Technical Interview

This class has a huge focus on collaborative teaming and project development; this is a hugely important skill and one that you will exercise significantly in the professional workplace. But one of the other key expectations of engineers on a team is that each is capable of being an independent contributor, and feels comfortable talking technically and exploring technical concepts deeply in conversation. This “technical interview” assignment is about getting a chance to practice these individual skills within the context of our work in CompRobo.

Pedagogical Note

This is a pilot experience this year! All participants will be asked to fill in a follow-up survey about the experience and suggestions for the activity if it were to roll out in future years as a feature of the course. After the interview and survey are complete, participants will earn up to 10 points of extra credit applied to an area of the course related to their chosen topic.

Learning Objectives

By participating in a technical interview, you will:

  • Practice technical oral communication skills
  • Synthesize a robotics problem in real-time and brainstorm possible solutions and implementations
  • Discuss an algorithmic implementation in detail (mathematical, computational, design, implementation, and consequences)

Interview Format

Each interview will be ~25 minutes long and conducted by the instructor in a space with a whiteboard, table, and chairs. Students will not be required to prepare anything for presentation during the interview, but they are expected to have studied and prepped based on the topic of their choosing (more on this below).

The interview will always start with a context-setting robotics challenge. The interviewer and interviewee will then have a conversation that will start from problem formulation and move into algorithmic identification, design, implementation, and evaluation design. The interview will always end with a brief reflection on the conversation.

Topics

Students may choose from one of the following topics, to be submitted when they sign up for an interview slot:

  • Behavior Planning
  • State Estimation
  • Machine Vision

Interviews will span analytical and computational spaces, and may involve mathematical discussion, pseudocode, whiteboard coding, reading and modifying code, algorithmic design, experimental design, and metric interpretation.

Preparation

To prepare for the interview, it is strongly recommended to:

  • Review all course notes thoroughly
  • Review resources linked in course notes, including related chapters in linked textbooks or technical papers
  • Review projects and the feedback on these projects

Signing Up

To sign-up for an interview (to take place during or after class), please fill in your name on this spreadsheet.