Bauyrzhan Zhakanov

My name is Bauyrzhan Zhakanov, and I am a junior year robotics student at Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. During my tertiary years, I want to get an invaluable experience to be competitive and useful for humanity. In this letter, I would like to express my great attitude why I want to be part of your organization. My research interests are connected with computer vision, robotics, artificial intelligence, control systems, and machine learning. 

As my first choice, I would say that my research interest is machine learning. The reason why I have chosen this starts from the Fall 2018. During sophomore year, I have completed a Machine Learning course taught by Andrew Ng in the popular online learning platform “Coursera”. Having some machine learning background allowed me to take a “Statistical Methods and Machine Learning” course taught by professor Berdakh Abibullaev at Nazarbayev University during Fall 2019. Throughout this course, me and my teammates have done a course project which is called “Driver Distraction Identification”, since we were motivated by Kaggle competitions and other related research papers. In this course project, we have collected our own dataset which considers 7 classes, and recorded drivers via two RGB cameras with dimensions 1920x1080 pixels from the front and side positions. Basically, we have trained two neural networks with ResNet50 model for the front position with a result of 92% accuracy, and the side positions with 80%, and combined both via multimodal approach which has 71% accuracy. I want to enrich my knowledge in the field of machine and deep learning.

My second research interest is Image Processing. The reason why I have selected this lab starts from my personal interests of computer vision techniques. Throughout the summer 2019, I was able to become a research assistant of ALARIS robotics laboratory of Nazarbayev University. During my full-time job as a researcher, I have integrated different approaches of visual odometry codes as Direct-Sparse Odometry, Event-Based VO, and others via ROS (Robot Operating System) using rolling-shutter cameras for mapping the environment. Working at ALARIS research laboratory provided me an opportunity to help graduate students with a data preprocessing of 3D Velodyne LIDAR sensor for machine vision system using C++ Point-Cloud Library and ROS Kinetic. In addition, I am passionate about making instagram filters via open-source platform called Spark AR provided by Facebook, since it seems funny for me. All those experiences enlarged my interest in computer vision fields, and it would be great if I can increase my abilities during summer school program. 

The third choice of my research interest is a robotics itself. The passion and love to robotics begins from cartoons, movies, video games, and also wonderful people that I met at University. Previous Fall 2019 semester, I have completed “Linear Control Theory” and “Mechanical Design” courses where I enlarged my knowledge in the field of control systems. As I mentioned above, I had a great advantage to be part of ALARIS robotics laboratory, where I tested “Gripper” and Jaco robotic arm for the first month. Nowadays, I am currently taking “Robotics 1: Kinematics and Dynamics” and “Electromechanical Systems” courses where we are learning how to use the manipulator and the physics behind it. As I am passionate about innovation, creation, and involving engineering challenges, I am willing to continue my studies and future career in the sphere of robotics and engineering.