Sensor calibration is a manual job today, and it does not scale to the number of sensor units we intend to ship. We are building automated test and calibration infrastructure to fix that, starting with a cell built around a UFactory UF850 robotic arm on a linear rail.
We already have the arm and the calibration software. What we do not have is the physical cell around it, or the software that drives it. This first project is split into two internships that run side by side:
• Mechanical design and integration — this position
• Robot programming and automation — separate posting
The two interns will work closely together. Neither half of this project is any good on its own. This calibration cell is the first thing we are building on this front, not the last, so there is a good chance the right person carries on to other hardware and automation projects once it is running.
If you are the kind of person who likes designing hardware that has to actually work, who thinks in tolerances and stiffness rather than only in shapes, and who wants to see something you drew get built, measured, and used every week, this internship is designed for you.
We are looking for a Mechanical Design & Integration Intern to help design and build the physical hardware behind our robotic test and automation infrastructure. Your first project is a cell built around a robotic arm and linear rail — but the skills involved are the same ones we’ll lean on for whatever we automate next.
Good automated hardware has to satisfy a few things that pull against each other, and balancing them is the interesting part of this kind of work:
1.
Modular. It has to accept different payloads and fixtures without a redesign each time. Swapping the item under test should take minutes, not a morning.
2.
Movable. It has to relocate: between rooms, into a van, onto a test site and back again. It cannot be a bolted-to-the-floor installation.
3.
Repeatable. Moving it must not destroy the geometry. If re-establishing it after transport requires a full re-survey every time, we have not solved the problem.
Resolving that tension is yours to do, on this project and on whatever comes after it.
This is not a desk-only internship. You will spend time at the CAD workstation, but also at the printers, at the bench with a caliper in your hand, and underneath the frame wondering why it flexes.