Prof. Hovakimyan recieved her Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics in 1992 from the Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, majoring in optimal control and differential games.

Prof. Hovakimyan is currently a W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. In 2014 she was awarded the Humboldt prize for her lifetime achievements. In 2015 she was awarded the UIUC Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising. Prof. Hovakimyan is Fellow and life member of AIAA, a Fellow of IEEE, and a member of SIAM, AMS, SWE, ASME and ISDG. She is cofounder and chief scientist of IntelinAir.

This presentation discusses the key challenges of the 21 st century and puts forward the right perspective for development of aerial co-robots of the future by emphasizing safety, intelligence and certification. Each of these three pillars hinges on fundamental theoretical

developments for support. Challenges with flight control, cyber-resilience, cooperative path planning, intelligent control, and certification are discussed, and fundamental limitations of feedback loops are revisited for development of safe intelligent control. The new metrics for certification, important in the era of the fourth industrial revolution and requiring new paradigms for certification, are presented. Applications in elderly care, scalable e-commerce, and precision agriculture are discussed.