Meet Sofia Olsson, PhD student in Electronics and Embedded Systems
What if tools could see and locate bolts in various assembly processes? As an industrial PhD student, this is what Mechatronics Engineer Sofia Olsson is researching.
What is your area of research?
I’m doing a PhD in Electronics and Embedded Systems at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. My research focuses on how to find optimal solutions for custom-made software to be implemented on custom-made hardware.
How can that help customers and the society?
The project centers around computer vision, giving Atlas Copco tools ‘eyes’ so they can see and locate bolts in the assembly process. The vision system that I’ll put on the tools will locate the bolts and understand how to tighten the bolts while the operator is actually moving the tool around, which can help to error-proof the assembly process. This increases quality of course, but also reduces waste, which is good from an environmental point of view.
Are you enjoying your research? What do you hope to do afterward?
I am. It’s creating value for society and the environment. We’ll be dealing with algorithms that require a lot of computing power so we’ll need the hardware to process that data. I want to make the hardware as energy efficient as possible, for an optimized solution for software and hardware. I’ve just started my industrial PhD so my next step is to keep learning more.
Sofia's thoughts of what it's like to do research on the job
