NUR HUSNINA ASYURA BINTI MEZALAN

From 10 June 2019 until 30 August 2019, I was one of the selected students to undergo industrial training programme in Japan for 12 weeks. I was placed in Automatic Control laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Knowledge Engineering, Tokyo City University, Setagaya campus under the supervision of Professor Hidetoshi Oya (laboratory supervisor) and Professor Taguchi Akira (dean of faculty). Tokyo City University (often called Toshi-dai) or TCU for short is an engineering, environmental and information sciences focused private university located in Tokyo, Japan. Setagaya campus is the main campus with the nearest train station being Oyamadai station. The Automatic Control laboratory (or called Jidou Seigyo) focuses on the development of automatic system control technologies for the use in robot engineering and transport systems, robotics, classical and modern control theory, system analysis and system engineering.

My research was focusing on automatic control in robotic system. My research project was to apply three different methods, namely; time-scheduled control, P control and PID control on a line tracing robot. A line tracing robot, also known as line following robot, is an autonomous robot that can either sense a black line or white line on either white surface or black surface, designed to trace and follow the line automatically. The robot uses an array of infrared sensors attached at the bottom of the robot to trace the line so the robot remains on intended path. The robot is also equipped with a distance measuring/proximity sensor or being called as arm sensor and is utilized for obstacle avoidance. Arduino Uno is used as the microcontroller to control the motors while sensing and following the line. The purpose of this project is to implement time-scheduled control and P control and PID control algorithm to control robot movement by tuning and adjusting control parameters correctly that is capable of following a black line smoothly as well as avoid obstacles in its path and able to return back to the desired position.

Throughout these 12 weeks of internship, besides learning how to design and working on the line tracing robot, I have also gained a lot of different things such as understanding Japanese cultural values, ethics and manners, Japanese working environment especially in a research laboratory, enhancing communication skills especially in Japanese language with professors and laboratory members and also gained new experiences in Japan. Even though it was challenging with the language barrier and miscommunication that often happened, I was determined to complete the project given in those 3 months with perseverance and patience. The opportunity that had given to me to experience my internship in Japan had helped in terms of my personal growth and also knowledge gain as MJIIT student.