In semester 6 of Applied Computer Science, each student has to do an internship free of choice(falling into the criteria of a meaningfull internship). With my academic background and interest in Japan, I decided to look for an internship in Japan.
With lots of searching and lots of luck, I managed to land an internship at Advantech! A Taiwanese company with branches all over the world.
Advantech
Advantech is a Taiwanese based technology company that designs and manufactures industrial computers and IoT solutions for sectors like manufacturing, healthcare and transportation. They offer hardware and software platforms—such as edge-computing systems and cloud services—to help businesses connect devices and analyze data in real time.
I’m working in the Japanese branch situated in Tokyo, where we aid the FAE(Field Application Engineer)-team with their work and learn various topics around AI.
Tasks
The tasks and projects we interns receive at Advantech Japan are incredibly versatile. We began by learning how to train AI models to perform real-time computer vision inference.
Occasionally, we assist the department with manual rework on their hardware products—an experience that has taught us a great deal about electronics and device assembly.
We’ve also undertaken projects such as improving the functionality of a mobile warehouse robot using ROS 2.
Because our assignments cover so many areas—from AI and machine learning to hands-on hardware and robotics—we gain a broad understanding of the full development lifecycle.
Exhibitions
We also got a lot of opportunities to visit exhibitions and events. We got the chance of visiting The Big Sight venue a several amount of times. One time to visit the yearly Japanese AI-Expo.
Another time was a whole week to help set up Advantech’s own booth at Next Tech’s IT-Week.
Training camp
The biggest event we could participate in was the Advantech Global AE LEAP Camp in their Headquarters in Taiwan.
This was a training camp of Advantech where selected people of every branch worldwide could participate in. The camp lasted a week and was filled with cultural exchange between the host country Taiwan and all the other countries that came to the training. In this week we learned more about Advantech’s products and more about technical AI-skills as well.
This was such a great experience for us interns. Not only did we broaden our tech-skills, but also our cultural experiences.