Over the past year, my final year project became much more than a graduation requirement. I wanted to work on something that brought hardware and software together, and it introduced me to a completely different side of engineering.
While looking for ideas, I came across a statistic: India sees more than 23,000 new amputation cases every year. That got me interested in prosthetics and eventually led us to build an automated bionic hand.
Existing prosthetic systems often rely on EMG signals and specialized sensing hardware. We wanted to explore a simpler approach by building a voice-actuated bionic hand that could respond to spoken commands.
What started as a simple idea quickly turned into months of testing, failed prototypes, research writing, and learning far beyond the classroom.
From designing the mechanical structure to working with electronics, voice interaction, and machine learning, this project showed me how many different disciplines come together to create something functional.
One of the most exciting parts was working on gesture prediction using ML. We trained models on over 1,000 command samples, allowing the system to understand natural language commands. Watching the hand respond to our model's predictions was one of those moments that reminded me why I love building things.
Over time, the project opened doors to opportunities I never expected when I first started working on it:
β’ 3 international conference presentations
β’ 2 journal publications
β’ Research presentations across institutions
β’ Experience across different lab environments
I've always enjoyed fast-paced environments like competitions, hackathons, and building products. But this experience showed me a different side of building.
Research taught me patience.
It taught me that not every problem has a quick solution. Sometimes progress comes from testing an idea, seeing it fail, figuring out why, and trying again.
A huge thank you to my professors for their support throughout this journey, and to my teammates who were there through every presentation, deadline, and debugging session. :)
And just like that, with my thesis finally in hand, my undergrad comes to a close. Onto the next chapter π