Shivam Kumar
Contact
Real flight
Open to internships · drones, robotics, robot vision

ShivamKumar

Portrait of Shivam Kumar
Fig. 1 · S. Kumar

Mechanical engineering student at Delhi Technological University. I build the whole robot: the frame in Fusion 360, the ESP32 firmware, the Pixhawk autonomy and the vision code that lands it on a tag.

Title blockRESULTS
ISRO IRoC-U 2026Cleared 3 rounds
Technoxian 20263rd in Drone Rescue · Nationals
Smart India Hackathon 2026Cleared DTU internal round
Delhi Robotics League★ Best Design Award
School science exhibitions2× zonal winner
Detail drawings

Selected work

Four builds, each with real footage. Hit Try it on a project to play with a working model of the engineering behind it.

C1Aerial autonomyDTU ALTAIR2026 · ongoing

ISRO IRoC-U 2026 autonomous drone

Cleared 3 rounds of ISRO's national challenge
My part: mechanical design, base station, companion-computer bring-up

A quadcopter that scans an arena without GPS, holds position from cameras alone and lands on an AprilTag pad facing the way it took off.

  • Designed the landing gear and base station, including the copper charging cradle, in Fusion 360.
  • Brought up the Jetson Orin Nano stereo pipeline and fixed GStreamer/OpenCV by pinning NumPy 1.26.4.
  • Chose bench-verified visual-inertial odometry over heavier SLAM to fit the compute budget.
PixhawkArduPilotJetson Orin NanoVIOAprilTagFusion 360
C2IoT · Edge sensingAug–Sep 2026

Nexora-MineGuard

Cleared DTU internal round · SIH 2026
My part: team lead and systems architect for a team of six

Cheap sensor nodes on a mine slope measure tilt, vibration and flex, and warn people before the ground gives way.

  • Wrote the team blueprint first: architecture, wiring maps, JSON contracts between sub-teams, power budget.
  • Built a four-node ESP-NOW mesh with IMU, ball-tilt and flex sensing, a LoRa gateway and 3D-printed enclosures.
  • Swapped a planned LSTM for explainable anomaly scoring and cut dashboard refresh from ~15 s to 2–4 s.
ESP32ESP-NOWLoRaFastAPIReactAnomaly detection
C3Embedded · ControlApr–Aug 2026

Technoxian race car and line follower

Both ran clean full courses at Technoxian 2026
My part: both robots designed, wired and programmed from scratch

Two competition robots built around the ESP32: a 4WD race car and a fast PID line follower.

  • Race car: BTS7960 drive at 20 kHz PWM, FlySky or Bluetooth control, cubic expo and ramp-limited throttle.
  • Line follower: 7-sensor IR array, TB6612FNG driver, PID gains tuned live over Bluetooth.
  • Added gain scheduling and hairpin detection after the first track runs.
ESP32PIDBTS7960TB6612FNGFlySky3D printing
C4Wearable HCIOct 2026

Smart ring air-mouse

Working prototype
My part: solo build, hardware and firmware

A ring that turns small finger movements into a Bluetooth mouse. The hard part is making a noisy IMU feel steady in the hand.

  • ESP32 with an MPU6050 IMU, advertising as a BLE HID mouse through NimBLE.
  • One capacitive touch pad replaces three push buttons.
  • Hand-tuned smoothing 0.65 and deadzone 1.5 to remove IMU jitter.
ESP32MPU6050NimBLEBLE HID
Parts list

More builds

Mechanical2023 · school

Delhi Robotics League robot

Inter-school task robot. I led the mechanical design: chassis, ball shooter and grabber arm.

★ Best Robot Design Award · 4th overall
Space2026–27

CanSat 2027, Team MetalHawk

Release mechanisms for the PocketQube and its solar panels, including nichrome burn-wire circuits. Built the PDR decks.

SimulationJul 2026

NXP Cup simulation stack

Set up the CogniPilot ROS 2 and Gazebo stack for the team's autonomous buggy in NXP Cup India 2026.

Concept2026

Host Octopus robot

Bio-inspired multi-arm robot that grips pipes and structures. Python ground station with ESP32 actuation.

CADJun 2026

Fusion 360 automation

Python scripts on the Fusion 360 API that generate and modify CAD geometry instead of clicking it.

ExploringAerogel + PCM wall insulationNitinol heat enginesUAV aerodynamics in CFDA drone with deployable arms
Bill of skills

Toolkit

No percentage bars. Pick a tool to see where I actually used it.

Revision history

Journey so far

JOct 2026Smart ring working.
HSep 2026MineGuard cleared the SIH 2026 DTU internal round.Result
GAug 20263rd place in Technoxian Drone Rescue; qualified for Technoxian nationals. Line follower ran at the Robotics Zonal Championship. Taught an AI and robotics workshop at RPVV Dwarka.Result
FJun–Jul 2026First flights with the Jetson on board; VIO verified on the bench. Cleared round 3 of ISRO IRoC-U.Result
EApr–May 2026First takeoff tests from the AprilTag base station. Built the PID line follower from scratch.
DEarly 2026Joined DTU ALTAIR's ISRO IRoC-U drone team.
C2025Class XII school topper (91.2%). Started B.Tech Mechanical Engineering at DTU and joined DTU ALTAIR, the university robotics team.
B2023Best Robot Design Award at the Delhi Robotics League (inter-school), 4th overall.Award
ASchoolWon two zonal science exhibitions.Award
General notes

Beyond the bench

I'm a second-year mechanical engineer who ended up writing a lot of code, because the robots I wanted to build needed it.

I treat embedded systems and AI as one stack. The goal is to become an AI/ML engineer for robotics: robot vision, manipulator control, and getting that intelligence onto small, power-limited hardware.

Right now I'm working through maths for machine learning, then ROS 2 Jazzy, SLAM and sensor fusion.

SIH 2026

Leading a team of six

Split MineGuard into backend, AI/ML and hardware sub-teams and kept them in sync with written data contracts.

DTU ALTAIR

Recruiting the next batch

Made the fresher recruitment campaign, orientation material and interview questions.

13 Aug 2026

Workshop at RPVV Dwarka

Co-taught school students AI basics, the sense-think-act loop and robotics careers.

A beetle landed on the drone's arm between test flights.
Campus at 4 a.m. during a night of flight testing.
Printing a base station part overnight.

I also shoot photos and video. Most of the footage on this page is my own.

Sheet 1 of 1 · End of drawing

Let's build something that flies.

I'm looking for internships in drones, aerospace and robot vision. Email is the fastest way to reach me.