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Summary

• Assisted in the development of 4 independent R&D projects.
• Designed various circuits and PCBs in order to characterize the performance and attributes of the sensors being developed.
• Created PCBs by CNC milling copper panels and then soldered the components (usually SMD) on the PCBs.
• Designed 3D models and 3D printed the housing for the testing systems.
• Assembled the test systems and conducted tests to refine and optimize the design of the whole system.
• Wrote Arduino code to continuously collected data from various sensors and transmitted it over USB to a C# program on Windows to record and process the data

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About the Company

Robert Bosch GmbH is one of the biggest producers of MEMS (Micro-Electromechanical Sensors) in the world and is the dominant supplier of electromechanical sensors for the automobile industry. Bosch is also a major manufacturer of consumer products and professional power tools. In Germany and many parts of the world, Bosch is a brand that is synonymous with high quality and integrity. Bosch’s headquarters are located in Stuttgart, Germany which is also home to the headquarters of Porsche and Mercedes.

In late 2015, Bosch opened it’s new Renningen campus (near Stuttgart) which is entirely devoted to R&D of new sensors and technologies for automotive, industrial, commercial and consumer applications.

My Work

Bosch has a long standing relationship with UBC to hire 2-3 engineering interns for 8-month coop work terms. After various phone interviews, I was selected to start working at Bosch’s Renningen campus in January 2016 as a research engineering intern.

At Bosch, I was involved in the design and developed of 4 projects being developed in the MEMS and semiconductors department. I was mainly tasked with designing the electrical circuits, PCBs (in Eagle CAD), and 3D models (in SolidWorks) for testing equipment which were then used for characterizing and measuring the performance of the sensors being developed in a given project. For quick prototyping, I was also responsible for manufacturing the PCBs using an in-house CNC drilling/engraving machine (LPKF ProtoMat S62) and 3D printing the designed 3D models. I ordered and managed the parts required for the PCBs and personally soldered all the SMD components onto the PCBs. Once all the test equipment was assembled for a project, I conducted various tests in controlled lab environment and recorded data which I would then analyze with my supervisor to characterize the sensor’s performance. The insights gained from these tests would then be used to improve the design of the sensors (by other teams) and the test equipment.

One of the 4 projects I was involved in also required me to write Arduino code to continuously gather data from various sensors in an IOT (internet of things) setup and transmit that data to the computer as a continuous stream of JSON data packets. I also developed a C# program that obtained the JSON packets sent by the Arduino over the serial COM port and displayed the current state of the various sensors in the GUI.

Living in Germany

As an engineer, I always fancied the idea of working for one of the big German engineering companies. With this coop work term, that dream became a reality. Before leaving for Germany, I put in extra effort to learn German so that I would not be totally lost in Germany. Once in Germany, I continued to learn German and was even able to impress some of the German friends with my ability to speak or understand a few German sentences every now and then. Being able to work and live in Germany for 8 months allowed me to gain a much richer experience of the German and European cultures. I was able to work hard during the weekdays and go visit a different European city on the weekends using the relatively cheap Deutsche Bahn. But most importantly, I was able to do all of this on a meagre salary of €975/month.