W.S.G. Isaac Newton

I did my internship at Demcon, where I was an intern at the Mechatronic Systems Engineering department. Demcon is an engineering firm t hat d evelops a variety o f n ew high-tech m echatronic s ystems. D emcon has a lot of different customers with g reatly varying demands, like ASML and the Dutch Ministry o f Defense. During my internship, I performed a literature study on a relatively new control topic, called the hybrid integrator-gain system (HIGS). I used this literature study to do a novel controller design that included the HIGS. The performance of the controller was successfully tested on an experimental setup available at Demcon, shown in the picture. The setup consists of a motor with a motor disc (left) and a load disc (right), which are connected via a spring. Additional damping to the fixed w orld i s a dded t o t he l oad s ide w ith a magnet inside a holder (top-right). The motor and load disc angle are both measured with an encoder. I got great supervision during my internship. My main supervisor from Demcon was up to date with the things I did and gave me very useful feedback along the way. The profound discussions we had (at least weekly) really contributed to my learning process. Furthermore, the ambience at Demcon is informal, which was something I liked a lot. Demcon also organizes a lot of different nice activities for its employees, like monthly drinks, yearly BBQs, trips abroad and it participates in several sports activities like football tournaments and running competitions. Overall, I had a very instructive and fun internship at Demcon.