Formula SAE — Team Member
Designed and fabricated safety hardware mounts, the seat, and the firewall for the car. Radiator testing supported a 30% reduction in radiator size.
Shival Shah
Mechanical Engineering @ Boston University
Passionate about building elegant solutions to widespread problems, and mechanical engineering provides a broad toolkit to do so. I'm a student based in the SF Bay Area, attending university in Boston, and I'm interested in robotics, hardware design, and space.
In my free time, I play competitive tennis, read, and explore the city with friends.
Projects
Waterproof Flashlight — Solo Project
A machined flashlight designed from scratch. Features include waterproofing, one handed brightness control via a Hall effect sensor, tactile detents, knurled touch points, and custom PCBs.
aiCAD — Solo Project
In development. A browser based CAD platform that generates editable 3D models from natural language, with conversational editing, linked engineering drawings, assembly motion, and analysis.
Open aiCAD Autonomous Catching Robot — Solo Project
In development. A robotic bin designed to intercept thrown tennis balls using stereo phone cameras, trajectory prediction, and three omni wheels. Software and calibration-rig testing inform a hybrid sheet-metal and printed mechanical design.
Undergraduate Researcher
Human-to-Everything Lab
A semi autonomous vehicle that provides independent mobility for visually impaired users. Uses a Jetson Orin Nano with OAK-D depth cameras to handle steering/braking while the user pedals.
Authoring a paper on learned routing for autonomous navigation; complex scenes use a cloud model, routine ones a fast local model, balancing accuracy against inference cost in real time.
Smart Window — Team Lead
An automated window that monitors temperature and air quality on both sides and opens or closes itself to ventilate with outdoor air instead of running AC.
Tennis Ball Pickup/Feeder — Tennis Captain
A dual function ball machine that collects tennis balls from the court and feeds them for practice, combining two separate commercial products into one unit at a quarter of the cost.
Samsung Solve for Tomorrow — Team Lead
A two stage soil erosion detection system combining drone based aerial imaging with ground rover verification. Reached top 1% of 30,000 teams in Samsung's competition, winning a $5,000 grant.
Point to Point Communication — Team Lead
A directional infrared communication system with a rotating transmitter and stationary receiver, designed for environments where RF signals are undesirable. Constrained to 15mW transmit power.
Air Hockey Table — Solo Project
Full-size air hockey table with a shop vac plenum chamber and custom playing surface, built in about two months using almost entirely salvaged materials.