Project partners finally gathered for the 2nd edition of DroneDays 2021 that took place in Biograd na Moru, Croatia . The aerial robotics workshop was held on the 4th and 5th of October, organized by LARICS team . Each partner participated by giving lectures and presenting their work through tutorials and hands-on implementing project activities. Expert lectures were given by: Prof. Mirko Kovac (ICL) on Multi-modal Aerial Robotics for Environmental Sensing and Construction Prof. José Ramiro Martines de Dios (USE)  on Heterogenous Aerial Robot Cooperation for Inspection and Maintenance Tutorials and hands-on were given by: Silvia de los Santos (CTA) on Technology Transfer Actions and Key aspects for the creation of a successful spin-off André Farinha, Constança Rosas and Mirko Kovac (ICL) on The intricacies of looking underwater with a drone – A dual agent system for aerial and underwater operations Ashutosh Choubey (ICL) on   Commercialisation of university based R&D projects Julio L. Paneque and  Raúl Tapia (USE) on Heterogeneous Robot Cooperation The event was successful with 90 registered participants, 16 lectures, 6 demonstration flights, and 200 visitors of the exhibition area where 7 companies presented their products and services.  Photos of the event are available in the gallery of the DroneDays official website .

On Friday, 1 October 2021 , a group of eight upper-grade students from the Elementary School Eugen Kvaternik in Velika Gorica visited the LARICS lab accompanied by their informatics teacher Dalija Kager. The students had the opportunity to see LARICS’ labs, 3D printers in action, and various robotic equipment such as the Schunk robotic arm currently used for installing power line separators in the AERIAL-CORE project . The main reason for their visit, however, was to learn about how we can measure the well-being of plants and use that information to model our surroundings – a goal we are actively pursuing as a part of the WATCHPLANT project . The students learned about various types of sensors we use for that purpose and got to observe the changes in measured values in real time as they interacted with the plants. They also helped us to water the plants properly using a soil humidity sensor. The children and even their teacher had a lot of interesting questions about the project and our lab, and they were excited to share their own experience with microcontrollers and programming with us. Check out some photos from the visit in the Gallery .

Since LARICS team is constantly growing, so is the need for more space. Last weeek, the construction of a new facililty was finalized. The new offices are now detached to the testing ground. Wishing the LARICS team a lot of experiments and reserach results!