My Internship Experience at HERE Technologies

We all know internships are a very important part of a student’s college life because by providing us with an opportunity to work in a professional workplace environment and apply our knowledge in a more practical sense they help develop our technical and professional skills. They also help us strengthen personal character and focus on overall development that suits the domain you want to work in.

With the help of the Bennett university placement committee I was given the opportunity to intern at Here Maps for a period of 2 months and in this blog i’ll be taking about my experience.

ABOUT HERE TECHNOLOGIES

Here Technologies was founded in 1985 and is based in Netherlands. It’s a global leader in providing mapping and location data and related services to individuals and companies, equipped with mapping data of around 200 countries. Some of the companies they provide location and mapping data to include automobile giants like BMW and Audi, social media platforms like Facebook and leading cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services.

With over 3 decades of experience in this industry the cloud based company has set a goal to provide their users with the world’s best maps and location experience across all devices with a focus on community-driven content. Keeping this in mind they created the HERE Maps Creator which has millions of users worldwide through mobile apps and social networks. This was done so that users can themselves help improve the location and mapping experience of the areas they’re familiar with by adding or editing places of interest with photos and opening hours and also updating addresses of places they’ve visited.

MY TRAINING AND PROJECT

In my training I was introduced to basic concepts of GIS, remote sensing and GPS using the QGIS platform. I was also taught how to proficiently use the Here Maps Creator tool to help develop my mapping skills. Considering the Covid-19 pandemic all the field work had to be skipped and this was converted into a virtual internship. Even though the conditions were far from normal our supervisor Ms. Mudrika Shakdwipee trained us on video calls and made sure all of our doubts and concepts were clear.

After the 2 days of training we were asked to mark roads in any unmapped regions we could find in India(editing house numbers wasn’t possible cause it required field work). Later on we were asked to form groups of 4 and mark roads such that 2 students can review what the other 2 had marked and reduce the rejection rate. The roles were reversed every week. Working in teams also helped us develop our communication and coordination skills while working in a team.

CHALLENGES FACED BY US DURING THE COURSE OF THIS INTERNSHIP

• While marking in regions close to India’s border we would sometimes cross the borders and start marking in some other country without realising it, especially while marking in areas around the 7 sisters of India.
• Sometimes while marking if proper connections were not made between 2 roads or any other criteria wasn’t met the whole road would get rejected causing the rate of rejection to increase.
• It was difficult to mark roads in some areas cause the previously marked roads were marked using the old satellite image(which changes every year) causing some discrepancies.
• Sometimes it was difficult to reach the daily targets we had set for ourselves because it wasn’t easy to find unmapped regions in the country and sometimes the satellite image wasn’t clear enough for us to mark roads accurately.

MY EXPERIENCE OF INTERNING AT HERE

Personally I loved working at Here Maps. We ended up marking approximately 3600kms of roads. This was a field I wasn’t very familiar with and because of this internship not only was I introduced to all the basic concepts about mapping and location data I was also taught how to efficiently use the different services that Here Maps provides. Other than the technical part the internship also helped improve my communication skills while working in a team.

This was definitely an educational experience that I enjoyed all thanks to my supervisor at Here Maps Ms. Mudrika Shakdwipee and my teammates. I would also like to thank Bennett University for providing me with this opportunity.

Thank you for reading. Stay home and stay safe.