On 15 January 2020, Prof. Stjepan Bogdan and Prof. Nikola Miskovic held an invited lecture called ‘Heterogeneous Mobile Robots Mapping the Present and the Past’ at the Time Machine Croatia Info Day . This event kindly invited the interested public and experts in the field of humanities, culture, science, history, IT and the research sector to learn more about the Time Machine project as well as the Time Machine Organisation. The Time Machine Project is by far the most ambitious and far-reaching project ever undertaken using Big Data of the Past. Revolutionising the way we experience European history and culture, the project is an international collaboration to build a map of European history that spans thousands of years.

On 2 January 2020, Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji list published an article on project Specularia (Structurized Ecological Cultivation with Autonomous Robots in Indoor Agriculture). Project team members Ivana Mikolić, Bruno Marić, Antun Ivanović, Matko Orsag and Marsela Polić explained in a nutshell the objectives of the project and its scientific, technical and implementational aspects. - Robotic systems can help small farms with farmland that is difficult for a family to cultivate. One of agricultural critical issues is lack of workforce, young people interested in ariculture. Robotics is a lifeline for our economy, said Project Coordinator Dr. Matko Orsag. You can read the article (in Croatian) here .

ROBOWEEK activites have been successfully finalized – Sunday (Dec 15, 19)  ROBOBAND concert at KSET; Wednesday (Dec 18, 19) lecture "Real-World Robotics: From Swarms to Entrepreneurship"  held by Prof. Daniel Lofaro (University of George Mason) and Prof. Neil Dantam (Colorado School of Mines); ROBOTIC FOOD COURT and ROBOFUN interactive workshops on Thursday (Dec 19, 19). Supported by the U. S. Embassy Zagreb , these events served to popularize robotics and spread holiday cheer, all for a good cause. The raised donations will be given to the Association for improving the quality of life of poor and neglected children "Mali zmaj" .  Check out photos in the Gallery .

Article on 'Highly-scalable traffic management of autonomous industrial transportation systems' written by Ivica Draganjac, Tamara Petrović, Damjan Miklić, Zdenko Kovačić, and Juraj Oršulić has been published in Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing  journal. In this article, a method for highly-scalable coordination of free-ranging Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) in industrial environments is presented together with experimental results obtained on a system comprising six vehicles and simulation results with up to fifty vehicles. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing  journal is on disseminating the application of research to the development of new or improved industrially-relevant robotics, manufacturing technologies, and innovative manufacturing strategies. Preference is given to papers describing original research that includes both theory and experimental validation. Full article is available online by February 01, 2020 at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736584518303843?dgcid=author  

The H2020 project "Twinning coordination action for spreading excellence in Aerial Robotics - AeRoTwin" and Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems - LARICS invite you to the lecture: "Real-World Robotics: From Swarms to Entrepreneurship" by Daniel Lofaro , George Mason University , which will be held on 18th December 2019 at 12:00 in the Gray Hall of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Zagreb, Croatia. The lecture is organized under the programme Robotics Food Court which is supported by the U. S. Embassy in Croatia . More about the speaker and the talk can be found in the detailed news content or here .

Ivana Mikolić has been nominated as a finalist of the Project Management Awards 2019 for the best young project manager for the organization of the international interdisciplinary field workshop of maritime robotics and applications “Breaking the Surface (BtS)” . This is a unique award for project management in Croatia. The award is given by the Croatian Association for Project Management (full member of the International Project Management Association, IPMA) and IPMA Young Crew Croatia. The winners will be announced at the award ceremony at hotel Esplanade in Zagreb on December 17, 2019. More details at  IPMA Young Crew Croatia .

The new project “AERIAL Cognitive Integrated Multi-task Robotic System with Extended Operation Range and Safety (AERIAL-CORE)” commenced on December 1, 2019 . It is a four-year project funded under HORIZON 2020-ICT , and coordinated by the University of Sevilla (Prof. Anibal Ollero). FER (LARICS) is partaking as a project partner, together with other European partners. The main objective of AERIAL-CORE is the development of core technology modules and an integrated aerial cognitive robotic system that will have unprecedented capabilities on the operational range and safety in the interaction with people, or Aerial Co-Workers (ACW), for applications such as the inspection and maintenance of large infrastructures. The project will integrate aerial robots with different characteristics to meet the requirements of: Long range (several kilometres) and local very accurate (subcentimetre) inspection of the infrastructure capability; Maintenance activities based on aerial manipulation involving force interactions; and Aerial co-working safely and efficiently helping human workers in inspection and maintenance.