Early Engineering and Prototyping

The foundation years: a mechatronics degree with a robotics specialization, and the prototypes that came with it. Wind and solar energy rigs, a saree-folding machine, a piezoelectric energy experiment, robotics competition work, an inventory-robot concept, and a Siemens internship in 2016. Each prototype has its own page below; this is the overview.

Student Engineer. This is where the habits started.

Before any of the ventures, there was a mechatronics degree with a robotics specialization and a string of prototypes. A wind turbine design and a small solar rig taught me energy systems at the scale where you can hold every part in your hand. A saree-folding machine taught me mechanism design, because fabric does not behave like a textbook rigid body. A piezoelectric experiment turned sound into small, honestly measured amounts of electricity. There was robotics competition work, an autonomous shopping and inventory robot that stayed a concept, and in 2016 an internship at Siemens in Ahmedabad, which was my first look at how a large engineering organization actually runs.

None of these projects were commercial and I do not present them as more than they were. They belong on this site because the pattern that runs through everything else started here: pick a problem slightly too hard for you, build the real thing, measure it honestly, and let the failures teach you. The wind turbine and the solar rig led, eventually, to a 320 V traction pack. The competition robots led to production automation. The habit is the point.

Technical scope

• Mechatronics degree, robotics specialization, SRM Institute of Science and Technology
• Energy prototypes: wind turbine design, solar rig, piezoelectric experiment
• Mechanism and robotics work: saree-folding machine, competition robots, inventory-robot concept
• Siemens Ahmedabad internship, 2016

Status — Academic and foundation work, 2012–2016.