Inside Milrem Robotics with Greg Otsa: our engineering setup

I got back from my vacation this week, so as I promised, let’s take a look into the engineering setup in Milrem Robotics. 

As we have a lot of projects going on, it should come as no surprise that the majority of Milrem Robotics’ employees – more than 100 people - are engineers. Although one might think that most of them are in mechatronics, there are actually significantly more software engineers. And their number rising rapidly, since they put the “intelligence” in intelligent robotic systems that we promise to clients. 

But let’s look at the departments and their main areas of responsibility. While this is certainly not the full picture, it covers the most important parts: 

1.System engineering:

• Analysis of customer requirements and based on that creation of technical requirements. Managing system level requirements and dependencies between requirements. Responsible for technical/system aspect of the client/internal project. In IT context a bit like technical project management

2.Mechatronics:

• Mechanics - mechanical design from concept to technical drawings used for production
• Electricity - cable harnesses, selection, and implementation of off the shelf components used in our products
• Electronics - selection of off the shelf components but also design of our custom circuit boards

3.Special engineering:

• Communication systems
• Simulation - supporting the engineering in the design phase with mathematical models and simulation tools
• Technical and product design supporting UI, UX, technical documentation etc.

4.Software:

• Core - software layer between the hardware and all other software areas
• UI - human-machine user interface for the machine operators
• Autonomy - follow me, pre-programmed waypoint navigation incl obstacle detection/avoidance etc. Everything about the autonomous movement without the operator
• Quality assurance - testing & analyzes
• Simulator - digital twin of our machines - mainly needed for developing autonomy algorithms
• Teams supporting all other teams incl devops, data warehouse etc.

 Next time – a deep dive into Software.