Wesley Ecoiffier

Home Institution
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year Participated
2021

Year in School
Undergraduate

REU Faculty Mentor
Nancy Amato

Research Area Interest
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

Project Title
Motion Planning

Biography & Research Abstract

Abstract:

The research was to plan paths for robots, called motion planning, through a configuration space. The space that is explorable is called free space, while space filled by obstacles is called obstacle space. Planning is done to find the best path from one place or configuration to another.

Bio:

Having graduated with a bachelor's degree in applied physics in 2020 from the University of Washington, I started being a student in the iCAN program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign last August, a new program at the school for people who graduated with a bachelor's in something other than computer science. An introduction to computing, I learned Python and Java for the first time. It was a very interesting learning process, one that was at times challenging but where I learned more than I thought I could. Part of the program was to take part in research or an internship during the summer, and as I chose research, I ended up in the Parasol Research Group at the school. The experience taught me a lot about how to do research, in computer science specifically.