​​​​Avani Gupta​

Motivation

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It all began when I had a glance on a book series in library : “Tell me why?” and “Tell me how?” in class seventh. I was
fascinated reading stuff about evolution, emerging technologies, Artificial Intelligence etc. From my childhood I was
curious to know how children learn, how humans evolved, how our brain was developed and how it functions: the
mechanisms behind it. My aim in life was clear : “Solving real life problems for the benefit of people”. I wanted to
make something which could replicate human brain. The idea of mimicking the brain always fascinated me. Now seeing
reinforcement learning and AI is like a dream come true. Though we in 2019 are far away from making an exact replica
of human brain in terms of functionality and adaptability, we have started heading towards it. I was fascinated to see
Sophia talk and answer questions posed by us during Techfest in IIT Bombay. I studied how it was made, the way it talks
the database it uses, algorithms and methods behind it. It shows we need to go a long way to make human like robots. 
Concept of Agents learning from rewards and punishment was enough to motivate me to dive straight into this world of
agents. I started with Andrew NG’s course on Machine Learning in Coursera. Then I did Machine learning a-z : hands on
python and R which helped me learn and develop various models. After this my interest and confidence in the field grew
tremendously which instilled in me the drive to learn more.

I want to pursue my career in applied research and am truly passionate about it. I was fascinated while using
Reinforcement learning to make Autonomous car : seeing my agent play in the environment was awesome . I developed
AI playing games like Doom and Breakout, made Chatbot using deep learning and Natural Language Processing. I
Have also worked on object detection and image processing. Made fake currency detection system, driver’s drowsiness
detection , drinking liquids purity detector in first year of engineering.

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Today, I strongly believe in advancements in Robots and technology as whole. Robots can be sent to places where humans can't go, carry on discoveries and research work in difficult to reach and sustain terrains like under-waters, under-grounds and Space. We humans are limited by Physical capabilities but Robots won't be since we can design them to sustain extreme temperatures and Humidity and can give them desired shape, size to carry out certain specific tasks. Thus robots can supplement us and act as exceptional sources to carry out research work, rescue options and other important tasks.

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