Akarsh Kumar

Basketball-RL

Developed a custom differentiable 2-D basketball reinforcement learning environment. End-to-end trained RNN agent to maximize reward.

NBA-3D

• Reconstructed NBA players as 3D stick figures given multiple RGB videos of the scene.

• Estimated camera pose using a differentiable renderer matching synthetic views and real views of the court.

• Won best project Image Processing class.

• visual presentation

Audio Source Separation with GANs

• Developed a U-Net CNN as a GAN to distinguish noisy and noiseless spectrograms.

• Used GAN as a loss function for spectrogram segmentation network.

• blog

Reimplementing Neuroevolution of Augmenting Topologies

• Implemented NEAT (I was inspired this video).

• Defined fitness of a neural controller in custom FlappyBird and CartPole environments.

• code (from scratch in Java)

Reimplementing AlphaZero

• Implemented AlphaZero in PyTorch for Connect4.

Implementing Dense NN for MNIST

Developed a dense neural network to classify MNIST dataset. Reached 97% accuracy on the test set. Developed a visualization of the neural network activations, weights, and classification (left image). code (from scratch in Java)

BetterKey

• Developed a Genetic Algorithm to optimize keyboard layouts to reduce probability of typos.

• Fitness defined as the (negative) number of pairs of words in English that are orthographic neighbours and physical neighbours on the keyboard.

• code (from scratch in Java)

• blog

Computer Algebra System and Graphing Calculator

Developed a computer algebra system to parse mathematical text into a logic tree. Manipulated expressions to simplify, compute, and calculate derivatives. Developed a graphing calculator to render 1-D functions. Utilized multi-threading to acheive mouse dragging, zooming, and markable points. code (from scratch in Java)

BEVO

• Used speech-to-text and CV object detection models to assist blind people in finding everyday objects.

• blog

Code-Viz

• Parsed and visualized a Python codebase in a directed graph of class/method dependencies.

Strategic Anomalies

Revived the popular strategy board game Tactics Area Online. Implemented multiple unique characters with unique abilities, on-hit effects, and long-lasting effects. Utilized multithreading, file IO, Java Swing, server-client paradigm. code (from scratch in Java)

Computer Programming 3 and Graphics Programming

Computer Programming 3

• Maze Solving with A* and Dijkstra's Algorithm

• Hashtable, self-balancing binary search trees, etc.

• Multithreading.

• Won first place in class for minimizing city building cost in multi-agent simulation.

• code

• hashtables.pdf maze.pdf pathfinding.pdf binarysearchtree.pdf citysimulator.pdf

Graphics Programming

• Image transformations

• Convolutional kernels (Gaussian, Sobel, etc.), edge/corner detection.

• Panoramas, panorama stitching, and panorama blending.

• Seam carving for image size reduction and expansion.

• Custom QR code (“akarz”) encoding and decoding.

• code

• compression.pdf kernels.pdf panorama.pdf seamcarving.pdf transforms.pdf

Free Geek Volunteering

Developed software for tracking volunteers’ hours for a nonprofit company (used in production for 3 years) Allowed admin access and export of statistics and reports. code (from scratch in Java)

Valentine's MatchMaker

Developed a Valentine's day match maker program to match people based similarity of quessionaries. Used at scale for students in Fayetteville High School. Algorithm was based on a fair model where most unique candidates had priority. code (from scratch in Java)

Chess

Developed a chess program and a basic minimax AI. code (from scratch in Java)

Physics Simulation

• Developed a rigid body physics simulation to test theories on magnet behavior.

OpenGL

• Developed a C++ library on top of OpenGL to mimic the capabilities of Java Swing.

• Supported windowing, rendering custom shapes, images, and hierarchical pane layouts (like gridlayout).

• code (from scratch in C)

Chat Service

• Developed client-server paradigm chat platform capable of sending texts, images, and files in iMessage style GUI.

• Won best project in Software Design II class.

Embedded Systems First Person Shooter

• Developed a first person shooter for an embedded system inspired by Call of Duty Zombies: Kino der Toten.

• Move, aim, and shoot the zombies as they spawn in rounds.

• Zombies drop ammunition when killed, and you need to go pickup the ammunition to shoot.

• Originally used ray tracing for rendering, but this was too slow for the embedded system.

• Opted for a simpler but faster rasterization method.

• Won best project in Embedded Systems class.

• code (from scratch in C)

iOS Apps

• I made an instagram clone, twitter client, movie browser, and a tip calculator.

• code (Swift): twitter instagram tip