HELLO, I'M
Arjun Sadananda
Systems and Control Engineer | Robotics & Drone Developer
About
With a passion for robotics, I have spent nearly a decade learning, building and programming a wide variety of robots. It has become my personal mission to connect the theory from the classrooms & research papers to practice in real-world projects, because I believe this is true mastery of the subject. (plus it's a lot of fun!)
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At the same time I try to make myself useful to the society with the valuable soft skills I have developed, through intrapreneurship and teaching. As an upbeat, self-motivated team player, I envision an exciting future ahead filled with challenging projects and collaborative endeavors.
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My story in short:
Education, Professional Experience & Highlights
WHAT I’VE LEARNED, WHERE I’VE WORKED & WHAT I'VE WORKED ON
2021–2024
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay
Master of Technology
Systems and Control Engineering
M.Tech Project
Attitude Estimation and Control for a Quadcopter UAV with concepts from manifold theory
Guide: Prof. Ravi N Banavar
Hardware Implementation on firmware developed from scratch on Teensy4.1 development board
The controller implemented is from the paper titled: Control of Complex Maneuvers for a Quadrotor UAV using Geometric Methods on SE(3) by Taeyoung Lee, Melvin Leok, and N. Harris McClamroch. The control objective is similar to the Throw Mode in ArduCopter Firmware, which is to stabilise a Quadcopter UAV thrown into the air (or dropped from a height).
Paper Published
Robust Orientation Estimation with TRIAD-aided Manifold EKF
Presented at European Control Conference 2025 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/66236
2019–present
e-Yantra - Robot enhanced teaching
in engineering colleges & schools
Sr. Project Technical Assistant
Developer, e-Yantra Robotics Competition (e-YRC)
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Conceptualised technical challenges or Gamified Real World Problems to facilitate comprehension and application of technologies and concepts from multiple disciplines. Provided mentorship to 1000s of engineering students nationwide in tackling a variety of problem statements listed below.
Holo-glyph Bots Theme (2023-24)
Holonomic Art Bot Theme (2022-23)
Intrepid Explorer and Game Inventor (2020-22)
Sahayak Bot (2020)
Patrol Fish Theme (2019-20)
Holo-glyph Bots Theme
Build and program a trio of holonomic drive robots to plot images and functions on an 8ft x 8ft arena using ArUco markers and an overhead camera for localization. Tech Stack: ROS2, Gazebo, OpenCV, micro-controller programming, μROS.
Led Embedded Systems Faculty Training Workshops
at Indore, Tirupati, Surathkal and Bombay.
The workshops were designed to equip faculty members from the vicinity of these cities with a comprehensive understanding of embedded C programming, on the ATMEGA2560-based robotic platform Firebird V
Mentor, e-Yantra Summer Internship Program (e-YSIP)
Worked with summer interns on a range of projects like Design and fabrication of a Robotic Gripper for UR5 arm, CAD modelling of Arrestor and Battery Swapping Mechanism for UAVs, Design and simulation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, ...
Mechanical designer
for a variety of platforms/projects @ e-Yantra
Chassis for the Collaborative Robot (to marry a UR5 robotic arm to a UGV).
Components mounts for 7kg payload drone platform, etc.
Papers Published:
Learn, Build and Compete: An Aquatic Robot-Fish Challenge
Saail Narvekar, Rucmenya Bessariya, Arjun Sadananda, Kavi Arya
2020 3rd International Conference on Education Technology Management (pp. 60-65).
Learning Efficacy and Effect of Scaffolding in Online Engineering Education during COVID-19 Pandemic.
Narvekar, S., Gupta, V., Atar, S., Sadananda, A., Singh, S., Arya, K.
Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2022
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2017–2019
CSD ROBOCON NITK Team
Centre for System Design | NITK Surathkal
https://robocon.nitk.ac.in
Founder and Team Leader
of the first team from NITK Surathkal to take part in the prestigious ABU Robocon.
Winners of First Time Best Use of MATLAB
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Recognized for adeptly modelling the forward and inverse kinematics of a holonomic drive robot and line tracking controller on MATLAB Simulink.
Lead role in Control Systems, MATLAB simulations, and Mechanical Design of the Robots for Robocon 2018 & 2019. Designed, built, and programmed four robots tailored to meet the specific task requirements outlinedin the competition rule books.
2015–2019
National Institute of Technology (NIT) Karnataka
Bachelor of Technology; Mechanical Engineering
Runner Up e-Yantra Robotics Competition 2016
Launch a Module Theme
Implemented Image Processing using OpenCV for Localisation, Dijkstra’s algorithm for Path Planning and PID + behaviour based controller to control the Differential Drive Robot.
e-Yantra Summer Intern 2017
6 DOF Robotic Arm;, PCL Library
Designed and fabricated a 6 DOF Robotic Arm inspired from the mechanics of the Human Arm. Implemented object detection on point cloud data stream from a Kinect sensor using Point Cloud Library
Paper Published:
Geometrical Mapping of an Initially Unknown Region by a Mobile Robot
Shashank Rao Marpally, M S Nagarakshith, Arjun Sadananda, K. R. Guruprasad
2019 IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing, VLSI, Electrical Circuits and Robotics
Part of BTech Major Project at NITK Surathkal (2015-2019)
2013–2015
Indian Educational School (Bhavans) Kuwait
CBSE Senior Secondary Curriculum (XI-XII)
Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science
Country Topper (Kuwait 2015) in Computer Science
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay
Project Research Engineer
Aerospace Engineering
July 2025 - present
Designing and developing autonomous flight controls firmware for UAVs for various applications.
Working with research scholars to implement theoretical advancements on hardware.
Skills & Tools
that I've worked on through this jorney
Soft Skills...
Problem Solving,
Design Thinking,
Product Development and Prototyping,
Team Work,
Leadership,
Teaching...
Languages
Python
C++
English
Hindi
Tulu
Kannada
Interests
OUT OF LAB/OFFICE
Club Manager of the IITB Ultimate Frisbee Club (June’22-Dec’22)
Spirit Captain of the IITB Ultimate Frisbee Team in NCS Regionals 2022 @ Surat
Piloting FPV Acrobatic Drones
A variety of Racquet Sports, bouldering, playing guitar (beginner), adventure, etc.
