest in forestry jobs due to the job being time-consuming and pretty dull since it is a lonely job. According to Mcqueen, the data used has to be precise and attainable before the Finnish Forest Centre can train the robots. They use aerial and lidar imagery to construct forest inventories, record tree measurements, and species information. All the data required by the robot is then placed in a geographic information system (GIS). The development director of the Finnish Forest Centre, Hamalainen, and his team see robots bringing benefits. Mcqueen stated that People owning more than 65% of Finland’s forests can have simpler and more proactive management of their forests. To produce precise data and decrease the amount of work in the field, the Finnish Forest Centre is using AI. Mcqueen mentioned that by combining the data from GIS, imagery sources, climate and weather datasets, precise measurements of the forest can be obtained, and improve forest inventory predictions. It can also detect signs of spruce bark beetle attacks. Through AI, Hamalainen states that “we want the data to be so accurate that users can see and sell without having to go to the forest”. Currently, 85% of the cases have reliable data, while the remaining 15% is being improved. Mcqueen stated that the machine testing algorithms are being tested to extract the same measurements that were previously required in-person inspection crews. AI can also provide the relevant information of the volume and species of wood without being present on the land which is costly and time-consuming. Mcqueen concluded that robots are efficient in maintaining the forest-agriculture in the long run without the need to depend on manpower.

Artificial Intelligence, robots have indisputably empowered our world, their presence has made things more efficient and effective by contributing towards the workforce, agriculture and in schools. Robots have slowly immersed themselves in our lives.

One of the areas that AI had benefitted is the workforce. West expressed his feelings and emphasized how surprised he was when he found out that his personal assistant was an AI robot. It was impressive according to West because her performance was exemplary, extremely fast and efficient. This was because of the prompt follows up in rescheduling tasks immediately after being assigned. According to West, her tasks included reading emails, discerning intent and responding to relevant issues. Unlike humans, a robot is definitely focused, effective and efficient as it does not get distracted by other tasks. Robots can function 24hours and can perform beyond working hours. West mentioned that robots are " increasing in sophistication and dropping in price", which also explains why robots are attractive to employers. West concluded that AI robots are effective, efficient and are very attractive in the workforce.

AI had also impacted the agriculture sector. According to Philipp, as the World's Population escalates, the demand for food and resources increases. The Plant Classification Robots have also empowered our world. Robots have dominated the agricultural sector by making the agricultural system more efficient and effective. It can reduce the ecological footprint of agricultural production to achieve sustainability. Philipp mentioned that the system uses robots that can distinguish and locate the plants and weeds in the field and trigger the actuators to perform the treatment selectively without destroying the rest of the plant. These plant classification systems will enable agricultural ground robots for online in-field interventions and for aerial robots to perform accurate monitoring of the plantation on a large scale which will overcome the problem of manpower shortage and increase crop yield in a shorter period. Philipp concluded that AI is effective in meeting up demands in the agriculture sector.

AI has been introduced in schools and included in the curriculum. In Programming the mBot Robot in School, Mester made a very strong statement about how working with robots impact the student. Mester stated that “ Working with the mentioned robot develops imagination and creativity, decision-making skills, logical thinking, connecting different knowledge, also improves designing skills and empower children in different levels so they can improve their 21st-century life skills ”. This explains that robots are a significant tool in educating the students or allowing them to explore the creativity within themselves. Mester also shared a few examples of AI applications software such as 'Scratch' which allows the users to create projects using the block-like interface, and 'mBlock' which has similar functions to 'Scratch' with additional interact functions with hardware. These are common engineering software used that is relevant to the current industry. This proves that AI is taking over the industry as this knowledge are included in curriculums. Mester concluded that AI is an efficient and effective way of educating the students by letting them explore and work on the robots.

AI, Robots are portrayed as effective, efficient and slowly overtaking our daily tasks, making a positive and huge impact in our lives. However, there are cons and negative impacts. According to Leduc and Liu, with the presence of robots dominating human tasks, people may slowly feel the loss of meaning to life since they lose their jobs to robots as they need to compete. From an article ‘Are Workers losing to Robots?’, Leduc and Liu mentioned “The steady decline in the relative prices of robots and automation equipment over the past few decades have made it increasingly profitable to automate”. This shows that employees would rather invest in robots or automation rather than in manpower. Leduc and Lie stated that "Although automation boosts labour productivity, the productivity gains do not fully translate into wage gains". This proves that although it seemed effective, the profit or outcome is pretty much similar, which in fact, in a long run, AI robots will get worn out and maintenance can be costly. Hence, Leduc and Lie concluded that robots are becoming more relevant to the employees resulting in higher chances of employees losing their jobs.

