Briefing session by Mr. Siddhant Gangapurwala
About Siddhant Gangapurwala
Siddhant graduated from D. J. Sanghvi College of Engineering in 2016 where his primary focus was on Embedded Systems for Robotic applications. He worked on a Semi-Autonomous Quadcopter as a final year project and has continued in the direction of Control Systems and Robotics for his research. After taking a year off to work on a few personal projects including ‘Financial Sector Behavior Prediction’, ‘Autonomous AGV for Industrial Setting’ and ‘Visual Odometry for Mobile Robots’, he moved to Oxford to pursue a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in AI and Robotics.
His current work focuses on developing techniques for ‘Mobile Robot Trajectory Optimization’ mainly for Quadrupeds. His research interests include System Dynamics, Inverse Reinforcement Learning, Signal Processing and Mobile Robotics. Among his long term goals, he aims to set up a venture that addresses issues such as Energy Distribution and Social Instabilities through Data Analysis and Robotics. If not working, he’ll mostly be found either completing an abstract painting, at the gym, indie traveling to a place not much heard of, or attending a seminar on socio-economic topics.
About the session
The Session was conducted in the Library Seminar hall on 20th January 2018. The main topic of discussion was Robotics and its advancements in the modern industries. It was a part of the mentor-ship program by one of our mentors and Alumnus, Mr. Siddhant Gangapurvala. It was conducted via Skype as he is currently based in UK, pursuing his PhD in Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems. He shared his experience so far and gave an insight into Machine Learning, Neural Networks and Data Analytics.
He stressed on the importance of having a good base in Mathematics if one wants to pursue a career in the aforementioned fields. A few interesting questions were raised by the students’ side as well regarding certain topics to which he provided solutions and alternatives. He introduced the basics of Robotics and the prerequisites that would be required. He also encouraged the students to pursue online courses in Mathematics, Data Analytics and Machine Learning from eminent institutions like MIT, University of California as well as websites like Coursera and Udacity. He then went on to talk about the possible problems students may run into and some steps as to how they can overcome those by themselves. While emphasizing on learning new subjects, he gave some tips regarding group studies its benefits. He ended the session by assigning a simple task to the students to go through the various topics and follow up with what they prefer and choose .
