Hej!
This morning, I had the same breakfast I’ve had the past few days of parfait, fruit, peanut buttered bread, and a ginger, honey, and lemon shot. Day two of company visits kicked off with a meeting with Magnus, the Market Area Director of Qualisys. This is a motion capture, or mo cap for short, solutions company. They create high quality cameras to capture movement for many different applications. Magnus spoke about the main uses for Qualisys products and how they are typically related to engineering, biomechanics, and virtual reality (VR) and animation. Engineering is related to automated construction, biomechanics to research movement, and VR and animation for better media content creation. Some examples of the biomechanical applications include rehab gait analysis, sports research, and even how to play musical instruments better.
Helen, the Marketing & Communication Manager, then spoke to us about Qualisys’s marketing efforts globally. She went through how much work it was to try to create a cohesive feel for the company around the world and the creation of a media plan. She also spoke about the importance of using consumer stories in the marketing to reach consumers on an emotional level.
We then had two demonstrations of the products. The first was when Robbie suited up with infrared emitting mo cap sensors all over his clothes to track the biomechanics of how he runs. It was so interesting to see the set-up, actual test, and analyzing the results that the Qualisys system captured. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. The program recorded video, could add in the skeletal system, and look at factors such as stride length and pronation versus supination. The second demo was when Nicole, Sam Ram, and Matt put on full body suits to showcase the animation application. They had a great time dancing to some interesting music and attempting cartwheels and moonwalking.
The second company we toured was SKF ball bearings. This Swedish company is the largest bearing manufacturer in the world. The company headquarters is located on a sprawling campus that even has a large silver sphere sculpture that was very reminiscent of the Bean in Chicago. Lars Werner, our tour guide, gave a short presentation on the history of SKF and its significance to the culture and economy. It’s crazy to think that a company as large as this did not turn a profit for the first 4 years. It was also impressive that they have had the same logo since 1909, two years after it was founded. Lars showed us just how essential ball bearings are in everyday life, which I never thought about before. We then toured one of the manufacturing plants and saw the large number of robots being used to increase efficiency. They even had unmanned forklifts driving around!
Daily Reflections:
- Robots are going to take over the world.
- Street signs are actually located on the buildings.
- Time zones apparently affect everyone.
- Canadians say the letter ’z’ as “zed” instead of “zee” when spelling a word.
- We’re tryin’.
Adventures in Sweden 