Over the summer we welcomed Katrina Marshall (Kat) to our office, an engineering student from the University of Sydney who joined our seasonal internship program. Reach Robotics’ internships offer students exposure to industry while fulfilling their vocational placement requirements. Over the duration of her internship, Kat worked closely with our R&D department – learning, developing and testing alongside our engineers.
We caught up with Kat towards the end of her internship to find out about her project outcomes and overall experience at Reach Robotics:
What was youR R&D SUMMER INTERN project?
My primary R&D intern project was about exploring and testing a new way to control the arm using hand-tracking cameras. There are advantages and disadvantages to every control method but hand-tracking was thought to have potential as an intuitive and easy to use method.
CAN YOU share the project outcomes?
The final integration proved to be a success! When your hand is in a grab position, the camera reads its velocity and sends that to the arm to match. Using a pinch gesture the jaws can also be actuated separately. Testing and learning about its limitations, for example its accuracy in certain hand positions and different environments, was also a useful outcome of the project.
What was your experience of interning at Reach Robotics?
Interning at Reach has been such a great experience. As well as the hand-tracking project, I also spent a lot of hands on time working a machine learning project. Being trusted to contribute to projects and join team meetings and reviews meant I learnt a lot. Reach as a whole has such a great culture and everyone is so welcoming. The highlights of my internship would definitely be hanging out with the team – the end of year celebrations, park BBQ and the many lunch outings!
The Reach Robotics team are very impressed with Kat’s ‘sci-fi’ control method and greatly enjoyed working alongside her over the summer! We wish her well with her ongoing studies and travels abroad.
If you’re an engineering student and would like to intern at Reach Robotics, follow our linked in to find out when our summer and winter intakes open. We also take longer intern applicants during the year on a case-by-case basis – submit your application here!
