VARUN NAYAK
Robotics Engineer
PROJECTS
Here are some of the projects I've worked on so far, please do click on the link for files like reports, illustrations, code, CAD files, images, videos, etc! You can always contact me too for any kind of discussion about these.
CLICK ON THE ICON FOR GIT REPOS
Autonomous Racing on a Volkswagen Golf GTI
For a course project (ME 227: Vehicle Dynamics and Control) at Stanford, we developed three different controllers for guiding a Volkswagen Golf GTI around an oval track as fast as possible, with constraints on motion that ensured a comfortable ride.
Project Git Repo:
Playing Crokinole with a Panda Robot Arm
Our Experimental Robotics (CS 225A) project was a great way to explore the versatility in applications that today's torque-controlled robot arms can be used for. We were able to program a 7 degree-of-freedom arm to play a famous French board game called "Crokinole", similar to the game of Carrom played in India.
Project Git Repo:
Autonomous Exploration and Food Pickup/Delivery using Turtlebot
For AA274 (Principles of Robot Autonomy) at Stanford, we developed ROS packages for a turtlebot to autonomously explore and navigate through a mock environment. It would "pickup" and "deliver" food items that it saw along the way.
Project Git Repo:
For autonomous exploration, we used a costmap overlay over a map generated by EKF-SLAM package gmapping and a modified Djikstra algorithm that found the closest unexplored part of the map.
Autonomous Exploration Git Repo:
Building an Autonomous Robot from Scratch: ME218 at Stanford
Our team designed and developed an autonomous differential drive robot from absolute scratch in the ME218B course project. The robot had to pickup, sort and dispose off coloured balls in specific zones while navigating an arena with various provisions for localization such as beacons and lines.
Our robot relied heavily on navigation using beacon detection and inductive field sensing. Decision making was carried out by implementing state charts for various tasks and imparting intelligence.
Project Git Repo: Dedicated Project Website:
Watch our robot "Thomas The State Machine" win the final at the ME218 Great Pacific Garbage Patch Competition!
An interactive game to inspire eco-friendliness
I had worked on a group project to design and develop a simple arcade-style interactive game with various audio-visual feedback and mostly mechanical user inputs.
The user plays three distinct games simultaneously, and has 60 seconds to save the sinking polarbear! The first game involves recycling paper and metal (basketball). The second game is saving water (sliding a bucket under a column of LEDs) and the third game is to "Whack-a_Light" and by turning off LEDs before they consume too much energy!
Project Git Repo: Dedicated Project Website:
AERIAL MANIPULATOR FOR INSPECTION
Design and Control of a Light-Weight Aerial Manipulator for Industrial Inspection. Like a Flying Hand!
"FOLLOW ME" QUADROTOR
A human following quadrotor using proximity sensor fusion. It can really chase you.
