About | Varun Nayak | Robotics

Master of Science, Mechanical Engineering (Robotics), 2018-20

CGPA: 4.0/4.0

I am currently pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering (with a focus on robotics and mechatronics) at Stanford University, CA. My goal is to acquire knowledge in the areas of robot design and control, mechatronic development as well as autonomous navigation and decision making using A.I.

PROFILE SUMMARY

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), Mechanical, 2014-18
CGPA: 9.30/10

At BITS, I spent a reduced three years pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering. I worked under the department's senior most professors on projects such as an MR Damper, a Solar UAV and a Delta 3D-Printer. I was an active part of the robotics and flying clubs and lead the latter for one year. I also was part of the academic senate, which advocated curriculum updation. I served as a TA for a freshman-year CAD course and completed courses relevant to Design, Controls and Dynamics in my junior year.

University of Nevada, Reno

Undergraduate Researcher
Aug 2017 to Dec 2017

I was selected by Dr Kostas Alexis, an experienced researcher at the University of Nevada to pursue a Bachelor's Thesis - a part of my undergraduate curriculum. Here, I worked on Aerial Manipulation - which is basically a robotic arm mounted on a drone. It was designed to carry out contact-based inspection such as NDT. I also worked on a novel Active Vision module for the Nevada Autonomous Vehicles Project.

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Summer Fellow
May 2017 to July 2017

I was among the very few students selected by the Department of Aerospace Engineering for IIT Madras' Fellowship Programme. Here, I worked on two projects. Firstly, I worked on autonomous vision-based landing of a quadrotor, with an MS student. Along with this, I developed an object-tracking quadrotor using proximity sensor fusion in under a month.

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (B.A.R.C), Mumbai

Project Trainee, Department of Remote Handling and Robotics

At BARC, a national research facility owned and run by the Government of India, I worked on developing a fast and robust solver for real-time closed-loop control of a 6-DoF parallel manipulator for performing precision tasks such as neurosurgery.