Hiba
Robotics, automation, mechanical. Firm believer in ELYT: everything can be learned from a YouTube tutorial
About
Hi, I’m Hiba, a self-proclaimed tinkineer, second-year mechanical engineering student at JEC Jabalpur. A tinkineer, by my definition, is someone curious enough to ask why something ticks.
I love robotics, automation, reverse engineering, hardware: basically figuring out what happens under the hood.
My idea of a random Sunday plan is unscrewing a hundred screws out of some industrial machine, taking the whole thing apart, staring at its guts just to understand how it works.
Work & experience
- Research Intern, Smart Materials Lab, IIT IndoreClosing automation gaps in instrumental physics research. Automated a temperature-dependent LCR meter setup with PT100-based temperature control and Python data logging.
- Research Assistant, UC San DiegoMy first review paper, written under the mentorship of Prof. Marcelo Caetano. It reviews 24 years of literature from the ISMIR conference, 2000 to 2024.
- Co-Founder, UnfazedCo-founded an e-commerce clothing brand at 16, bootstrapped to $10,000 ARR with no outside funding. My two co-founders and I exited to start a social media marketing agency.
- Human Resources Administrator, DAY FoundationWorked with children and families living in slums, visiting homes and counselling parents and children. It taught me that opportunities only matter when they actually reach the people who need them.
- Quantum Computing Student, The Coding School (Qubit by Qubit)Studied qubits, superposition and quantum algorithms using Python, on a $2,000 scholarship.
Projects
- SCARA colour-sorting robotA 4-DOF SCARA arm that learns with PPO to pick up coloured cubes and drop them in matching bins, deployed on ROS 2.
- Temperature-dependent impedance measurement systemAutomating an LCR meter to sweep impedance across frequency while controlling and logging sample temperature.
- Potentiostat for a vacuum sputter coaterA potentiostat built to replace the broken Pirani gauge on a sputter coater, using a PT100 in a Wheatstone bridge and Keithley ICs for I–V measurement.
- EEG-based mental health monitorReading EEG signals with a BioAmp EXG Pill and streaming them to a live web dashboard.
- EMG-controlled robotic handA robotic hand driven by muscle signals picked up with gel electrodes and a BioAmp EXG Pill.
Currently building
- Autonomous traffic-rule-following robotAn Ackermann-steered vehicle being trained to follow traffic rules and avoid traffic. Currently working through steering geometry, holding and changing lanes in CoppeliaSim, and lane detection from video.
- Text-to-CAD training pipelineTurning text descriptions into CAD models, with a reinforcement learning loop that scores generated geometry against what was asked for.
- Physical build of the SCARA armTaking the trained SCARA sorting policy off the simulator and onto real hardware.
Achievements
- $2,000 scholarship for Qubit by Qubit, a two-semester quantum computing course from The Coding School with IBM (2023)
- Selected for a competitive research mentorship program with UC San Diego (2025)
- 3rd place, RC boat racing, MANIT Bhopal (2025)
- 2nd place, drone soccer, IIIT Jabalpur (2025)
- Top 5, UWA Hack for Impact, India–Australia hackathon (2025)
The Test Bench
A safe space for work in progress: half-built circuits, quick experiments and ideas I’m still poking at. Things here might be messy, broken or abandoned, and that’s the point.