Canada Japan Coop Program (CJCP)Internship Experiential Report

Yuni Fuchioka
University of British Columbia, 3rd Year Engineering Physics

Honda Research Institute/Honda R&D
Robotics Co-Research Lab, Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
June 2018 - April 2019

Company Background
Honda is a Japanese Automobile manufacturer founded in 1946, with headquarters based inAoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Although there are many automobile companies in Japan,
Honda is renowned for its dedication to taking risks and developing innovative technologies
under its company slogan “The power of dreams”. Notable examples of its innovation
includes Japan’s first entry to international motorcycle racing with the Isle of Man TT in 1959,
Japan’s first entry to Formula 1 racing in 1964, the release of the Honda NSX in 1990 which
is often considered to be Japan’s first supercar, the HondaJet airplane released in 2012, andits long history of developing cutting-edge experimental robots.
Robot development at Honda started out in secret in 1986 with the first public announcementof the P2 humanoid robot stunning world in 1996, and its direct line of research continuing
up to the third generation ASIMO released in 2011. More recent developments in robotics
include the disaster response humanoid robot E2DR announced in 2017, and moresocially-oriented robots such as those showcased at the CES conference in 2017 and 2018.
The company is composed of three parts: Honda Motor Company overlooks business,
Honda R&D does technical research and development, and Honda Engineering facilitates
production. Honda Research Institute (HRI) is a subsidiary of Honda R&D, and it is designed
for international collaborative research, with locations in Japan, Europe, and the US.
I originally worked at HRI Japan (HRI-JP) headquarters in Wako, Saitama, but I moved tothe Robotics Co-Research Lab in Aoyama, Tokyo after it was newly created during the third
month of my internship. During the last month of my internship, the ownership of the officeand the company I was working for changed from HRI-JP to Honda R&D, but no significant
difference in working conditions arose from the change.
The Robotics Co-Research Lab, at which I spent the majority of my internship, had a veryrelaxed and open working atmosphere much unlike a traditional Japanese company. The
official language was English, and although the majority of the employees were Japanese, itwelcomed many research collaborators, internship students, and new team members
coming from an international background. Social events were fairly common, and provided
opportunities for everybody to get to know each other, which was possible because of thesmall size of the office.

Work Experience
The purpose of my internship was to perform fundamental theoretical research on robot
bipedal locomotion using nonlinear control theory. My personal work environment wassomewhat similar to what a graduate school student might experience while doing researchat a University. I worked very closely with my supervisor, from whom I received all of mytasks and feedback from. Similarly to graduate school research, my internship started with aseveral month period of reading and understanding background theory. After gaining
necessary knowledge, I was given a research problem, for which I read additional papers,
implemented and tested ideas, and presented my progress to my supervisor to receive
feedback and research direction.
I was incredibly fortunate to have been given the opportunity to pursue a long term research
project, and through the incredible support of my supervisor, we managed to develop amethod effective enough to write on a paper submitted to an international conference.
Having a paper published is the most visibly obvious output of a research project, so getting
this result as an undergraduate student will undoubtedly help me immensely in my future
career development.
Apart from having visible results, this internship has taught me many skills crucial for a
researcher, and generally useful for any engineer. This includes teaching myself very
complicated theoretical topics, explaining them to other people concisely and intuitively,
working through difficult problems with no known solution, driving a long term project to theend, and presenting results in a way that convinces people of the importance of my work. In
addition to these soft skills, I also gained a deep understanding of differential geometry andnonlinear control theory, mathematical proof, modern control theory, many different methodsof robot bipedal locomotion control, physical modelling and simulation, and MATLAB
programming.
Although this was my third internship experience, it was undoubtedly my favourite one so far,and it convinced me to pursue a robotics research career as a result. In fact, I hopesomeday that I will be able to come back to the same office to work, this time as aprofessional researcher and not an internship student.
Finally, as an enthusiast of robots and of Honda, I was very pleased to see that robotics
research is still going strong in the company. I believe that the founder Soichiro Honda’s

spirit of innovation is still very much alive in the company, and the company is continuing totake risks and take in new ideas.

Living Experience
The company was kind enough to provide me with a very nice apartment complete withliving essentials (cutlery, rice cooker, air conditioner, internet router, etc.), and with allelectricity and utility bills covered by the company. The apartment was very conveniently
located, as it was directly across a large supermarket, and a 5 minute walk away from
Wako-shi station. The station was an incredibly good one to live close to, as I could accessmost stations in Tokyo with no more than 1 train transfer, and most notably Ikebukuro (2ndbusiest station in Tokyo) could be reached directly in 13 minutes on the fastest train. If I evercome back to live in Japan, I would try to live in Wako.
Since my working location moved during my internship from Saitama to Tokyo while myapartment stayed the same, my commute went from being a 10 minute walk to a 1 hour train
ride. Although I had mixed feelings about this at first, I quickly became very glad about thechange because it encouraged me to enjoy and explore Tokyo.
The company paid for a monthly commuter pass that allowed me to board and get off at any
station between my home station (Wako-shi) and my workplace station (Omotesando), whichmeant that it was completely free for me to go to Ikebukuro, Shinjuku or Shibuya at any time.
For example, I could stop by Shibuya on Friday night on the way home to have dinner withfellow interns, go shopping in Ikebukuro on the weekends, and have a much cheaper fare tovisit anywhere in Tokyo.
This was very convenient for me, as my favourite hobby in Japan was going on walks andexploring various neighborhoods in Tokyo. Each neighborhood in Tokyo has its own distinct
characteristic and personality, with some of my favourite places including Ikebukuro, Odaiba,
Ginza/Yurakucho/Hibiya, Shibuya, Akihabara, and Yokohama (not in Tokyo).

