Kavan Mehrizi

Hi there!

I’m Kavan and I’m a recent graduate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from the University of California, Berkeley. I’m currently working full time at American Express as a Data Analyst. I’ve also worked as a Machine Learning Intern at Amazon-UCLA under Prof. Abeer Alwan of the Samueli Electrical and Computer Engineering Department & Amazon-UCLA Science Hub for Humanity and Artificial Intelligence in speech processing. My current interests lie in the ability to use automation to build an increasingly innovative way of life, especially in the role that artificial intelligence can play.

My current interests include human-computer interaction, data science, robotics, and management. When not studying, I love being outside by either photographing, hiking, picnicking, cycling, skiing, or just enjoying nature.

papers

arXiv

Quadrupedal Robotic Guide Dog with Vocal Human-Robot Interaction

Kavan Mehrizi

2021

Abs arXiv PDF

Guide dogs play a critical role in the lives of many, however training them is a time- and labor-intensive process. We are developing a method to allow an autonomous robot to physically guide humans using direct human-robot communication. The proposed algorithm will be deployed on a Unitree A1 quadrupedal robot and will autonomously navigate the person to their destination while communicating with the person using a speech interface compatible with the robot. This speech interface utilizes cloud based services such as Amazon Polly and Google Cloud to serve as the text-to-speech and speech-to-text engines.