With all these, I conclude, humans should expand their knowledge so as to compete with their intelligence otherwise robots would overtake the world, and humans can be redundant. However, I do not refute the fact that robot helps increase efficiency and effectiveness in every aspect.

References:

Darell M. West. (2018).The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation (2nd ed.). https://books.google.com.sg/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PeY2DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=robots+and+automation&ots=m1fpP_hiRP&sig=hGF380ouR3aRbT803kdQ2TNIm64&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=robots%20and%20automation&f=false

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. (2019, October). Are workers losing to Robots? Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu. https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2019-25.

Gyula Mester. (2019, December). Programming the mBot Robot in School. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gyula-Mester/publication/337926235_Programming_the_mBot_Robot_in_School/links/5df661dea6fdcc28372455e3/Programming-the-mBot-Robot-in-School.pdf

Lottes, Philipp. (2021, March). Plant Classification Systems for Agricultural Robots (No. 1). https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/8981

Draft 2 of Thesis

 Title: Artificial Intelligence, Robots

According to an article by Scott McQueen (2019), Finland’s forests make up three-quarters of the country’s land. The Finnish Forest Centre is in charge of overseeing the conservation of this massive area and hence came up with an ambitious solution to use robots to autonomously execute most of the forest conservation tasks. 

Manual harvesting is definitely inefficient in the long run to meet up with demands and with the lack of manpower. There is a depletion lack of interest in forestry jobs due to the job being time-consuming and pretty dull since it is a lonely job. 

Firstly, the data used has to be precise and attainable before the Finnish Forest Centre can train the robots. They use aerial and lidar imagery to construct forest inventories, record tree measurements, and species information. All the data required by the robot is then placed in a geographic information system (GIS). 

The development director of the Finnish Forest Centre, Hamalainen, and his team see robots bringing benefits. People owning more than 65% of Finland’s forests can have simpler and more proactive management of their forests.

To produce precise data and decrease the amount of work in the field, the Finnish Forest Centre is using AI. By combining the data from GIS, imagery sources, climate and weather datasets, precise measurements of the forest can be obtained, and improve forest inventory predictions. It can also detect signs of spruce bark beetle attacks. Through AI, Hamalainen states that “we want the data to be so accurate that users can see and sell without having to go to the forest”. Currently, 85% of the cases have reliable data, while the remaining 15% is being improved.

The machine testing algorithms are being tested to extract the same measurements that were previously required in person inspection crews. AI can also provide the relevant information of the volume and species of wood without being present on the land which is costly and time-consuming.

Robots have indisputably empowered our world, their presence has made things more efficient and effective by contributing towards the agriculture, workforce and raising awareness in school. Robots have slowly immersed in our lives.

In The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation -  Darrell M. West mentioned how surprised he was when he found out that his personal assistant was an AI robot. According to  Darrell M. West, her performance was exemplary, extremely fast and efficient. This was because the prompt follow up in rescheduling task immediately after being assigned. The tasks include reading email, discerned intent and responding to relevant issues. Unlike humans, a robot is definitely focus, effective and efficient as tt does not get distracted by other tasks. Robots can function 24hours and can perform beyond working hours. This also helps to solve the issue of lack of manpower.

As the World's Population escalates, the demand for food and resources increases. The Plant Classification Robots have also empowered our world. Robots have dominated the agricultural sector by making the agricultural system more efficient and effective. It can reduce the ecological footprint of agricultural production to achieve sustainability. The system uses robots that can distinguish and locate the plants and weeds in the field and trigger the actuators to perform the treatment selectively without destroying the rest of the plant. These plant classification systems will enable agricultural ground robots for online in-field interventions and for aerial robots to perform accurate monitoring of the plantation on a large scale which will overcome the problem of manpower shortage and increase crop yield in a shorter period.

In Programming the mBot Robot in School, Gyula Mester made a very strong statement about how working with robots impact the student “ Working with the mentioned robot develops imagination and creativity, decision making skills, logical thinking, connecting different knowledge, also improves designing skills and empower children in different levels so they can improve their 21st century life skills ”. This explains that robots are a significant tool in educating the students or allowing them to explore the creativity within themselves. This is an efficient and effective way of educating the students by letting them explore and work on the robots.

Robots are slowly overtaking our daily tasks and they make a positive and huge impact in our lives. However, there are cons. With the presence of robots dominating human tasks, people may slowly feel the loss of meaning to life since they lose their jobs to robots as they need to compete. Fom an article ‘Are Wokers losing to Robots?’, Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu mentioned “The steady decline in the relative prices of robots and automation equipment over the past few decades have made it increasingly profitable to automate”. This shows that employees woud rather invest in robots or automation rather than in manpower.

