The event has started
Ignited Minds Expo is an annual Robotics and technology event featuring many ideas, demonstrations, coding sessions, lightning talks, exhibits, competitions and anything more you could think of by Science Kidz and Young Engineer’s Club in collaboration. I myself have a keynote talk about Artificial Intelligence, I will share with you it’s experience too.
This year Ignited Minds Expo witnessed 5000+ developers, students and tech enthusiasts!
There was a kind of enthusiasm I could feel in the air as the people were getting ready to showcase their prototypes or present their ideas. For many students this became a starting platform to learn about demonstrating your idea or conveying your idea to people at a large scale.
What the event comprised of?
The event also featured many professionals all across India. The event featured almost all of your wild imaginations; robots playing soccer, golf, bowling; AI models greeting you according to your emotions; drones racing and welcoming you in the hall; a virtual paintball game; AR and VR games and lot more.
The best part according to me was the fact that you don’t just get to see these kind of tech applications but the exhibitors are more than happy to share with you how they made it, what was their motivation behind it and which technology they used, even the source code of the applications. So, you can actually get to know how it was built and explore more for yourself. Moreover there were some wonderful games too. Most of the models (90% + ) were working and realistic models which meant you could see how they could work, a demonstration of it and visualize the condition under which they might be useful.
The event also had some cool science experiments alongside technology related exhibits and you could explore some science too! In the event you could see 10 year olds making a simple but novel robotic model maybe on some easy to use interface like WeDo, but it is quite stunning to see that 10 year olds can think about the problems around them and solve them using technology.
I felt that Science Kidz and Young Engineer’s Club (YEC) are open to latest and quite new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and IoT. The best part about projects made using these technologies is that you can understand these projects even if you are a layman or have never worked with these projects. To get more information all you need to do was ask the exhibitors and they were ready to furnish you with the necessary information. I also observed that most of the exhibitors were ready to make an update, they are open to recommendations too. You can discuss with them the pros and cons of a solution. Most of the exhibitors were students who were well versed in their respective fields. I, myself had an interesting (and quite long 😂) conversation with one of the exhibitors about the alternative solutions we could use.
The team
My Talk about AI
It was a wonderful experience and a joyous one of giving a keynote talk about AI, what I am good at. Addressing so many people at a time, when everyone is focused on you and what you are speaking. I felt quote nervous while delivering the talk. I was constantly scanning faces of people and trying to understand their expressions. After like 20 seconds I stopped doing so as it had made me more nervous and I planned, not to do so. And there I was after some time, I had delivered my talk well and the audience seemed to be receptive to the talk too.
My talk was a keynote talk so I had to make sure that people understood well what I was trying to convey to them. Let me share with you few lines from my first draft of the talk which were then not shortlisted but were very cool according to me-
I have worked for quite a time with AI and feel that there are two kinds of people, one who don’t know AI and say it will destroy humanity and take away jobs and other who know AI and are wondering why their model is classifying a cat as a dog
By Shubham Sah.
My talk
So, I first started with where AI could be used and how it could be used. Then explained the difference between Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning. I then showed some algorithms which could be used to solve some pretty elementary problems to hardcore industry problems. I then explained and showed a live demo about an AI algorithm which could do emotion and face recognization on edge. I had made an Android app to do so and ran the app in front of the audience and showed them how accurate the model was.
When, I was showing this model I had run into a small issue. I was running the app on my mobile device and live streaming via WiFi, it’s screen to the laptop connected to the screen behind me. It just happened that the computer lost the connection to my mobile screen. I was shocked and scared for a second, there was a retry button on the screen. That was my last hope. And guess what, the computer controller, pressed the retry button and it worked! And I continued merrily with my demo. That was a scary event for me! Fortunately enough things worked out.
Another line from my talk which I personally love-
A good reason to learn AI is to chat in AI language. Chat in AI language? Ok what is OMG, not oh my God but oh my gradients. What is BRB? Not be right back but back propagation right back😂
Wonderful feedback!
Key Takeaways
I learnt about presenting projects
Show your projects in a favorable manner
Got some new ideas too
Saw some working models of wonderful ideas
So, I would say overall it was a huge success and I loved my time at the event.