Co-op #3 The Final Twist
Christopher
Experience Information
Employer: Twisthink
Job Title: Electrical Engineering Intern
Major: Electrical Engineering
Received Credit: Yes
Paid: Yes
Abroad: No
Description of the Organization
Twisthink is a value-added partner that helps bring companies new ideas and products to life that customers desire by leveraging strategic insights and applying intuitive design and relevant technology. Twisthink is located in Holland, Michigan and is employed by engineers, strategists, designers, creators, developers, and optimists who are not content with the status quo. Given that Twisthink is a consultancy, employees have an opportunity to work on a variety of different projects in fields such as consumer electronics, furniture, medical, automotive and more. Within the engineer team, you will find employees who excel in Vision and Sensing, IOT/Embedded systems and hardware design. Twisthink strives to create a welcoming, fun environment that brings the team together. To name a few team events, they include our annual Holiday party, "Souper Fridays", group mountain bike rides in Rockford, and occasionally lunches provided on the deck and more. Twisthink's culture is far from stale and boring.
Description of the Tasks/Projects Completed
In my previous semesters, I had the ability to work on numerous projects for different West Michigan companies where I learned a lot of valuable skills. However, this semester I had a very narrow focus on a single vision system project. This project included camera evaluation and testing, data set development, and transfer learning algorithms. I was able to utilize a variety of tools in order to complete this project including MATLAB, python-based scripts, TensorFlow and Google's machine learning engine.
Skills/Knowledge Gained Through The Experience
This semesters project was very much outside of my knowledge base. However, through th course of this semester I gained great insight and knowledge into the filed of camera systems and transfer learning. I was able to develop my skills in camera parameters and evaluation. I learned how to effectively use python based scripts and the TensorFlow library in order to create data sets and apply augmentations. Finally, I learned how to train object detection models and then export them in order to view accuracy and apply them to a image set. I learned more this semester than in any of my previous semesters.
Favorite Part of the Experience
My favorite part of this semester was being able to contribute valuable work to a customer project. I had the opportunity to interact with our customer, be a part of weekly status meetings and share my work with those around me. By the end of the semester I was able to have complex and well educated conversations on vision systems and how to progress with the project in the future. Being able to understand and contribute in a professional setting is a great feeling. That was the best part of this semester.
How the Experience Influenced Future Career Goals
This semester only gave me more reassurance that I was in the correct field for my future. It helped my be convinced that I was up for the challenge that I engineering and that I have the ability to be successful in the future. Now I'm prepared to graduate and begin that new journey.