This morning, we grabbed a quick breakfast and hopped on the bus to sleep for another half hour before the SGL visit. SGL is a German chemical company that produces various products made out of carbon and graphite. They specialize in carbon fiber, which has a multitude of uses because of how light but strong it is. Our company visit started with a long presentation from one of the local managers and another high-up employee. The presentations were a bit mundane, but I definitely could’ve learned a lot if I was more awake. When the guided tour began, it was a lot easier to pay attention as we got to walk around. It was very cool to see a Kuka robot in action in another company after we got to see how they were made. Another interesting part of the tour was seeing the very long line of carbon fiber being made; it was like a string factory. 

In my opinion, the SGL tour was the most well-done. It was a lot more organized because the groups were staggered and each station had a different tour guide. Each tour guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the company and carbon. I left feeling like a knew a lot about what they make. 

After we left SGL, we got on the bus and headed back to the university to work on our presentations for a bit. Then a representative from BMW came into the university and gave us a presentation about autonomous vehicles. It was very easy to listen to and I was very intrigued because I actually did my engineering conference paper on autonomous vehicles. I’m more familiar with the autonomous vehicles produced by Uber, so it was really neat to see the perspective from another country. The presentor had some very good points and had an optimistic view on the future of autonomous vehicles.

At the end of the day, we took a quick nap and went out to dinner at Vapianna, a nice classy Italian restaraunt downtown. Then, another night out on the town. Excited for Munich tomorrow!