Rockwell Collins Co-Op

During the Spring and Summer Quarters of my sophomore year (2018), I completed a 6-month cooperative study program at Rockwell Collins (recently acquired by United Technologies). During my time at Rockwell, I became integrated into a team of full-time engineers (and some other co-ops and interns) to complete work on multiple government systems software products.

The main project I worked on was for the Avoidance Re-Router (ARR) Team.  Unfortunately, because this was also a government systems project, I can't go into great detail about which parts of the software I worked on specifically. However, I can give a general overview of what was going on for the six months I was there. On a basic level, ARR does exactly what it sounds like. Aircraft with ARR installed can detect a large variety of known avoidances - such as military enemies or even weather obstacles - within the current flight path. ARR will then find the safest, fastest way around that avoidance, and update the flight path accordingly. 

Initially, there was very little ARR work to be done, but that picked up quickly. The team has a working ARR version, but wanted to make it more accurate, to take slightly shorter detours around avoidances in order to maximize efficiency of the flight path. I assisted with the initial implementation of this multi-resolution version of ARR, and the first version was completed a few weeks before my time at Rockwell Collins ended. In addition to contributing to this development, I worked on a variety of software reviews and checks, including a large re-write of hundreds of requirements for one aspect of ARR. All in all, my time at Rockwell Collins contributed to my knowledge of what work after graduation will be like, and has helped me realize what I still need to work on, both on the technical and non-technical sides of my skill set.