In conclusion, humans should expand their knowledge so as to compete with their intelligence otherwise robots would overtake the world, and humans can be redundant. However, I do not refute the fact that robot helps increase efficiency and effectiveness in every aspect.

References:

1.Plant Classification Systems for Agricultural Robots (No. 1). (2021, March). Lottes, Philipp. https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/8981

2.The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation (2nd ed.). (2018). Darell M. West. https://books.google.com.sg/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PeY2DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=robots+and+automation&ots=m1fpP_hiRP&sig=hGF380ouR3aRbT803kdQ2TNIm64&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=robots%20and%20automation&f=false

3. Programming the mBot Robot in School. (2019, December). Gyula Mester. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gyula-Mester/publication/337926235_Programming_the_mBot_Robot_in_School/links/5df661dea6fdcc28372455e3/Programming-the-mBot-Robot-in-School.pdf

4. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. (2019, October). Are workers losing to Robots? Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu. https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/el2019-25.

Draft 2 Summary

 According to an article by Scott McQueen (2019), Finland’s forests make up three-quarters of the country’s land. The Finnish Forest Centre is in charge of overseeing the conservation of this massive area and hence came up with an ambitious solution to use robots to autonomously execute most of the forest conservation tasks. 

Manual harvesting is definitely inefficient in the long run to meet up with demands and with the lack of manpower. There is a depletion lack of interest in forestry jobs due to the job being time-consuming and pretty dull since it is a lonely job. 

Firstly, the data used has to be precise and attainable before the Finnish Forest Centre can train the robots. They use aerial and lidar imagery to construct forest inventories, record tree measurements, and species information. All the data required by the robot is then placed in a geographic information system (GIS). 

The development director of the Finnish Forest Centre, Hamalainen, and his team see robots bringing benefits. People owning more than 65% of Finland’s forests can have simpler and more proactive management of their forests.

To produce precise data and decrease the amount of work in the field, the Finnish Forest Centre is using AI. By combining the data from GIS, imagery sources, climate and weather datasets, precise measurements of the forest can be obtained, and improve forest inventory predictions. It can also detect signs of spruce bark beetle attacks. Through AI, Hamalainen states that “we want the data to be so accurate that users can see and sell without having to go to the forest”. Currently, 85% of the cases have reliable data, while the remaining 15% is being improved.

The machine testing algorithms are being tested to extract the same measurements that were previously required in person inspection crews. AI can also provide the relevant information of the volume and species of wood  without being present on the land which is costly and time-consuming.

' Soul of Communication '

 I believe that both communication and critical thinking will impact greatly my future role as a leader. This however depends on the skills I obtained, be it a positive or negative habit that I cultivate along the way. In communication skills, I believe that being able to convey the message clearly and effectively will allow a good quality of work. When clear of tasks, roles, and datelines, we are able to seek assistance from the right person. This also prevents time wastage due to challenges encountered by team members. Time wastage usually occurs when team members are unsure of their roles, resulting in procrastination which affects the progress of other team members since teamwork is a  process cycle. Critical thinking is a process flow that takes place in the brain. Carrying this out before the start of every project allows you to summarize and plan out the schedule. With this, we are able to tackle in-depth by parts. Carrying out critical thinking allows the team to question their topics, research and find the solution, and to end the conclusion by answering the question convincingly.

Draft 1 Thesis

 Robots indisputably solve the issue of manpower shortage

According to an article by Scott McQueen (2019), Finland’s forests make up three-quarters of the country’s land. The Finnish Forest Centre is in charge of overseeing the conservation of this massive area and hence came up with an ambitious solution to use robots to autonomously execute most of the forest conservation tasks. 

Manual harvesting is definitely inefficient in the long run to meet up with demands and with the lack of manpower. There is a depletion lack of interest in forestry jobs due to the job being time-consuming and pretty dull since it is a lonely job. 

Firstly, the data used has to be precise and attainable before the Finnish Forest Centre can train the robots. They use aerial and lidar imagery to construct forest inventories, record tree measurements, and species information. All the data required by the robot is then placed in a geographic information system (GIS). 

The development director of the Finnish Forest Centre, Hamalainen, and his team see robots bringing benefits. People owning more than 65% of Finland’s forests can have simpler and more proactive management of their forests.

To produce precise data and decrease the amount of work in the field, the Finnish Forest Centre is using AI. By combining the data from GIS, imagery sources, climate and weather datasets, precise measurements of the forest can be obtained, and improve forest inventory predictions. It can also detect signs of spruce bark beetle attacks. Through AI, Hamalainen states that “we want the data to be so accurate that users can see and sell without having to go to the forest”. Currently, 85% of the cases have reliable data, while the remaining 15% is being improved.

