For “Mujinians Voice” series, we had a chat with the Frontend System team and thought it would be great to share their mission and ethos.
The team is responsible for developing a very important part of Mujin’s intelligent robot solutions, and Binbin is the team lead.
— Hi, thank you for your time today. We are excited to get to know more about your team. So Binbin, first of all, could you tell us your team’s mission?
The Frontend System team has 2 groups; developers and designers, and together we are developing the robot interface software.
Mujin is building “Industrial robots for everyone.” Our robots do manual labor so that people can focus on other, more creative tasks. We made robots intelligent, and automated tasks that were never possible before. If you’re involved with technology you would understand that robots are very complicated, and still only highly-trained people can set them up. In fact, it still takes around a month to set up a high-performance industrial robot, even though Mujin has shortened the period from a year.
Our mission is to create a user-friendly robot interface software so that everyone can set up robots easily and quickly, just like exploring in video games.
There are three main parts to our robot interface software; an application for setting up the robots, an application for troubleshooting and analysis, and an application for production usage.
First, we have the application to set up the robots. Actually, the system integrators or robot users set up the robots and connect them with other systems, and they customize settings for their own use through this software.
Second, is the troubleshooting application for engineers and integrators. Robotics is so complicated that at each moment there are lots of signals and feedback looped interacting. If something wrong happens, it is difficult to identify the real cause from these data. This application helps us to debug the system.
Finally, we provide a production application for customers to be able to monitor production and recover the system from exceptions.
— What kind of skills are important for your team?
Our work is related to the whole product life cycle from development to production. That’s why Mujin developers need to know more than calling APIs, but the whole process including data flows, picking business logic, and backend system interactions. Knowing what you are developing is more than coding according to the specification document.
In the nature of frontend development, developers are expected to deal with different backend systems a lot. It’s important to be open-minded and willing to learn new things. For example, when you find an unexpected result, can you figure out whether it is a bug or the way using API is wrong? If it’s a bug, you can either wait for others to fix it, or do it by yourself and submit a pull request to other teams if you feel like a quick one! “Take initiative, be independent” is one of the important values at Mujin.
Those who are eager to learn and contribute a lot would be a great fit!
— Thank you Binbin! We would also like to hear the thoughts of team members.
How did you become interested in Mujin? How do you feel about working for this team?
My initial interest in the company stemmed from my fascination with robotics as the topics involved carry considerable depth. And it was strengthened during the project-based final interview. Not only did I appreciate a project-based problem over the more commonly used interview questions (whose relevance is questionably trivial), but it was also great to get some insight into the type of work carried out at Mujin on a daily basis.
Free lunch and an in-house gym don’t hurt either └( ^o^)┘.
Working at the Frontend System team at Mujin is somewhat different than at other frontend positions. It’s more of a full-stack position that also involves some knowledge of system architecture and UI/UX. It’s definitely challenging, but it’s a great opportunity to learn a lot.
Working with really smart colleagues here is also another nice thing as well.
It was my dream to live in Japan, which is why I encountered Mujin first. After learning more about Mujin, I realized its vision and business are unique and exciting. Compared to the previous firm I worked for, I feel more passion from my colleagues.
I love what I am doing and where I am right now, and I feel like I’m improving myself naturally.
Mujin has many dedicated professionals coming from various corners of the world – working to solve exciting problems. Interacting with them having different perspectives inspires me a lot. It’s also great to know them personally, apart from knowing their cultural, work, and educational background.
I was new to robotics, and I am always learning. Here at our robotics center, we have a robot cell dedicated for our team, making this a great environment to learn robotics systems. Even if you are new to robotics, if you are open-minded and passionate, you can keep up.
Of course, the job here is very challenging. There is always deadline pressure.
But I feel the work we do is filled by passion. I don’t feel exhausted that much, because I am working on what I want to achieve.
— Thank you everyone. Excited to hear the energetic comments!
If you are interested in being a part of the Frontend System team, please apply directly through our career website.