Charlie Leslie ’18: Amazon Robotics Internship Journal Part II
As my nine weeks at Amazon Robotics (AR) come to a close I have started to realize how much this opportunity has been able to teach me. My first day seems so long ago that I almost laugh when I think about how clueless I was for those first few days. Part of why my experience was so awesome was the fact that I did something different almost every day. Each day I found myself excited to go to work to find out what project I would be working on that day. I have done everything from putting barcode stickers on the warehouse floor to building and testing robotic stations.
One of the many tasks assigned to me at Amazon was to make a grid of barcode stickers on the warehouse floor in order for the drive units to move around to the different stations. Each robot (drive unit) has a barcode scanner beneath that scans the sticker on the floor and uses that to determine not only its location but the location of the other drive units on the active floor. This task involved crawling around on the dusty floor with a high powered laser and a wicked long measuring tape. We would set the laser up with a preexisting sticker and then put a new sticker every 40 inches until the entire 5000 sq ft active floor was covered. While this may sound somewhat tedious I actually had a lot of fun doing this mini project with my fellow co-ops. The main project I have been working on is building a second robotic station used to automatically stow items from a container onto a tray. I started off by building all the interior tables and components using 80–20 kits. 80–20, as described on the box, is the industrial erector set. 80–20 are kits of metal pieces that connect using various types of fasteners such as L-brackets. Theoretically all of the pieces and screws should be included in the kits but 80–20 has a reputation for missing pieces or having the wrong length pieces. In the process of assembling I spent a lot of time in the machine shop retrofitting pieces to fit the correct dimension.
At the beginning of the summer I never would have thought that I would be using a hydraulic cutter to cut metal beams completely by myself. After the interior components were completed we proceeded to build the exterior frame which measured to be about a 10 ft x 10ft x 10ft cube. Panels of tinted plexiglass had to be cut with a jigsaw in order to get them to fit properly within the framework. The resulting product was basically a big black box. I had to use a program called Solidworks in order to measure the locations of all the interior tables including the UR pedestals (the big pieces of 80–20 the robotic arm sits on). Solidworks is a program that engineers use in order to create 3D drawings of parts, assemblies, etc. to either be built, sent to a contractor to be built, or 3D printed. So for example if you needed a bracket to hold a certain camera, a part could be made on Solidworks and then sent to the machine shop to be made. Solidworks also allows you to digitally measure any section within the drawing. Solidworks was yet another cool thing I was able to learn and experience in the real world. At this point in my last week, I am installing cameras, wiring, lights, and any other final components to the station. It has been really cool to see how a 3D drawing on a screen turned into a real life structure that I built.
Another large component of this internship has been testing robots. Recently I have been doing a lot of tray pull testing (TPT). This type of testing uses a robot to remove and then put back trays in a giant pod. The robot goes row by row pulling out and then pushing back in trays. This type of testing has taught me a lot about coding and the SQA (software quality assurance) process in general. This particular testing is really fun other than the fact that I often have to be in North Reading by 6:00 a.m. in order to have time to test before the developers get there. My time at AR has shown me nearly every part of the technology business and how the engineering process typically works. What I have learned at AR will surely help me in the coming year in college and even beyond as I begin my own professional career. I am truly grateful for the people at AR for taking a chance and giving a high school kid one wicked awesome summer at their office.
