Piyush Kumar

Life is an optimization problem, and the constraints change over time. What constraints you can keep constant throughout? Well I think it can be peace of mind. Some wise people also call it happiness. So no matter what happens in one's life, one should always be happy. One fun way of saying this is: Dot product of any outcome and your happiness should be 0. Check my blogs to see more of my thoughts on different aspects of life.

Hey, welcome to my page. Nice to e-meet you! :)

I'm a graduate from IIT Kanpur (IITK) with a BTech in Electrical Engineering and minors in Computer Systems and Theory of Computing. I worked at American Express as a Software Development Engineer for 2 years. I also got an admit in MRSD program at CMU starting Fall'25. But I didn't join CMU, and chose to build iCurious AI instead. We then pivoted to build Protago AI. Both of these are now closed leaving behind tons of learnings.

I'm passionate about Robotics, Computer Vision, AI, Software Development and learning about life in general. During my undergrad, I was an active member of Aerial Robotics IITK, working on various robotics projects and competitions.

To be honest, many things interest me that I haven't explored enough which include, but not limited to, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Cognitive Science, Genetics, Philosophy, Art, Psychology, History and Economics which I explore through reading books in my leisure.

My core belief

"Every single person deserves respect and love."
🚀 Explore My Work 📧 Get In Touch

🚀 Startups

Protago AI

Co-Founder & CEO AI Startup Apr 2026 - Jun 2026

Co-Founder & CEO at Protago AI. Created personalized storybooks for kids, making them the heroes of their own stories with their images and names woven into the narrative.

Protago AI Instagram

iCurious AI

Co-Founder AI Startup Oct 2025 - Mar 2026

Co-Founder (Tech & Product) at iCurious AI. Built physical AI companions for kids to solve the problem of high passive screen time.

📚 Publications

Trajectory-Constrained Standoff Target Tracking using Barrier Lyapunov Functions

Co-first Author Presented in Orlando, Florida AIAA SciTech 2024

Research paper presented at the 2024 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech Forum and Exposition.

📄 Read Paper 🏛️ Conference Details 📸 Photos & Experience

🏆 Awards & Recognition

I've been a believer of the fact that talent is cheaper than table salt, it is the effort that matters.

🏆 View Awards & Recognition

🔬 Research Experience

Undergraduate Researcher

IIT Kanpur July 2022 - May 2023

Advisor: Prof. Twinkle Tripathy, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur

Worked on designing a control law for an agent having unicycle kinematics using a potential function based on a Barrier Lyapunov Function (BLF) to autonomously stabilize it upon a circular trajectory while avoiding a restricted inner circular region.

RL Research Intern

CIO, Mexico May 2021 - July 2021 Remote

Mentor: Prof. Gerardo Flores

Learnt Fundamentals of RL. Conducted Literature Reviews. Explored Hybrid Reinforcement Learning Control for a micro quadrotor flight. Implemented RL-based controller for warehouse robot. Explored DDPG algorithms for bipedal walking robots

🔬 Research Explorations

My thoughts on research papers that I explore. More for the purpose of tracking my learnings.

🔍 Check Here

💼 Professional Experience

Software Development Engineer

American Express Bangalore, India July 2023 - Sep 2025

Working in the Payment Tokenisation team at American Express, developing and maintaining the lifecycle of tokens generated from customer card numbers.

Technology Intern

American Express May 2022 - July 2022 Pre-placement Offer

Worked on migration of applications from private to public cloud based on confidentiality and risk.

🛠️ Projects & Competitions

UAV Guided UGV Navigation

DRDO's UAV Guided UGV Navigation Challenge

10th Inter IIT Tech Meet IIT Kharagpur 🥉 Bronze Medal

Worked on a problem of UAV guided UGV navigation in hilly terrain. Won Bronze Medal in this event.

💻 Code 📚 Documentation
Vision Based Obstacle Avoidance

DRDO's DGRE Vision Based Obstacle Avoidance Drone Challenge

9th Inter IIT Tech Meet IIT Guwahati 🥉 Bronze Medal

Worked on a problem of Vision based obstacle avoidance using UAV. Won Bronze Medal in this event.

💻 Code 📚 Documentation 📊 Presentation
IARC Ship Drone

International Aerial Robotics Competition

Mission 9 Simulation Challenge Aerial Robotics IITK 🥉 Top 12 Worldwide

Worked on International Aerial Robotics Competition, Mission 9 simulation challenge as part of the team Aerial Robotics IITK. Ranked in Top 12 teams worldwide.

💻 Code 🎥 Preview Video 🏛️ Competition Details
Autonomous Driving

Autonomous Driving

CS637A Course Project Rule-based Control

Implemented the research paper Rule-based Optimal Control for Autonomous Driving as part of the CS637A course.

💻 Code
SDF Planning Library

SDF Planning Library

Aerial Robotics IITK Path Planning

Explored autonomous navigation and path planning based on generation of Truncated and Euclidean Signed Distance Fields from depth pointclouds using Voxblox.

💻 Code 📚 Documentation
Map Generation

Map Generation

Aerial Robotics IITK OpenCV

Developed a software to generate a 2D map of an area using OpenCV in simulation.

💻 Code
Blog Generator using Llama 2

Blog Generator using Llama 2

NLP Llama 2

Built a Blog Generator app using Llama 2 chat model.

💻 Code

Twitter Name Changer Bot

Automation Twitter API

Built a Twitter bot capable of updating my profile name based on my number of followers. Used Heroku for Deployment.

💻 Code

✍️ Blogs

I sometimes write too!

📚 View All Blogs

📧 Get In Touch

I'm always open to discussing new opportunities, collaborations, or just having a chat about life in general!

📧 Email (Preferred)

piyushk.kpiyush25@gmail.com

👥 Social Media