A First-year Seminar in 2024
The international project group is offering a first-year seminar for freshmen this year.
I participated in this course as a teaching assistant.
The course consists of lectures and group work, and I primarily joined the group work sessions. I was inspired by the fresh perspectives of the first-year students and their eagerness to learn new things each week, which also provided me with new insights.
On the first day of the course, I visited the Komaba Campus for the first time in four years.
This week, as the final session of the course, we visited Haneda Innovation City.
We joined a tour of “PiO PARK,” an open innovation space, an autonomous bus, and the robot restaurant “AI_SCAPE.”
Previously, I had ridden an autonomous bus in Sakai Town, which was the ARMA model by the French company NAVYA. This time, I experienced the MiCa model made in Estonia. MiCa has been customized for Japan, and according to the staff, it performs better than the NAVYA model, which they formerly used. On this route, the bus operated in “fully” autonomous mode without any manual intervention, showing significant advancements in autonomous driving compared to the visit a year ago.
Although we couldn’t enter the robot restaurant, its futuristic ambiance made me eager to dine there someday.
This was my first visit to this facility, which was established in 2022, and it was a valuable learning experience for me.
Re-engaging with the first-year seminar I took as a freshman, now in my final year, was a precious experience that made me reflect on what I have learned. (Nakamura)
