Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
                — Arthur C. Clarke

Overlook

This section is in place in order to provide the first time reader with a notion about the constraints and common information regarding the doctoral thesis of Markus Gattol.

History - Future Outlook

Markus Gattol gained his admission to the doctorate study when he finished a graduate¹ M.Sc. (Master of Science also known as Diplomingenieur) study. As of now (August 2007), Markus Gattol graduated in two M.Sc. studies².

He his very excited and forward looking to do research in the area of mechatronics. At some point in the future³ he will then receive a doctors degree (Ph.D.) after finishing a written summary⁴, passing some exams and orally defending his research amongst a circle of academics.

Aerial Venn diagram describing the various fields that make up Mechatronics

At the moment Markus Gattol has no plans in the matter spanning beyond the point after the finalization of his doctoral thesis — he focuses on the time-frame needed to finalize his doctoral study. However, since the area easily allows it he might continue this path further on after he gained his doctoral degree.

Motivation

All men by nature desire knowledge.
      — Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

The question should rather be What is the motivation to do research? The answer is easy. Markus assumes, like with most things in life, people do things for joy, idealism, interest in the matter, social status, love, money, because being pressured, some are bored and thus look out to busy oneself, curiosity, etc. In the end it is probably a diversity of things that drives people to do different things in life ...

His motivation is part idealism and part interest coupled with a great deal of joy and curiosity in the matter. He also think, that as a nice side effect, it might place a higher degree of self-determination for himself since having knowledge and/or skills no one other has, has already proven beneficial in his life. He is not so much into money besides the fact that in our society more money equals more self-determination which he does not think is a good thing (self-determination depending on ones financial status at such a high degree) but then he is just a single little human, being unable to change this fact. Neither does he care a lot about his social status. What he cares a lot of is being his own boss — deciding what to do, when and where he wants instead of being told by someone.

Events and People

• how to manage projects, events and people involved
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentor

Science is organized knowledge.
      — Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903)

The Project itself

This is what the doctorate study is all about — this section provides information of all aspects with regards to the project or links may found, that point to other locations on the net, which are nonetheless considered part of the research projects interests.

Introduction

The project can be shortly described with a few keywords for first time reader so gain a notion of what the research project is about and what it cares about aside from pure scientific research:

on the legal, financial and philosophical part:

free software
open standards
publicly available hardware/software specification
no financial requirements whatsoever

on the organizational part:

collaborative, geographically distributed working
free access to project infrastructure
free access to knowledge
freedom to join/leave the project at any times

on the technical part:

real-time
portable
modular
distributed
autonomous system
control
virtual reality
framework

Abstract/Rationale

Requirements

A modular software architecture, providing a distributed computing and information traveling system on top of of-the-shelf hardware as well as hardware specific to certain industrial or expert applications is needed. This software solution stack, ranging from atop the hardware, across the userland and its applications to where man machine interaction is done needs to meet certain requirements:

• Real-time capable (OS as well as userland)
• A distributed system (no centralized components, no single point of failure)
• Possibility to either let data (huge size) or computations (tiny in terms of size) travel on the network i.e. we are used to the case when data travel from A to B where it is then computed and the result sent back to A. Why not let the computation travel from B to A in the first place.
• Portable to many hardware and software platforms i.e. not just the OS and userland to drive the autonomous system but also development tools, test suites, etc.
  • Support for a wide variety of hardware platforms (e.g. x86, x86_64, etc.)
    • Also the possibility to use (connect) numerous sensors and actors with the chosen hardware platform
  • Software support for major operating systems
• Support for a variety of programming languages (at least for userspace application programming)

To do:

Find the best

• KISS (Keep it small and simple) i.e. try to accomplish things with the lowest possible complexity thus working efficiently
• reuse things if they are good; do not waste time by reinventing existing things
• take care all follows open standards, software should be free software and knowledge should be made public and available to anybody
• major design decisions should focus on long-term perspectives
• do not engage into things that might not allow to easily change things within a project. At any times, it should be possible to restructure, switch to new tools, change direction without being forced to start all over again.

solution to let .NET and the C as well as C++ parts (OS, libraries for the distributed and real-time userspace tasks, etc.) interact and build a solid software stack providing all of the above mentioned requirements.

Miscellaneous

This is where I drop in all stuff that I come along on my daily walks through the net, conversations, etc. Please be aware of the fact, that everything in here might look a bit confusing an really-fast-done because it is true — whenever I find something useful, I just grab it and drop in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for example. I then go over it from time to time and sort, clean up and fill the skeleton with some meat in order to be easier for me and others to understand the context of the information dropped into that place.

Open Access

At some point in the future, the research project will provide Open Access or a similar project with knowledge in form of writings.

Thesis Defense/Preparation

Certain URLs I came across that might be worth reading. Those are all with regards to what do and what not when it comes to defend some thesis of whatsoever. However, some is just considered fun... My advice/experience in the matter is

• The more often you do some talks in front of an audience the better it gets. The experience rises for both sides, talker and listeners.
• Also, you improve a lot with any thesis defense you do. My first one was could have been better (my Linux box did not work well with the supplied projector, too many slides, I was a bit nervous,

  ... the usual greenhorn experience). My second thesis defense was much better, almost perfect I would say but just because I had the chance to learn and adapt things to the former experience.

• Do not (especially with Masters or higher) assume that everybody but you knows more about the issue. If you are sure then say it but provide accompanying prove. If questions come not crystal clear, ask for rephrasing or try to solve the knot by doing something like that My understanding is... which is probably what you meant by

  ... therefore.... Folks are eagerly trying to clarify things within a conversation since the weakness here is not the examinee nor the examiners but the weakness (ambiguity) of the spoken human languages.

There are lots of more hints provided by those URLs below — some of which are serious and others of which makes us grin.

• http://www.cs.utep.edu/grad/ThesisTips.html
• http://www.theologywebsite.com/humor/150things.shtml
• http://ask.metafilter.com/29046/Thesis-defense-tips
• http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/viva.html
• http://custom-writing.org/blog/writing-tips/110.html

Useful Information

• Today (2010-01-19) I have been informed about a new site called http://www.openthesis.org which looks quite promising and interesting. It is a free repository of theses, dissertations, and other academic documents, coupled with powerful search, organization, and collaboration tools.