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SLAM and the Vietnam War
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- SLAM and the Vietnam War
- Google Gemini API Challenge
SLAM
In 2021, while participating in the Level 2+ Autonomous Vehicle project at VinAI Research, I became acquainted with a crucial component in the architecture that VinAI, as well as most technology companies worldwide, utilized to tackle the challenge of autonomous vehicles at that time—the 3D point cloud map. I was deeply impressed by how well a point cloud map reflects the physical shape of a place in particular, as well as the techniques of localization and mapping for navigation in general, with SLAM—Simultaneous Localization and Mapping—being the most remarkable among them. I read numerous papers, tech blogs, and watched tech talks from academia and major companies developing their autonomous vehicle technologies, such as NVIDIA, Mobileye, TomTom, and atlatec. At that time, content on those topics was always flooding my YouTube feed (and it still is now, but on LinkedIn). Lol.
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| 3D pointcloud map of a corner of VinAI's office |
Vietnam War
I have always admired the historical stories of our ancestors' struggle for independence. During the 70th anniversary of the victory of Dien Bien Phu (May 7, 1954 - May 7, 2024), I closely followed the commemoration event in Dien Bien on TV, read various articles, and devoured videos about the history surrounding this battle. Initially focused on the struggle against the French, I gradually delved deeper into the content about the resistance against the Americans, expanding beyond just the battles and moving towards the political aspects surrounding that resistance.
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| 2 of my favorite history channels |
From watching the developments at Khe Sanh, Hamburger Hill, and the Quang Tri Citadel, to the Diem-Nhu coup, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan with the infamous photo of the execution on the streets of Saigon, to the negotiations surrounding the Paris Agreement involving Le Duc Tho (Advisor to the diplomatic delegation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and Henry Kissinger (U.S. National Security Advisor), I even bought an ebook of Kissinger’s autobiography, “Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War” to gain a better understanding of the American perspective on this conflict.