Sara: My Internship Experience at AlpacaTech

Introductory:

This July, I had the opportunity to do an internship at AlpacaTech for a month as a high school intern. Although it was for a month, the time seemed to fly by, and I greatly enjoyed the time I was able to spend at this company, as well as being grateful for the experiences and new knowledge I have gained!

Here, I will be talking about my experiences working with AlpacaTech, as well as what my internship consisted of.

Up until first week:

We began by setting out a rough plan for the next month, and putting up a schedule. The plan was to organise a robotics competition within the company using the AWS DeepRacer. I first met with the company online to sort through a rough plan and schedule.

On my first day, I went to their office in Kanda, and introduced myself as the high school intern. After we went through a few administrative stuff, we got straight into solidifying the plan and schedule. To do this, we needed to try out building the model on the console and see how complicated it was, and how long it took to make.

I was able to grab lunch with some of the employees later that day, which was a really nice opportunity for me to get to know everyone better. Although I was nervous at first, the employees were very welcoming, and I found it very easy to talk to them, which made me less nervous and more excited for this next month.

The first week was mostly administrative; we solidified our plan and schedule, and made sure we knew what we required in terms of materials and time. I had the opportunity to present my plan with the CEO and CTO, which had very positive feedback. Now that I had a solidified plan, we were ready to start executing it.

Second week:

The second week was spent gathering all the materials and building the robot. We began by buying tape and mats to create the track. The robot arrived on the 10th of July, and so we were able to begin building the robot relatively quickly. By following the tutorial on the website, we were able to easily build the robot.

After building the robot, we decided to give it a test run. Although we faced problems with the calibration of the robot at the beginning, in he end we were able to figure it out through brainstorming ideas. Once we knew the robot was able to move, we built a small curve for it to see whether it would follow the lines. At first, it didn’t follow the course at all, but after a few tries, it began to slowly follow the lines, which was a huge progress. When it first turned and followed the borders, we all got very excited as it was the first time seeing the DeepRacer truly in action.

I also had the opportunity of presenting in a company meeting, and giving everyone a brief update on my progress with the DeepRacer. I was very nervous, but the presentation went well. I was even able to listen in on what a usual company meeting would be like, and what would be discussed, which was insightful.

Third week:

The third week was spent creating models and building the course. At this point, we had decided that we did not have enough time or materials to organise a competition, and settled on a workshop event. Although we were not going to run a competition, we still needed to build the course and make sure both devices would work.

Building the course was a challenge, as we were very restricted with the size, and had to figure out the right dimensions so that the Deepracer would have enough space to recognise the white lines and turn. On top of this, we had a problem with the mats as we had bought slightly different ones and so some of them did not fit in very well and created gaps in the course. It took us a while to figure it out, but in the end we were able to figure out the dimensions and create a small course, and fill the gaps by connecting the mats with the tape for the border.

We faced a lot of challenges with the course and the model, but it was overall very fun to work with people in the reward function of the model and making sure we got the dimensions right for the course through calculations.

Fourth week:

After building the course, our only task left was to get the DeepRacer to do one whole turn. At first, it would only turn once and either turn too early or stop mid course. It would also only turn left, and we thought everything would be solved by turning right, but it seemed to not like turning to the right. We went through the model multiple times, but could not find where we went wrong.

We ended up not solving the problem until the last day; which was a perfect opportunity to ask the engineers of the company to help solve the problem, as I had mostly been working with the business side of the company. I was able to meet a lot of different people who would typically work online and so I wasn’t able to meet them in person beforehand. I was shocked at the diversity of the company; everyone had a unique upbringing, and I was lucky enough to be able to talk to so many different people.

Although it was only a workshop event, we were all able to enjoy it very much, and everyone was especially excited about the pizza we ordered. In the end, Yuri san’s (who is actually a HR business partner!!) model ended up allowing it to complete a new course, and she was ‘appointed’ as the new lead of the ML team :) We finished the day off with a brief commentary, and I was so happy to be met with such positive reviews from everyone, making my internship project an overall success.

In mid-August I also had the opportunity to meet more of the (engineers) in the company who were not able to make it on the day. I was able to learn more about what they do in their work, and ask them various questions about working in the tech industry. I was able to learn a lot, and I hope I can use this advice in the future to find a job I can be very passionate about.

Closing:

This internship was a really good opportunity for me to talk with the engineers and collaborate with them to solve problems which I would have been unable to solve with my own skill set, as well as gain an insight into the company atmosphere and what it is like to work with these people. This is an amazing company to intern at, with their welcoming atmosphere, and I hope to work with them again in the future. Thank you so much to everyone for the past month!