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Engineering co-op students build a robotic bartender to demonstrate new, high tech motion controller technology Responsibilities during co-op experience help local company with launch of new product

When Teknic challenged a co-op student team from RIT to produce a configurable, automated machine that would use its newest motion and I/O controller called ClearCore, team members responded with a robotic bartender that automates the drink-making process.

Undergraduates from RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering and Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences worked during the summer and fall through required co-op experiences with the company, which manufactures servo motion control components.

“The robotic bartender is a mix of fun and serious engineering,” said Abe Amirana, Teknic’s director.

Integrating high tech, brushless servo motors, connections to multiple networked devices such as digital and analog sensors, solenoids, LEDs, pneumatics and other hardware devices, the robotic bartender is capable of producing thousands of mixed drink combinations. Users can interact with the bartender through a touch screen interface, browse an extensive menu, vary combinations and place an order.

“RIT has a really good emphasis on group work and communications – that proved invaluable when working with an inter-disciplinary team trying to complete a sophisticated automated machine of this nature in a short period of time,” said Carter Miller, a mechanical engineering major who expects to graduate this May. He did one block at Teknic as a co-op, and recently accepted an offer to work with the company. After graduation he’ll join its mechanical engineering department.

“My education in 3D solid modeling was also really valuable,” he continued. “The machine space constraints were tight and because we modeled the entire system in 3D CAD, we uncovered several internal interferences which would have delayed the entire program by weeks had they not been caught before releasing parts.”

The team was made up of mechanical, electrical, computer and software engineering students.

Brandon Key, now a software engineer with Teknic, is a graduate of RIT’s computer engineering program. He and project teammates, Cody Brown and Alex Amari, both computing science majors, were instrumental in coordinating the robotic bartender’s multiple system devices. All three have been hired by Teknic.

“In the software design, we had to deal with multiple input streams— estop, pressure valve, requests from the touchscreen—so the state machine design to time slice everything was critical,” Key said. “My coursework in embedded systems was helpful in this exercise.”

RIT’s Cooperative Education Program is offered to students to apply what they have learned in the classroom through meaningful work experience opportunities. Students participate over the course of several semesters in different industries and responsibility areas as well as in research centers at the university.

“At Teknic, we have a strong commitment and loyalty to the co-op program,” said Amirana. “We had a successful 2020, a most difficult year for many, and we were able to honor our commitments to the program and the students.”

Several engineering and computer science students who worked at Teknic, a local motion controller device company, developed a robotic bartender to model how electronic equipment can be integrated with the company’s newest technology. Credit: Provided by Teknic

A video is available for this article.

Semiconductor Shortfall

by Santosh K. Kurinec

The U.S. created semiconductor microelectronics through transformative innovations in science and engineering over the past century. This technology has ubiquitously influenced our daily lives by delivering many new technologies, such as mobile communications, the internet and computing. It has created an enormous industry and benefited the entire world by creating new applications in electronics, communications, computing, information processing, health care, transportation, energy, and more. The national and global economy has been driven by microelectronics for more than half a century. Today, semiconductor technology is more critically and strategically important than ever. A New Microelectronics Era is emerging that requires new innovations required by new technologies and applications ranging from artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, beyond5G communications, super data centers, cloud and edge computing, internet of everything (IoET), ubiquitous sensing, to the industries of future.

In 2001, nearly 30 semiconductor firms manufactured leading-edge chips. As time has progressed and leading-edge semiconductors have become more difficult and costly to produce, that number has decreased significantly. The remaining chip companies manufacturing at the leading edge are from only three countries: Taiwan, Korea, and the United States while China is ramping up its semiconductor industry. The ongoing decline of domestic chip manufacturing poses huge challenges for national security, the supply chain, and technical leadership. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, today, the U.S. share of semiconductor manufacturing accounts for 12 percent of global capacity, compared to 37 percent back in 1990. With a slower rate of U.S. chip production capacity, rival nations are poised to become strongholds of innovative transformation.

Off shoring of high technology jobs has been the trend in the U.S over the last several decades following a mantra: Invent here, build there. Get PhD students from overseas and displace mid-level jobs from the U.S. It has come to haunt us. The motivations attributed have been - it is cheaper to manufacture outside, no regularity concerns and lack of domestic workforce.

Semiconductor manufacturing requires a large workforce of skilled professionals, both for the industry and for the ancillary supporting businesses. These jobs include PhD engineers and scientists, and more of bachelor and masters level engineers and skilled machinists, programmers, process engineers and others. On-shoring of semiconductor manufacturing and associated migration of the supply chain to the U.S will lead to a significant creation of well-paid U.S. jobs.

Anticipating the promise and growth of semiconductor microelectronics, Rochester Institute of Technology founded the first and the only undergraduate program in Microelectronic Engineering in 1982 with in-house fabrication facility. The program mandates over a year of co-op internship experience in the semiconductor related industries. The program has produced top quality engineers for the semiconductor industry nation and worldwide over the last 37 years. Over time, RIT created Masters and PhD programs with continued curricula and lab advancements. The question is why enrollment has declined over the years. Young students see the overall trends - no factories in their backyard! Minimal exposure from media, guidance counselors, K-12 curricula and displaced national priorities. This is time to support programs like this, to create workforce desperately needed to keep US leadership resilient in semiconductors for defense, technology, and intelligence industries.

Santosh K. Kurinec

Santosh K. Kurinec is a Professor of Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). She is a Fellow of IEEE and a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences. She serves on the NSF Planning Workshop on Future of Semiconductors & Beyond and on IEEE*USA Advanced Microelectronics, Manufacturing, Research & Development Committee. Her current research activities include advanced integrated circuit materials and processes, memory, ferroelectronics and photovoltaics. She received the 2012 IEEE Technical Field Award for integrating research in teaching to prepare microelectronic engineers for future challenges. She was inducted in the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2018.