Yanisa Srithong is from Khon Kaen, Thailand, and spent October through December 2023 at Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences as part of the IAESTE international student exchange program. Her internship assignment involved developing initial prototype applications for autonomous vehicles and creating documentation that describes the necessary workflow. To achieve this ambitious goal, Yanisa conducted extensive literature reviews and studied numerous documentation guides and programming examples. In addition, she familiarized herself thoroughly with how autonomous vehicles work and learned to use the ROS development environment and the Python programming language. ROS, the Robot Operating System, is an open-source software platform that enables developers to create and run complex robotic applications with a reasonable amount of effort.

Yanisa worked with determination and reliability, enabling her to quickly acquire the knowledge necessary for her internship assignment in a subject area that was new to her. In a work environment that was initially unfamiliar to her, she soon distinguished herself through her strong communication skills and her collegial, positive, and cheerful approach to work. She also demonstrated her skills as a team player: her technically sound collaboration with the two Mexican students, Luis Gerardo Rosales Anduaga and Jose Jathir Rubio Delgado, was a prime example of international teamwork.

On December 21, she finally presented the results of her work at the Institute for Process Engineering, Process Automation and Measurement Technology (IPM), which she was also able to demonstrate in practice by guiding a model vehicle equipped with camera and LIDAR sensors to drive autonomously and collision-free through the lecture hall. In addition, she gave the audience beautiful and impressive insights into her home country in a separate presentation.

Incidentally, the young researcher often spent her free time on the weekends exploring cities such as Dresden, Paris, Berlin, Wrocław, and Prague and meeting up with other IAESTE students. In this way, she ultimately proved herself to be a true globetrotter who knew how to make the most of her time during her internship.

We are very proud of Yanisa’s achievements and wish her all the good luck for the future.