The machine testing algorithms are being tested to extract the same measurements that were previously required in person inspection crews. AI can also provide the relevant information of the volume and species of wood  without being present on the land which is costly and time-consuming.

Robots have indisputably empowered our world. Their presence has made things more efficient and effective. Robots have slowly immersed in our lives. They have contributed much towards the agriculture, workforce, and education sector without a doubt.

In The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation -  Darrell M. West mentioned how surprised he was when he found out that his personal assistant was an AI robot. Her performance was exemplary, extremely fast and efficient. This is because of her prompt follow up in resheduling as she would carry out her task immediately after being assigned. The tasks include reading email, discerned intent and responding to relevant issues. Unlike humans, a robot is definitely focus, effective and efficient as it  does not get distracted by other tasks. Robots can function 24hours and can perform beyond working hours. Hence,this helps to solve the issue of lack of manpower.

As the World's Population escalates, the demand for food and resources increases. The Plant Classification Robots have also empowered our world. Robots have dominated the agricultural sector by making the agricultural system more efficient and effective. It can reduce the ecological footprint of agricultural production to achieve sustainability. The system uses robots that can distinguish and locate the plants and weeds in the field and trigger the actuators to perform the treatment selectively without destroying the rest of the plant. These plant classification systems will enable agricultural ground robots for online in-field interventions and for aerial robots to perform accurate monitoring of the plantation on a large scale which will overcome the problem of manpower shortage and increase crop yield in a shorter period.

In Programming the mBot Robot in School, the focus was on connecting different knowledge and improving design skills in the 21st century. Hence, when students work with robots, it develops imagination, creativity, decision making skills and encouraged logical thinking,

Robots are slowly overtaking our daily tasks and they make positive and huge impact in our lives. However, there are cons. With the presence of robots dominating human tasks, people may slowly feel the lost of meaning to life since they  lose their jobs to robots as they need to compete.

In conclusion, humans should expand their knowledge so as to compete with their intelligence otherwise robots would  overtake the world, and humans can be redundant. However, I do not refute the fact that robot helps increase efficiency and effectiveness in every aspect.

https://bonndoc.ulb.uni-bonn.de/xmlui/handle/20.500.11811/8981

https://books.google.com.sg/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PeY2DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=robots+and+automation&ots=m1fpP_hiRP&sig=hGF380ouR3aRbT803kdQ2TNIm64&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=robots%20and%20automation&f=false

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gyula-Mester/publication/337926235_Programming_the_mBot_Robot_in_School/links/5df661dea6fdcc28372455e3/Programming-the-mBot-Robot-in-School.pdf

Introduction letter

 Dear Professor Brad,

I hope that you are well and in the pink of health. It has been a pleasure to sit in your communication skills module. Your lessons were engaging and has been very insightful. As a timid and shy 1^st year student, of the Mechanical Engineering course, I really benefit from this communication skills module.

I am writing to introduce my humble self. I graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic in 2021 with a Diploma in Biomedical Engineering. My interest in engineering developed during my internship. The 6 months internship in a medical manufacturing company made me realised my strength and aptitude towards engineering. I was in sync with the idea of promoting and manufacturing medical products.

I believe that communication skills are essential in our daily lives and plays a part in leaving behind an impression of our intelligence. I strongly believe that my strength in communication is my confidence. I seemed to gain confidence from experiences doing public speaking to the point where I can speak confidently of a topic that I am not very sure off. I also learned that when you are confident, audiences will believe you. However, my weakness in communication which I hope to overcome is my lack of vocabulary. I wish to learn more synonyms as a personal improvement to sound more knowledgeable. I extremely wish to stop using Singlish as well, this is a bad habit of mine.

I have two goals in mind that I hope to achieve during communication lesson. First, I want to relearn all the skills and materials that you are teaching. This allows me to learn things that I was weak at and also things that I didn’t even knew. It is the learning mindset to be excited and gain all the knowledge that you going to teach. Secondly, I would want to pay attention to how you speak, you as in Professor Brad. This is because I feel that you are a role model for me to listen to and apply how you speak in class for my communications.

What differentiates me from the other students in the class is that I am an all rounder. Name it all, well at least most of it. I do sports, I play instruments, I’m into real estates, I love shopping, I participate in competitions often, I’m a leader too.

I hope you enjoyed reading! It was nice meeting you professor Brad. I can’t wait to learn as much during your lesson !

Thank you Professor Brad!