Aiming for Development Focused on Global Markets Using the Ideas and Observations of Foreign Personnel

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

We are a venture company that is developing next generation optical systems that move just like the human eye. Our system, based on beam steering technology, can be applied to a wide range of fields, including automated driving, robotics, and security, by applying this technology to lidar. We are currently focused mainly on improving and developing devices, but inquiries have already arrived from several overseas companies, such as automotive manufacturers, and we are looking at full-on overseas development and the appointment of foreign personnel. For overseas development, we hope to actively incorporate the ideas and perspectives of foreign personnel and strive for the development of new products tailored to the needs of overseas markets. Additionally, there will be an inevitable increase in the frequency of negotiations with overseas actors as overseas expansion progresses and so we applied to this program in the hopes of improving English within the company. We hope to use this overseas internship for the first steps in SteraVision's business expansion.

Research Collaboration with Employees; Exchanges in English and Engagement in Problem Solving

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

The interns were each given a research theme and we had them develop these themes in collaboration with our employees. We asked our intern from Indonesia to create a program based on the results from measuring laser spot energy dispersion using an IR camera. We entrusted our intern from Malaysia with the implementation of operational testing for our company's beam steering devices and outside-company sensors. We assigned an employee to guide each intern and, after explaining the basic work, these employees gave advice and directions as necessary and got the interns to progress with research. Interns participated in our weekly in-company meetings and they reported their progress in development while at the same time learning how we carry out work at our company. The interns run into a variety of problems in the research process each day. For instance, in research that also uses the machinery of overseas manufacturers there are times when the use or specifications of the machinery is unclear. At such times, we often had the interns access the English information resources, which are more abundant than the Japanese language resources, directly contact those in charge overseas, and solve the problem with their own abilities.

Taking the First Step Towards Overseas Expansion for Both New Technology Development and In-Company Stimulation

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

As applications for the lidar system which we had not previously considered, the interns proposed virtual reality, 3D printers, and traffic observation systems. In particular, we felt that there was a high possibility that the field of 3D printing is one where we can demonstrate the superiority of our device, which has a distance accuracy of 1 mm and below. We obtained insight into business expansion via these fresh ideas born out of the problems that the young interns are facing in their home countries and their fields of interest. We felt stimulated to expand our own perspectives. Going forward, we will explore the possibility of product development in fields outside of automated driving, robotics, and security with reference to the proposals of these interns. We hope that this will be useful in the development of our company's unique technology. Additionally, the experience of cooperating with overseas interns also had a major effect on our employees and there were increased opportunities to use English in the company. We were also able to experience establishing an environment for the recruitment of foreign personnel and this was the first step towards the future. We feel that we have reaped major results in terms of both new technology development and the stimulation of the company from this internship.