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Background: About Me
• Hometown: Prospect, Kentucky
• College: University of Kentucky
• Year: Rising Junior
• GPA: 3.98
• Graduation Date: May 2017
• Major: Computer Engineering
• Age: 19
• Toyota: 1st Co-Op: SCPABS
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Background: Involvement
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Points plotted on a face used for
emotion detection algorithm
• College of Engineering Senator - Student
Government
• Vice Chair of Operations and Evaluations
Committee
• Vice President of Inter Fraternal Relations
- Interfraternity Council
• Triangle Fraternity
• VP of Activities
• Computer Science Research
• Emotion detection and measuring
• Currently submitting my first patent
which covers a medical application of my
algorithm
• Eagle Scout
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Expectations
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• Kaizen from previous co-op term
• Engineering experience
• Career direction
• Learning
• Automotive Industry
• Toyota
• Experience all 5 Values of the
Toyota Way
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Goal Setting
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• Within my first week at TTC, Ken and I reviewed all VUDBS
projects to determine which best fit with my expectations
• VENG Refresh: Recommend by Ken as an opportunity to gain
exposure to innovative technologies available in the auto
industry.
• Aerodynamic Simulation Design: Chosen by me so that I can
experience IS from a more technical perspective
• Autonomous Vehicle/ IS Collaboration: Selected as a project
so that I could participate in IS business engagement as well as
gain valuable engineering exposure
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Co-op Experience: VENG Refresh
• Virtual Engineering (VENG) Room
Refresh
• Worked towards creating global standard
for VENG design
• Benchmarking Visits
• RTT in Royal Oak, MI
• Caterpillar in Peoria, IL
• Created presentation for upper-level TTC
and TEMA management.
• Importance to TTC:
• Giving engineers an environment in
which vehicle design may be conducted
accurately, and collaboration is fully
supported.
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Co-op Experience: Aerodynamic Simulation
• Aerodynamic Simulation CFD
(Computational Fluid Dynamics)
• Created technical and high level
documents
• Gained understanding of high
performance computers (HPC’s)
• Hardware requirements
• Networking methods
• Importance
• Allow engineers to perform essential
aerodynamic analysis at a lower cost
than using a physical wind tunnel.
• These tests will aid in efforts to bring the
average fleet fuel efficiency to 54.5 mpg.
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Co-op Experience: Autonomous Vehicle
• Autonomous Vehicle Prototype LiDAR Sensor
Research
• What is a LiDAR Sensor?
• Light Detection and Ranging sensor that uses lasers
in order to determine distance to an object
• Cost for 64-beam Velodyne LIDAR (current):
~$100,000
• Cost of prototype 8-beam Quanergy LIDAR: ~$5,000
• Current Progress
• Vehicle is able to drive autonomously in Ann Arbor
with relatively small input from driver
• However, many driving conditions have not been
accounted for, and much more progress must be made
before the vehicle will be production-ready.
• Autonomous Vehicle group is in need of IS assistance
in the form of purchasing supercomputer hardware
• My Role
• Allow prototype sensor to be used on a lab computer
• Created visualization tool utilizing OpenGL so that
the sensor can be integrated into one of the vehicles
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One of 3 Autonomous Lexus 600h’s
LIDAR Output
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Reflection: Highlights
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TOPIC Results
1. The Five Values
of the Toyota Way
• Challenge: Asking for many, difficult tasks.
“Load of a full-time specialist” – Trever White
• Kaizen: Continuously revising/ seeking feedback
on VENG PowerPoint
• Respect: New understanding, perspective, and
respect for automotive engineering
• Team Work: Daily meetings with team members
allowed me to see the value of team work/
nemawashi
• Go & See: Pursued opportunity in TRI-NA by
physically going to talk to all members involved.
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Reflection: Highlights
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TOPIC Results
2. Career Direction
(My Takeaways)
• Driverless Car: I feel like I found my passion.
• Engineering: Liked my exposure to the more technical
business aspects of Toyota IS, but I thoroughly enjoyed
the engineering experience.
• TTC: Would love to work here one day
• Overall Direction: This co-op has set up my entire
career, and I’m excited to see what my future holds as a
result of my experience at TTC
3. Unique
Experiences
• 4 Crash Tests: Including first American-made ES 350
• 4 Autonomous Vehicle Tests: Drove autonomously in
Ann Arbor
• Groundbreaking: Saw CEO, Jim Lentz speak.
• Location: 30 minutes away from girlfriend (as opposed
to 6 hours).
• Ann Arbor: Lived in Triangle Fraternity house
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Reflection: Pictures
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Picture from Detroit Free Press of me and Jim Lentz
at TTC Groundbreaking
UofM Triangle Fraternity House
Prius Small Overlap Crash Test
My girlfriend
and I in Harbor
Springs, MI for
the Fourth of
July
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Reflection: Pictures
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My 1993 Corvette in the TTC Car Show Autonomous Vehicle Sensor Output
Another
great
picture from
my trip Up
North
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Reflection: Term Comparison
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TOPIC EXAMPLES
1.Role Term 1: Project management (VPACS and FVM), application
support, ringi
Term 2: Project management (Virtual Engineering Room
Refresh), supercomputer design, software engineering
2. Exposure Term 1: Manufacturing, supply chain, Toyota philosophies
Term 2: Engineering, vehicle design, advanced research Japanese
language, further Toyota philosophies.
• Building Vehicles vs Creating Vehicles
3. Project
Selection
Term 1: Assigned pre-determined projects
Term 2: Selected from list of available projects based off of my
interests and goals
• Selecting my projects was effective in creating excitement
about the co-op term and gave me the opportunity to choose
how I would meet my goals. Future co-ops should have one
manager recommended project, one project that can be finished
in a term, and one “really cool” project
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Reflection: Improvements
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TOPIC EXAMPLES
1.Onboarding Assignments: Should be specified prior to, or on first day
of work
2. Workload Downtime: Needing project approval/ feedback resulted in
a lot of downtime.
• Solution: Let co-ops have an amount of work that is
high enough to always keep them busy, even if it means
that one project won’t be completed entirely
3. Software Set-up: Computer should be set up with all required
software on first day.
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Future Plans
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Fall 2015-Spring 2016:
• Junior Year at University of Kentucky
Summer 2016:
• Toyota Technical Center
• 3rd Co-op Rotation: FRD 2
Fall 2016-Spring 2017:
• Senior Year at University of Kentucky
Post Graduation:
• Master’s Degree
• MBA
• Full Time Employment
