About me

Hello! I am Mahathi, a inquisitive researcher, passionate violinist, and jack of a few more trades. I am currently working as a Deputy Manager of Avionics Systems at ZMotion Autonomous Systems Bengaluru, leading development of autonomous navigation, computer vision, gimbal systems, and autopilots for various types of drones. Before this, I was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Bundeswehr University Munich. My research interests included optimal path planning, robust and adaptive control, safety algorithms using reachability analysis, and MPC. I completed my MTech and Ph.D. in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. My doctoral thesis primarily focussed on control of unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous vision-based navigation and landing, rigid-body attitude control, robust and adaptive control. I have immensely enjoyed working with my thesis supervisors Dr. Soumya Ranjan Sahoo and Dr. Mangal Kothari. I have also worked with Dr. Abhishek on topics such as helicopter control, design and control of novel VTOL UAVs, vision-based localization and landing, cooperative control and swarming. Previously, I have also worked on electronics and instrumentation projects during my undergraduate studies in SJCE, Mysore.

When I am not doing research, I play basketball or keep myself busy with Indian classical music. When I am on vacation, I mostly like to eat south Indian food, have my favourite filter coffee, and go on motorcycle rides. I am a diehard Michael Jordan fan. I have been formally learning carnatic classical music for about 20 years now. Currently, I am under the tutelage of vidwan Kumaresh Rajagopalan, a.k.a. the Fiddling Monk for violin and vidwan Somashekar Jois for konnakkol.