Working with Pringle Robotics on Temi the robot (Q&A)
Kidus Berhanu was able to work with Pringle Robotics in the summer of 2023 and even had some hands-on experience with their robots, one of them frequently seen on Bradley's campus.
When walking around Bradley University, students are destined to run into a four-wheeled robot chugging along, sometimes being followed by a fellow student taking notes. For most, the origins of the robot remain a mystery. But for those who worked on the robot, seeing it on the streets and completing tasks is like a dream come true.
The four-wheeled creation can be spotted throughout the campus from outside the library to strolling through the St. James apartments. While some might think that the robot is a student project—like we did—this robot is on a much bigger scale.
Kidus Berhanu is a senior computer science major at Bradley University who was looking for a summer internship in the spring of 2023 when he came across Pringle Robotics, a company that creates robots designed with their own personal skills. Students at Bradley University get to enjoy one of these robots—a delivery robots, to be specific—affectionately called Temi.
We asked Berhanu some questions on his time with Pringle and how the experience tested and elevated his computing and coding skills.
You can listen to our interview here:
*This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Q: What exactly is Pringle?
A: Pringle Technology is a company that provides IT consulting and automation services to healthcare industries, restaurants and various extra industries. They’re actually based in South Dakota, but they have employees in India, Indonesia and many other locations. But they have a sister company that is called Pringle Robotics — that’s where I worked at. They provide robots such as cleaning robots or food delivery robots and various services to different industries.
Q: How does it feel seeing Temi walking around campus?
A: It feels interesting something you are part of function in the real world and having a little bit of impact in society, even if its small. It’s good to see that your contributions are out there and making a difference in the world.
Q: How did you find out about Pringle Robotics?
A: There was a Bradley alumnus whose name was Mohamed who graduated in 2022, and he basically introduced me to Pringle. He was the one who gave them my resume and he was the first person I knew who worked at Pringle. Also, I’ve seen Pringle at the Bradley career fair before, and I was familiar with what they do.
Q: What was your job at Pringle Robotics?
A: The first one is creating microservices. When the bots move, they send their maps to the cloud. I basically helped automate that task for them. Before I joined Pringle, they used to use a software called Postman. It’s basically coding so you have to code in Postman and tell it to go from here to here. After I joined, I utilized languages such as D-Sharp, Python and etcetera to create a mobile application for them so anyone with a Pringle email can login and basically summon the bots from anywhere they want.
Q: What is your favorite memory of working at Pringle?
A: I would say working with the senior development team. Also, I had the pleasure of working with the CEO every day. He used to join our stand-up meetings. Getting to learn from those people who were an exciting part of the job, I would say. Just their background and knowledge and their commitment to the company was something I used to look up to.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you encountered when working at Pringle?
A: When I first joined Pringle, I thought it was going to be a learning experience. Basically, what I would do is help the developers and things like that, but after a while they used to give me tasks that I had to do on my own. I was tasked with connecting people and managing people from India, Indonesia and here, also. I was tasked with being a manager and taking on a senior development position, which was a bit stressful at the time. It was my first job experience in Peoria, and I didn’t have experience in managing people or leading people in the past.