§ 00 // PROFILE

Joshua John

Observing Through Sensors,Controlling Through Censors,Tames the Chaos.

CONTROL · ROBOTICS · SIMULATION // NIT TRICHY / IIT MADRAS / EPFL

FOR BROTHERHOOD? WHY DON'T YOU TRY USING THE UNAUTHORISED TERMINAL, BY PRESSING ` OR CLICKING HERE. THOUGHTCRIME IS DEATH.

Portrait of Joshua John L (Podalanga), robotics and control-systems engineer

SCROLL. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING.

§ 01

Education

National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli

B.Tech, Instrumentation & Control Engineering (Minor: Computer Applications)

Tiruchirappalli, India · Aug 2023 to Present · CGPA 8.5 / 10

Indian Institute of Technology Madras

BS, Data Science & Applications

Chennai, India · Aug 2023 to Present · CGPA 8.91 / 10

§ 02

Positions

Technical Head at Robotics and Machine Intelligence (RMI), NIT Trichy
Aug 2024 to Present
RMI is NIT Trichy's official robotics and technical research club. Managing all technical projects and mentoring club members, with active participation in robotics competitions, exhibitions, and educational workshops for school students.
Ex-Secretary at Toastmasters NITT Chapter
Apr 2024 to Present
Served as Secretary for NIT Trichy's official Toastmasters club, coordinating administrative activities alongside public-speaking and leadership practice.

§ 03

Internships

ALL CASE FILES →

FILE 01 // ZBOTCLOSED

ZBot: Simulating a Zebrafish Larva's Bio-Inspired Locomotion

BioRob, EPFL · JUN 2026 TO AUG 2026

Ported a bio-inspired zebrafish-larva swimming robot from Webots to MuJoCo/FARMS, then fixed two physics defects in the lab's underwater simulation stack: a fixed-point buoyancy model and a hard-coded fluid density.

Control
Simulation
Underwater
CPG

ON FILE:REPORTPRESENTATION

ZBot's articulated body holding a traveling body wave in the MuJoCo viewer, next to a small green target marker.

FILE 03 // WHEELCHAIRCLOSED

Data Collection and Mathematical Modeling of Wheelchair Dynamics

R2D2 / Thryv Mobility, IIT Madras · MAY 2025 TO JUL 2025

Derived a state-space model of wheelchair push dynamics from strain-gauge data collected across 40 subjects, and implemented a cruise-control proof of concept.

Control
Signal Processing
Modeling

FILE 02 // PENDULUMONGOING

Controller Implementation on a Rotary Inverted Pendulum

NIT Trichy · DEC 2024 TO PRESENT

Linearized and stabilized a Quanser rotary inverted pendulum using pole placement, LQR, and gain-scheduled LQR, validated on real hardware.

Control
LQR
Hardware

ON FILE:SHORT REPORT

Diagram of the rotary inverted pendulum: rotary arm angle theta and pendulum angle alpha, with lengths L_r and L_p labeled.

§ 04

Projects

ALL CASE FILES →

FILE 05 // ROVIOONGOING

ROVIO: Simulation, Control and Vision-Based Autonomy for an Underwater Vehicle

RMI, NIT Trichy · DEC 2024 TO PRESENT

RMI's eight-thruster, 6-DOF underwater vehicle: I sealed its enclosure, then built a simulated autonomy stack in Stonefish: thruster allocation, cascaded control, AprilTag localization and a monocular coral-mapping pipeline trained on auto-labelled images.

Underwater
Control
Perception
Simulation

ON FILE:SHORT REPORTREPORT

ROVIO in the simulator, seen from below in open water with sunlight overhead: the open frame, carry handles and thrusters.

FILE 09 // WATCHCLOSED

Mechanical Watch: Going Train and Swiss Lever Escapement

Independent · AUG 2026 TO SEP 2026

The basic mechanism of a mechanical watch, from mainspring barrel to balance, designed from first principles: thirteen parts driven by 393 linked equations, ogival NIHS 20-30 teeth, a Monte Carlo tolerance study, and a full contact simulation that ticks at 0.2498 s against a design value of 0.2500 s.

Mechanical Design
Precision Mechanisms
Simulation
Tolerance Analysis

ON FILE:SHORT REPORTREPORT

The complete mechanism from the mainspring barrel on the left, through the going train and escapement, to the balance on the right: thirteen unique parts on one line of centres.

FILE 04 // TRIDENTCLOSED

Trident AMR: Design and Simulation of a Differential-Drive Pick-and-Place Robot

RMI, NIT Trichy · SEP 2025 TO DEC 2025

A 3D-printed differential-drive robot designed for a WorldSkills pick-and-place task: a caging gripper slides coins without lifting, RTAB-Map and Nav2 navigate around obstacles, and a line follower guides the final blind docking. 36 of 36 coins delivered across twelve simulated missions.

ROS2
SLAM
Navigation
Mobile Robotics

ON FILE:SHORT REPORTREPORT

CAD model of Trident Version 2: differential drive with two N20 gearmotors, caging gripper, and depth camera mount.

§ 05

Skills

ROS2
Python / Cython

C++
MATLAB
SolidWorks
MuJoCo
Gazebo

LQR ControlKinematics & DynamicsObserver DesignSystem ModelingSimulinkOpenCVDockerESP-IDFRaspberry PiArduino

41 terms on file

3D Printing
Arduino
Bash
Blender
C
C++
COMSOL
CoppeliaSim
Decoupler Design
Docker
ESP-IDF
ESP32
Gazebo
Git
Intel RealSense
Kinematics & Dynamics
KVM GPU Pass-Through Without Virtualization
Local LLM Hosting
LQR Control
Machine Learning
MATLAB
MeshLab
MuJoCo
NumPy
NVIDIA Jetson
Observer Design
OpenCV
PID Control
Pole Placement
PostgreSQL
Python / Cython
Raspberry Pi
ROS2
RPLIDAR
Self-Hosting Local Servers
Simulink
SolidWorks
Stonefish
System Modeling
TensorFlow
Web Development

§ 06

Awards

CSWA SolidWorks Certification
Perfect score in the modeling and assembly category.
District-Level Toastmasters Humorous Speech Contest
1st place.
District-Level Toastmasters Speech Evaluation Contest
2nd place.