Events Calendar

AI Seminar

Speaker: Naira Hovakimyan, Professor, University Illinois Urbana Champagne

Talk Title: Aerial Co-robots of Future: How Far We Are?

Abstract: The presentation will give a historical overview of flight control technology from its inception till its maturation. Parallel developments in aerial robotics will be reviewed from the perspective of aerospace industry standards, prioritizing safety, resilience and reliability of operations. Special focus will be placed on cooperative control of UAVs for various mission scenarios in military operations. Flight tests of a subscale commercial jet at NASA and Learjet at Edwards Air Force base will be used to demonstrate the efficiency of the methods developed over the past ten years. Lessons learned will be summarized, and the opportunities in public safety, elderly care, package delivery, precision farming and digital agriculture will be discussed.


Biography: Bio of Naira Hovakimyan
Naira Hovakimyan graduated with MS degree in Theoretical Mechanics and Applied Mathematics in 1988 from Yerevan State University in Armenia. She got her Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics in 1992, in Moscow, from the Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences, majoring in optimal control and differential games. Before joining the faculty of UIUC in 2008, she has spent time as a research scientist at Stuttgart University in Germany, at INRIA in France, at Georgia Institute of Technology, and she was on faculty of Aerospace and Ocean engineering of Virginia Tech during 2003-2008. She is currently W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. In 2015 she was named as inaugural director for Intelligent Robotics Lab of CSL at UIUC. She has co-authored a book and more than 300 refereed publications. She is the recipient of the SICE International scholarship for the best paper of a young investigator in the VII ISDG Symposium (Japan, 1996), the 2011 recipient of AIAA Mechanics and Control of Flight award and the 2015 recipient of SWE Achievement Award. In 2014 she was awarded the Humboldt prize for her lifetime achievements and was recognized as Hans Fischer senior fellow of Technical University of Munich. In 2015 she was recognized by UIUC Engineering Council award for Excellence in Advising. She is an associate fellow and life member of AIAA, a Senior Member of IEEE, and a member of SIAM, AMS, SWE, ASME and ISDG. Naira is co-founder of IntelinAir, Inc., a company that commercializes data-drones for delivering actionable information from aerial imagery for various industries. Her work in robotics for elderly care was featured in the New York Times. Her research interests are in the theory of robust adaptive control and estimation, control in the presence of limited information, networks of autonomous systems, game theory and applications of those in safety-critical systems of aerospace, mechanical, electrical, petroleum and biomedical engineering.


Host: Aram Galstyan

More Info: TBA

Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - 11th floor large conference room

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kary LAU

Event Link: TBA