Patriot Profile: Dinesh Karri

Colleen Rich — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 15:02:32 +0000

Patriot Profile: Dinesh Karri Colleen Rich Mon, 04/24/2023 - 11:02

Mason PhD student Dinesh Karri has been working with the student teams competing in the annual Defend the Republic LTA robotics competition, held this year at EagleBank Arena. Photo by DeRon Rockingham/Creative Services

Dinesh Karri
Year: PhD Student
Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering, Controls and Robotics
Hometown: Hyderabad, India

Many people dream of flying through the sky in a Quidditch game straight out of the world of Harry Potter. While Mason PhD student Dinesh Karri, MS Electrical Engineering ’19, isn’t personally reaching new heights in a Quidditch match, his team’s technology is.

It’s a…Shark Blimp: A lighter-than-air (LTA) robotic shark blimp, to be exact. Three years ago, Karri started working with his academic advisor, Mason engineering professor Cameron Nowzari, on an LTA project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The goal is to develop a minimally viable swarm of robots that can safely maneuver and achieve their mission in a unique environment. ONR supports this project at universities across the country, and teams all meet up at the biannual Defend the Republic game to test their new technology, learn from each other, and compete in a Quidditch-like tournament. “It’s a great chance to see what other people came up with. It’s always different than what your team thought of,” said Karri.

Back to Basics: To create minimally viable robots, Karri says it’s best to keep it simple and stick to the basics. “At one of the Defend the Republic matches, I learned about how a team uses basic timers in a clever way to achieve the objective. It was so interesting,” said Karri. It may seem counterintuitive to have dumb robots, but in the case of Karri and his LTA shark blimp team, the simpler, the better.

The Best Advice? Fail Fast: Nowzari gave Karri some of the best advice that he employs both inside and outside the research lab. “Learn first, test fast, fail fast, and get better,” says Karri. “I’m not sure if he meant it to be such impactful advice, but for me, it is.” In research, things rarely go as planned the first time around. But if you keep waiting for everything to be perfect, or you’re afraid to even try, you won’t be able to learn. “You can’t know what’s wrong until you test your work,” Karri said. Even if a test fails, he believes he is still that much closer to the solution.

Doing His Homework: Karri came to the United States from India in 2017 to attend graduate school. He said he applied to Mason because it offered robotics and was in the Washington, D.C., area., but his research did not stop there. “I reached out to a lot of alumni to get information on the educational prospects, and I got a very positive response, which pushed me toward choosing Mason.”

The Quality of the Question: Karri admits that his PhD has been a rollercoaster ride, and sometimes the lows outweigh the highs. However, through it all, his mentors have taught him that even when the ride seems to be going off track, you’re still learning. “You’re always learning how to ask quality questions and find new ways to answer them,” he said. “When I started my research, my professors let me ask some dumb questions, but they never saw them that way. They always gave me a chance to learn.”

Try Anything…Once: Karri thinks everyone should take the opportunity to try new things, and with the large number of student organizations available at Mason, he’s found a few of his hobbies by simply saying yes. Dancing, ping-pong, chess, and cricket are a few of his passions. “Try new things and stick with what you like,” he said.

Watch to learn more about how Dinesh Karri and the Mason team did at the Defend the Republic Game hosted this year by Mason.

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Mason Engineering students and faculty compete at 99 Luftballoons competition

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 17:02:30 +0000

Mason Engineering students and faculty compete at 99 Luftballoons competition Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/08/2021 - 12:02

Left to right: Dinesh Karri, Robert Hooks, and Joseph Matthew Prince getting ready to compete at the Luftballoons competition at Indiana University.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a Lighter-Than-Air (LTA) robotic shark blimp, which is what a team of ��ӽ紫ý students and faculty used to participate in the 99++ Luftballoons Competition at Indiana University on November 9 through 13.

The competition took place at the Indiana University Bloomington campus where people from Mason, the University of California Los Angeles, Indiana University at Bloomington, Pennsylvania State University, the Office of Naval Research, the Naval Surface Warfare Center – Crane Division, and the Army Research Laboratory competed in an aerial soccer match using remote-controlled LTA robots.

“LTA robots don’t need any support to hold them in the air. Helicopters need propellers, but all LTA robots can stay in the air on their own. Instead, they need controls to move them about in the air,” says Mason graduate student and competition teammate Joseph Prince Mathew.

Each team had defenders and seekers to protect their goal and score points against the other team. “It got pretty competitive,” says Dinesh Karri, another team member. “But it was so much fun.”

Every team played each other, and the teams with the most points faced off at the end of the five-day event. “Unfortunately, we lost, but we had the most points overall throughout the week,” says Mathew.

Mathew and Karri were working with Assistant Professor Feitian Zhang to develop an underwater glider as part of their PhD studies when they found out about the opportunity to bring their skills to the air. “It was a change of medium, from underwater to air. The dynamics are pretty similar,” says Mathew.

Robert Hooks, a junior undergraduate electrical engineering major, jumped on the project because of his interest in robotics and autonomous systems. “When I heard about it from one of my professors, I was very intrigued. It was a valuable and fun experience to learn hands-on,” says Hooks.

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