Cultural Experience
The cultural experience for me in Japan was probably quite different from that of otherinterns, as I am first generation Japanese who grew up outside of Japan but speaks fluent(albeit sometimes a little awkward) Japanese. In addition, I have many relatives aroundTokyo with my aunt’s family located an hour train ride away from my apartment. I also visited
Japan many times as a child, although I usually did not stay for more than two months andthese visits generally happened about once every three to five years.
For this reason, my cultural experience in Japan was less of experiencing something
completely new and foreign, but more of fully experiencing Japanese culture that I know
from childhood memory and Japanese media for the first time. In addition to knowing thelanguage from talking to my family only in Japanese, I was also aware of many of its social
characteristics from watching Japanese variety shows every day with my family, and throughmy hobby of Japanese movies, books, and music.
My favourite aspect of Japanese culture is the overall personality of the people and thecharacter traits that are highly regarded by its society: sincerity, respect, discipline, andtaking pride in one’s own work. These same traits are those that I strive for myself, and I
really enjoyed talking to the Japanese employees in my office, many of whom I felt wereembodiments of these principles of living.
Something I like equally as much (possibly more!) as the serious cultural traits however, isJapan’s culture of social drinking. Being someone that is sometimes too shy or too serious
about work related matters, the ability to drink with coworkers once in a while to talk more
openly and casually is very appealing to me. In particular, the frequent drinking parties heldby my office gave me opportunities to get to know the Japanese employees, and theseparties were actually my favourite cultural experiences in Japan.
Because of my hobby of exploring Tokyo, I only went to three trips that were two or threedays long. My first was a business trip to Nagoya to attend a technical conference, so I did
not do too much exploring. After that, I went to weekend trips to Kyoto, once to see theautumn leaves and another to catch an early glimpse of cherry blossoms.

Overall Reflections
My time spent doing this internship in Japan was undoubtedly the best experience in my life.
Prior to coming to Japan, I worked very hard to accomplish the things that I had access to,
but I had too little experience and exposure to life outside of university classes to makeimportant life decisions about whether I wanted to pursue robotics engineering, a research
career, and working in Japan. Through this internship program, I was able to try out all ofthose things at once, and I now know that I love robotics research, I definitely love Japan,and that I would like to live here someday. I can now go back to university with a clear mind
and focus on my studies with the confidence of knowing what the end goal of my hard work
looks like.
Although my Japanese background makes my experience different from what a lot of
potential CJCP students might experience so it makes it somewhat difficult for me to give
general recommendations, I can at least say for myself that, applying for a Japaneseinternship through the CJCP program was one of the best decisions of my life, andsomething that will have greatly shaped my professional and personal life moving forward.
For this reason, I truly have to thank the people who have made this possible. This includes
the staff of the CJCP program, my university co-op program (UBC Science Co-op), all of mycoworkers at Honda and especially my supervisor. Thank you for everything.

Picture Gallery
Ramen!

Top Left: Nakiryu, Michelin Star winningspicy tan-tan-men.
Top Right: Tsuta, Michelin star winning salt
broth ramen.
Bottom Right: Tori-no-Ana, my personalfavourite. Thick chicken based broth that
doesn’t require hours of waiting to eat.

My Favourite Places to Visit
Yokohama,

locatedoutsideofTokyo in Kanagawa Prefecture,providesbeautifulseasidewalkways and parks, lots of good
food in Chinatown (Peking duckcrepe and pork bun shown below,
leftandright

respectively),

high-class western style shopping
street and an incredible night view
(shown left). I also happened to go
to preschool there.

Odaiba has many shopping malls, and it also
features a nice beach (shown right), a life-sized
Gundam (robot from an anime series) statue(shown below, left), and also a beautiful nightview (shown below, right).

The Four Seasons
All four seasons were quite noticeable inJapan, both through the changes in natureand through seasonal cultural events.
Top Left: Summer dance performancenear Yoyogi Park and Harajuku.
MiddleLeft:Autumnleaves

inArashiyama, Kyoto.
Middle Right: Winter illumination near
Yoyogi Park and Shibuya
Bottom Left: Spring cherry blossoms inAoyama Cemetery, close to my workplace.
Bottom Right: Night cherry blossoms in Kiyamachi, Kyoto’s drinking alley (even the drinking
alley is beautiful in Kyoto!)Drinking PartiesSince my workplace was in a nice neighborhood, I
had lots of very good food for company drinking
parties. Examples included fresh sashimi at
Uo-shin (top right), premium beef at Bistro Vin
Brule (middle left), beautifully prepared seafood at
Hachibe (middle right), and craft beer at Yona
Yona Beer Works (bottom left). When it was justthe interns getting together, we enjoyed chicken
skewers at Tori-Kizoku, a chain restaurant morefriendly for our student wallets (bottom right).

Other Special Events
Watching a sumo event from only a few
seats away from the front seats was a very
impressiveexperience.

Showninthepicture is former Yokozuna (highest rankingwrestler) Kisenosato. He retired only a few
months after this photo was taken.

Since I had a week off from work, I spent theNew Years with my relative’s family. Shown inpicture are some traditional dishes served
during New Years.

As a big fan of Japanese rock music, I reallyenjoyed going to my first Japanese rock festival,
Countdown Japan. I saw artists I really liked, as
well as unfamiliar artists that I started following
after the event.

Some of my coworkers and I went to a Honda
Formula 1 event, where we saw a real F1 car
drive in front of us. Shown in the picture aresome historical Honda F1 cars displayed atthe event, most notably the car that won the1965 Mexico GP only a year after Honda’s
debut in F1.