Inside Milrem Robotics with T?nis Jaaniste: Engineer’s life at Milrem

In this week’s article, we’ll have a closer look at what the engineer’s life looks like and what type of projects we are working on.

First about the projects and products. Engineering work in Milrem Robotics can be roughly divided between internal product development projects and external customer projects. Milrem is most famous for its main two products – #THeMIS and #TypeX but in addition to the continuous development of these products we have a wide range of external customer projects. One of the largest of the recent projects is the Estonian Defence Forces CV90 vehicle upgrade project where our role is to handle systems engineering and provide the whole mechanical engineering. Other examples include working together with some of the leading military systems providers in the world on projects related to automation, hybridization and system integrations. I cannot go into details now, but you'll find out should you choose to join us.

Personally, I am really proud that our engineers’ work is so highly valued by many top defence companies in the world. The growing number of cooperation projects is a great sign of the engineers' high-quality standards.

Now, looking deeper into the everyday work of the engineers. In some sense the internal and external projects are very similar - it always begins with the customer and their requirements. The first phase is always gathering input from all stakeholders and writing together the requirements. In cooperation with other engineers (systems engineers, software engineers and other specialists) the requirements are then analyzed and a conceptual architecture is put into place. The key is to find a balanced solution and this of course is an iterative process working closely with the customers. During this phase different trade studies are made, technologies analyzed and standards worked through. For example – the customer describes the use case and requires the UGV to move with a constant speed of 30 km/h on rough terrain. The engineers will then work on performance calculations to specify the power needed and simulate the system in Multi-Body Dynamics software to find the optimal suspension solution. Different solutions are analyzed and trade studies are made to make the best decisions based on reliable data.

After a conceptual solution is in place and agreed upon with the customer then we are moving forward into the next phase – the preliminary design. The engineers will work in smaller teams on their sub-systems to create a more detailed solution. Mechanical engineers will mostly work with 3D modelling, perform different types of analysis (FEM, Fluid dynamics and others) and develop the mechanical interfaces. Electrical engineers will be creating schematics and defining the components to fulfil the required functionalities. Powertrain engineers are working on defining components and conducting more detailed calculations for selecting the right system elements such as batteries.

Again, together with the customer, we go through the solutions and then move on to the next phase. The detailed design of all the components is made next and by the end of the critical design phase the production documentation - all technical drawings, schematics, off-the-shelf components are selected and so on - will be ready. After this, all that is needed to procure hardware will be finished.

Everything can be made to look good on the computer screen but in real life… Everything cannot be simulated (or it is sometimes not reasonable) so a physical prototype of the full system is built next. This project phase is called integration and testing. We have a principle that the engineers who have designed the system will need to take part in the integration and prototyping activities as well. So, the whole system is integrated by the engineers and technicians step-by-step and tested until we have the system ready to go into the verification phase. Such feedback from the integration phase and knowledge from the system behaviour is highly valuable.

The main aim of the verification phase is to make sure all the system-level requirements are fulfilled and the main part of this testing is done by test engineers. The same requirements that the team was working on at the initial phase of the project are evaluated. During this, the mechatronics department engineers still have several activities, for example analyzing the test results and debugging if something is not working properly.

If the system is fully tested, validated by the customer and handed over to production then the engineers move on to the next project and start from the first phase again.

Such product development cycles can be short, a couple of months, or up to several years in more complex cases. Also, important to notice that the phases have an iterative nature and in some cases, several solutions might be worked through before finding the right one. And in addition, building mock-ups or doing some additional prototyping along the way is natural – all to find a working solution with minimal time and get feedback from actual users or tests as early as possible.?

So, all in all, the engineers have the opportunity to work through the whole engineering process and shape the products from the start to the end. This gives a really broad understanding of the systems and customer expectations while enabling them to focus on their speciality. Personal growth and constant learning are also highly supported in Milrem. Let’s look at the roles and different engineering fields in more detail already next week.

Links to previous posts:

1. Intro & Summer Camp
2. Career model
3. Our Engineering setup
4. Autonomy
5. Core software
6. Simulation
7. Why do people like working here?
8. Intro to the Mechatronics Department