Intellectual Property Research and Development LLC, Half Moon Bay, CA
My work this past summer on the research into the viability of automated growth cells and agricultural hydroponics has been incredibly interesting. I’ve learned a varied and useful set of skills over the 12 weeks I’ve spent in Half Moon Bay. The people I worked with were knowledgeable and enjoyable to work with, and also taught me numerous skills, both practical and interpersonal. I felt that my work was important and relevant to problems faced around the world, and that the work I did was the sort that I am interested in continuing to pursue throughout my academic career. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity afforded to me by the Petersen’s and the skills I’ve been able to pick up over the past three months.
The project I worked on was a large one, and I was given a few rough guidelines and told to figure the rest out myself. It seemed a daunting task: I had to figure out how to manually grow strawberry and asparagus plants in an abnormal environment (four-inch PVC pipes with holes drilled in the tubing that the plants would grow out of). Once that was done I had to figure out how I might automate the bare necessities, such as lighting, watering, and spacing. I then began work on sensors and hardware that might detect and alter various aspects of the environment in order to better serve the plants’ needs. These included a means of detecting the water level in the fertilizer reservoirs, temperature and humidity sensors for both the water and the air, oxygen content of the water, and a conductivity sensor in the reservoirs to determine the concentration of fertilizer in the water.
These tasks required a wide array of skills, most of which I didn’t have. I needed to learn machining manufacturing techniques in order to build a structure that could support the PVC tubes, while giving each plant in each tube enough light to thrive and each tube enough drainage that water wouldn’t stagnate and rot the roots of the plants. I then had to learn Python in order to communicate via a Raspberry Pi chip with the various sensors I used, and c# in order to communicate with the robot that we planned on using to manipulate, trim, and harvest the plants. Unfortunately, the summer ran out far faster than the tasks on my schedule, and the project is not currently at a stage where it could be fully implemented. Despite not completing the project, I learned an immense amount.
I was working alone for the most part on my project, though I was able to enlist others if I had a technical question or needed an extra pair of hands. My supervisor was incredibly knowledgeable, if a bit overzealous in his expectations. I was able to tap into his capacious well of knowledge when my own was insufficient. Learning to deal with what I felt were unrealistic expectations on his part of an inexperienced undergrad (me) was an invaluable experience, and one that will ease my transition into graduate school or the professional realm. In the end, despite not completing the project handed to me, he agreed that I had shown tenacity and intelligence; and will write me a letter of recommendation when I next apply for an internship or job. I’m ecstatic to know that I now have a far more competitive résumé during my next search for a job or internship.
While working on my project, I also was able to help a coworker with their project. Sean was working on designing an attachment to a conventional bicycle that would fit inside the sprocket and convert it into an electric bike. This involved designing a gearbox that would turn the high rpm of an electric motor into the powerful, torque-heavy rotations a human might create by pedaling. I helped provide code that would iteratively create the profile needed for a complex gear shape, which was an incredibly interesting problem to work on. I also helped set up a CNC Mill, a tool I’m incredibly glad I now know how to use. Working on these sorts of problems with coworkers was a wonderful learning opportunity.
In working to develop an agricultural hydroponic system, my supervisor and I hoped to provide an effective alternative to conventional agriculture, which is a highly decentralized and difficult industry. The work I began could serve to cut down on the environmental and economic costs of transporting produce from farms to urban centers or to areas where agriculture isn’t feasible. In addition, agriculture is an industry that has a high impact on the environment: if a farm that takes up miles of land can be fit into a conventional warehouse, farming would be less expensive, more efficient, and environmentally friendly.
This work was closely connected with my majors: computer science and math. The coding I did in implementing sensors was an interesting challenge in line with my computer science knowledge, and my work helping a coworker implement a sinusoidal gear was an incredibly interesting math problem. The work I did this summer may well turn into a thesis, or perhaps even a Ph.D. Agricultural hydroponics is an incredibly interesting problem, and one I may well pursue in post-collegiate work.
The opportunity afforded by the Alumni Sponsored Internship Program is an invaluable one. I’m incredibly grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Petersen for their generosity. I’m also incredibly grateful to the ’68 Center for supporting me during this process. I was able to work in an environment that allowed me to learn and practice numerous skills and will serve me far beyond my work this summer.
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