[CSRC] Fall goals & kick-off discussion for today

[Computational Science Research Cluster]

Here are the 3 goals & areas we will be focusing on this Fall:

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1) Blender VR Environment

As a researcher I need to have support in our Blender VR environment
for more immersive interactions.  We need to support simulated
fish-bowl illusion using the Wii as a head tracker, as well as the 3D
positioning of an arm and attached tools in the environment that give
the feel of the persons own hand movements controlling naturally the
simulated avatars hand in the virtual environment to move, place and
manipulate objects.

   - Support WiiMote hand held to move position of arm in 3D VE
     Need hand to be connected to an actual arm & body, movement should 
realistically move joints (not just floating)
     Need to be able to pick up and put down objects (push a button to 
grasp, release)
     Some tools we would like to be able to use WiiMote movements to 
use, e.g. position knife in space, move down on cucumber causes cutting

   - Support WiiMote immersive head tracking fish-bowl illusion
     Moving towards or away from screen
     Turning head, see around corner of "window"
     Integrated and working with hand (2 WiiMotes at once).

   - Need as realistic looking environments as possible
     May need to make environments with low, med and high realism
     Need to be able to quantize level of realisim
     Do we need an artist?


2) Complex Networks & Robotics Simulation

As a researcher I want to have completed a simulation of evolving a
large neural network on our cluster that combines both physical
constraints of the network (wiring cost) with performance of the
network as a controller for a (simulated) robot.  We will try using a
simulated T-Maze for the task, rewarding getting to the target (the
faster the better, though we will need to reward progress forward, and
punish making a wrong turn).

   - Paper on parallelization of GA
     Finish up data generation
     Run some profiling, better understand performance

   - Complete T-Maze & Khepera in Player/Stage
     - Hand build controller to demonstrate sensors and working robot/env
     - Use camera and a color on wall to indicate Left/Right
     - Be able to calculate 1) distance from goal 2) time elapsed 3) 
when reached goal (reward) or 4) if reached punishment (stop on 3 or 4, 
or after max time)

   - Run batch of experiments on lion using SGE
     - To test we have SGE working to run X sims when needed
     - Also test with a GA using MPI, each node evaluates performance 
fitness by calling a Player/Stage sim...



3) HPC resource automation and administration

As a researcher and director of TAMUC HPC resources, I would like to
continue to "professionalize" our configuration, admin and automation
of HPC resources.  This includes both the lion Dell commodity cluster
as well as the cheetah personal GPU supercomputer.  A good model to
try and emulate would be the resources and procedures that TACC has
(http://www.tacc.utexas.edu).

   - User accounts automation
     1 account accesses all CSRC resources
     Web based request, usage policy, human review
     Web based account info, including changing password

   - Backups
     Centralized back up server
     Should support nightly (incremental) snapshots of all user home data
     Quotas should be applied to the 4TB (or more) of cluster, not to 
the backups, backups shouls support full 4TB if needed
     Should support off site monthly backups, keep at least a years 
worth for now

   - Get CUDA demo up on Nvidia GPGPU
     Get machine moved to location