SOP Sample for MS in Robotics in USA | Electronics Background

Statement of Purpose

[NAME] – MS in Robotics

I chose my Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Telecommunications due to my natural inclination towards electronic appliances and equipment. Pursuing an undergraduate degree in the electronics domain was an obvious choice to me, and I am glad as this eventually resulted in my interest in robotics systems.

My interest in robotics goes back to my freshman year of the undergraduate program. Elated at being able to get first-class and distinction in the first semester and having made a decent start to my undergraduate college journey, I heard the announcement about "[EVENT_NAME]" – our college fest. One of the workshops under this fest that caught my attention was "GESTURE ROBOTICS". They even showed us one sample robot and I was hooked! I was extremely fascinated to see how that robot is controlled simply by hand gestures. We were given robotic kits and told to build a moving robot with four wheels, a chassis, motor with motor driver, Arduino Uno controller and many other electronic components which I was handling for the first time. Even though I just got a rough idea of how electronic components and controllers work in robots, the joy of building a system that moves on your instructions was surreal and my interest in robotic systems was born.

In my sophomore year, I was studying subjects like Electronic Devices and Circuits, Integrated Circuits, and Digital Electronics which are like basic building blocks for electronic circuit design. So I was trying to understand designing concepts which I knew was crucial in designing circuits for any general electronic system whether it is a robotic system or an autonomous system. I applied for my college robotics club in the sophomore year but got rejected in the interview. Thus I realized that it's just not enough to learn circuit design but there should be some practical application of these concepts using embedded systems.

Later in the same year I got an opportunity to take part in [COMPETITION_NAME], organized by [COMPANY_NAME]. I was part of a 4-member team and we had a problem statement in which we needed to implement an innovative idea for the smooth movement of emergency vehicles on the road through traffic. We designed a traffic system that helps to create a green corridor for ambulances and fire brigades. In this project, apart from using electronic components like timer ICs, LEDs, transmitter and receiver, I was able to use Arduino Uno controller more efficiently to program the traffic control system. Thus I was able to do programming in Arduino IDE. My team was recognized as "Promising Innovator" by [COMPANY_NAME] which was a huge boost for me personally to go ahead.

Our college is host of the ABU ROBOCON – an international robotics competition organized by Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union every year since 2005. To take part in this competition, I reapplied for my robotics club my junior year with better preparation and finally got selected. Robocon competition gave me the best exposure to build robots. We made two robots – one manual and one autonomous. I worked on the Arduino Mega controller with its development design interfacing to motor drivers, sensors, pneumatic systems which we used as actuators, and Xbox controller to control the manual robot. For the autonomous robot's position and movement, we were the only team in India to use image processing techniques. I learned embedded C programming which was used to program some functions of the robot.

Apart from all these competitions, I chose my academic projects carefully because I needed to explore more on robotics and autonomous systems. My junior year project was a small surveillance robot with a camera which was controlled by keys on our mobile phone. The main purpose was to learn to use cameras on robots. In senior year, I explored the domain of automotive systems in which I worked on Texas Instrument Controller C2000. I designed a Model Based VCU Simulator in MATLAB and Simulink. Basically it was an autonomous vehicle control unit with various sensors like LDR, heat, accelerometer, ultrasonic sensor for obstacle detection and throttle which were controlled by C2000. We implemented this hardware setup and controlled it using model-based blocks in Simulink. Thus the main highlight of this project was to run an autonomous system without writing a single line of code.

Currently, I am working with [COMPANY_NAME] as a Hardware Design Engineer. This job has helped me to continue work with embedded systems. Apart from circuit design, I worked with various processors of [COMPANY_NAME], semiconductors, [COMPANY_NAME] and implemented them in various consumer electronic products like washing machines, ovens, and MI interfaces. I went beyond my scope and also understood the programming functions of these products using embedded C language with pin mapping of controllers, testing product with the code and after that doing the FMEA analysis.

With my co-curricular and projects in my college, I also developed leadership and man management skills by being the class representative. Also in my Robocon team, I was responsible as a design lead and inventory manager. Robotics is an interdisciplinary field in which electronics, mechanics, programming and algorithms work in a collective way. I believe my understanding of academic projects and my job experience will help me to understand the electronics and programming in robotics. My next step is to learn more about the brain of a robot with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning techniques. This aspect of robotics is yet to be explored by me.

To achieve my dream to have a full understanding of robotics, I would like to study at [RESEARCH_CENTER] at [UNIVERSITY_NAME] which encourages cutting-edge robotics research. I found research of [PROFESSOR_NAME] in artificial intelligence aligned to my goals and would be obliged to work with him. I would like to take the next leap towards my professional goal with [UNIVERSITY_NAME] and contribute in building robots which are helping hands of humans in the future.