Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry

This summer experience for me, is an opportunity to participate in research that has the potential to make a difference in all our lives. The RoboTutor, for example, would facilitate quality primary education for children in less developed and underserved educational setups. I hope to learn the art of focused research, and develop strong connections within my cohort. The Robotics Institute for Summer Scholars program has been a transformational journey for me, since I have met some of the most wonderful undergraduate researchers from around the world, accomplished professors and witnessed cutting-edge research. From pursuing research, learning how to present it, engaging in educational outreach, industry visits, to workshops on drones & humanoid robots, and discovering the beautiful city of Pittsburgh, this summer experience is unique, simply because it nurtures all-round development. I believe that the best part about Carnegie Mellon University is the freedom to think big.

In India, through the Right to Education Act and mid-day meal scheme, we have long strived to make quality primary education accessible to all children. The RoboTutor would an elegant step in our pursuit of quality, accessible and standardized education across the country. Presently the RoboTutor is being developed for children in Tanzania who use Swahili as their mode of instruction. Its design and architecture could potentially be expanded for children in India speaking Hindi or other regional languages.

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to FICCI for making this summer experience possible for me. I believe that the FICCI’s support is integral to encouraging Indian students pursue pioneering robotics research.

Through this summer experience, I intend to develop my research capabilities by solving a difficult problem in a short time period. Working with researchers and students at the Robotics Institute (RI) will expose me to numerous techniques and approaches in Computer Science and Robotics research and I hope to develop my own style towards solving and posing relevant research questions. A research experience at Carnegie Mellon is unparalleled in today’s day and age as it is one of the few universities in the world with separate departments for various areas of research within the School of Computer Science. The Robotics Institute Summer Scholars (RISS) program is a unique summer program as it is hosted by RI, an institute entirely dedicated to robotics with exceptional facilities and faculty. Being part of the RISS cohort, I will get to know some of the best student researchers in the world and also learn about different countries and cultures by interacting with them. The overall RISS experience will help me forge strong connections, uniquely develop my personality, and enhance my research capacity.

The problem of multi-agent path and motion planning in uncertain scenarios has many applications in industries, the military, and homes. The broader problem of ‘planning’ has countless applications in autonomous navigation (in self-driving cars, unmanned vehicles, service robots), automation, and robotic surgery. Sequential decision making under uncertainty is an important task in all the aforementioned technical domains, and also in the fields of economics and behavioral science. The are a lot of companies and start-ups in India that use these ideas, and also universities involved in similar research. Currently, developing self-driving cars in India is extremely challenging due to the country’s large population and underdeveloped roads. Furthering this work will require immense expertise in the domain of path-planning and navigation and my work at Carnegie Mellon is a stepping stone to achieving this.

I thank FICCI for supporting me during this intense summer research program. This initiative will encourage more students from India to apply to such programs, enabling them to become excellent researchers in industry and academia.

Apart from finishing my project successfully, I hope to delve more into the field of Human-computer Interaction, a field that has interested me throughout my college life and hope to pursue further in my graduate studies. Additionally, RoboTutor gives me a great opportunity to contribute to a social cause (technology for social good), and I hope to get more experience in this area. I hope to connect with my cohorts and other professors in RI, share my ideas and learn more about their experiences.

Carnegie Mellon and RI have been extremely generous and open in allowing people from around the world to work with them and gain research experience, something that few top institutions provide. CMU Robotics Institute is the largest and the most prestigious robotics facility in the world. The opportunity to work here, interact with 34 of the best undergraduate Robotics researchers in the world (my cohort mates), and meeting some of the pioneers in the field (through the workshops and lunches) is an extremely humbling experience, something I would not have been able to get elsewhere. Lot of credit goes to the entire administration team of RISS for creating such a holistic research program which is above and beyond any other undergraduate research experience in the world.

India faces an acute shortage of schools and teachers in developing states, and many of the states that do have access to education, lack in quality, so much so that many kids drop out. Through the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, children between the age of 6 and 14 years should get access to free and quality education. RoboTutor, through its completely automated interface, eliminates the need for teachers. It has carefully designed activities to maximise learning gains over periods of time. This is a massive step in the right direction, and something we can and should definitely use in India.

I am extremely thankful to FICCI for funding this opportunity for me to work at CMU RI. I believe they are doing a really great job in helping students like me get exposure to such amazing research environments and take a massive step in our careers. This is very beneficial for Indian students to pursue research in the future.

I hope to learn about Intelligent Transportation Systems at CMU which has been at the forefront of this field for decades. RISS provides me the unique opportunity to be a part of cutting-edge research with experienced and prominent researchers at CMU. I also plan on learning a lot about robotics in general. The program would allow me to venture deep into this field as it gives me exposure to learn new things from top professionals in the industry through workshops.

My project is related to the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems. The project aims at improving the feedback of the current transport signal system in place. If such smart infrastructures were to be placed in India that would definitely improve the urban mobility thereby increasing the productivity of the citizens. Traffic jams are considered to be part of the daily commute in major metropolitan cities in India but the ability to predict the congestion levels at an intersection using smart sensor data would provide useful feedback to smart traffic signals to make informed decisions thereby avoiding the traffic jams. This reduced travel time also would contribute to the fewer harmful emissions improving the air quality which is of extreme importance in cities like Delhi.

I would like to thank FICCI for supporting my internship at CMU RI as part of the RISS program. RISS is a golden opportunity for students across the globe who want to work in the domain of Robotics. This scholarship would encourage more Indian students to get to know about current state of the art technologies in Robotics and would help them apply the same back in India.

This summer program is a great opportunity for me to work on the state-of-the-art in computer vision as a whole and object detection in particular. In human-robot interaction, robots often face the problem of occlusion – the robot trying to track an object held by a human. The motion of the human hand often partially and sometime completely occludes the object. In order to track the object successfully in such scenarios, being robust to occlusion is of critical importance. This project should be a big boost to the practical usefulness of tracking algorithms. The RISS Program is a life changing experience for me. The opportunity for international students to work with the pioneers in the field is unheard of elsewhere. With mentors like Dr. Martial Hebert who has been innovating in the field for so many years now, RISS is one of a kind. It is a truly humbling and delightful experience. I wish to come back to Carnegie Mellon for further studies and I am sure this summer would help me a lot in getting into any such programs.

Object Detection and Tracking can be applied to a lot of other higher order tasks. Apart from Human-Robot interaction, Object Tracking is the backbone of many practical services for e.g. Crowd Behaviour Analysis, Traffic Control and Redirection etc. It can be even used in the military for military surveillance by the intelligence, and in war crafts for target locking systems among others. The scope is unbounded and innovative people can think of ways to use it in areas not thought possible before.

I would like to thank the whole RISS program committee for such an opportunity, bring the best undergraduate minds in the field from across the world under one roof. I would also like to thank FICCI for the support they are providing to make this summer experience possible for me. Opportunities like this are a big motivator for the students and FICCI should continue their support in the years to come.