Two LARICS student groups have become the recipients of the 2020 Rector Award . Borna Zbodulja, Jakov Vulama and Petar Ljubotina, mentored by prof. Zdenko Kovačić , won the award for their work ' Pepper as a welcome manager at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing' , while Filip Bradarić, Marko Cavalli, Ivona Krajačić and Jelena Tabak , together with Andrea Rebec from the  Faculty of Architecture, mentored by assoc. prof. Matko Orsag , won the award for their work ' Workshop for children: "Robofun" . The abstracts of their works can be found here . Congratulations to the students and their mentors!

The 1st AIRPHARO workshop on Aerial Robotic Systems Physically Interacting with the Environment will be held October 4-5, 2021 at Ilirija Resort, Biograd na Moru, Croatia. Since this two-day event is taking place in Croatia, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society is organizing the workshop together with LARICS. AIRPHARO workshop is the successor of the workshops on Research, Education and Development of Unmanned Aerial Systems (RED-UAS) . The workshop will focus on a high growth area of both research and industry, the use of aerial robots for physical interaction with people and the environment. For more details, please visit AIRPHARO 2021 .

Prof. Stjepan Bogdan held a lecture on "Mission planning in heterogeneous robotic systems“ at the the first conference on trends and application of artificial intelligence Bounding Box 2021 that was held on Friday, March 26, in Osijek (Croatia), emphasizing that it is a fast-growing technology that is increasingly applied in various areas of business and life and is becoming an industry. The conference was held hybrid, i.e. both online and live. At the opening, the organizers from the company Protostar Labs from Belišće and Creative Agency Adverta emphasized the desire to make it an annual event. Its first edition was organized as part of the project "Improvement and automation of the VirtuAI Annotation system-adaptation of tools to the requirements of the market for the development of artificial intelligence technologies", an EU-funded project. "Artificial intelligence is a technology that changes our lives and with its better understanding and application it is possible to improve a lot in various spheres of life and business," said the organizers. Among the participants-lecturers at the conference are representatives of many companies in Croatia that deal with artificial intelligence, machine learning, application, i.e. localization and reading of QR codes in production and others, as well as experts from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, organization CroAI, and others. The topics discussed with the followers/audience at the conference were mostly professional ones, presenting work experiences, and related to machine learning, heterogeneous robotic systems, computer vision as a catalyst for change in many industries, application of neural networks in construction, challenges of artificial intelligence in various industries and others.

On Tuesday, March 30, 2021, LARICS is organizing an online presentation of Fulbright Scholarships Program for researchers and PhD students. The presentation will be held by Mrs. Vanja Ratković , Established Opinion Leaders Specialist from the U.S Embassy Zagreb. Assistant Public Affairs Officer Mrs. Elise Crane will make a short introduction to welcome the participants. The presentation starts at 10 a.m. via MS Teams platform . To join, please follow: Fulbright Scholarship Presentation

Last week, 4-6 March 2021, the IEEE International Conference on Inteligence and Safety for Robotics ISR2021 was held online (Nagoya, Japan). LARICS' PhD student Bruno Maric presented a paper: B. Maric, F. Jurican, M. Orsag, Z. Kovacic: "Vision based collision detection for a safe collaborative industrial manipulator" The IEEE ISR2021 brought together an international community of experts to discuss a way forward in robotics for the future of safety and security with intelligence by provisions of new research results and perspectives of future developments as well as achievements of social implementation.

DroneDays 2021 is finally happening! The aerial vehicles end-user workshop is going to take place in Biograd na Moru (Croatia) on the 4th and 5th of October 2021 at Ilirija Resort . The programme is yet to be confirmed. Please check DroneDays webpage regularly for all the updates as well as the programme and registration details.

LARICS got another team member –  Dario Stuhne!  Dario obtained a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2019 and a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering (specialization in Product Design and Development) in December 2020 . He worked as a student teaching assistant at the Department of Applied Mechanics and at the Department of Design for 4 years, with a team of students from European universities for industrial partners Electrolux and ROLD, and in design and production departments for a year and a half year in companies Končar D&ST Inc., Vetropack Inc. and OMCO Croatia Ltd. His newest position in LARICS is   Research Associate in the field of design and development of robotic mechanical systems. Wishing him all the best and many prosperous years with the team!

Continuing the collaboration on the ASAP project, on 16 December 2020 LARICS  joined their partners from the Faculty of Civil Engineering in the inspection of the pedestrian bridge in Osijek . This inspection marked the first deployment of new upgrades to their UAV (gimbal, IMU and high resolution lidar), which allowed them to detect and measure frequency of bridge vibrations, which are now being validated against measurements of the partners' obtained through standard techniques. Although hindered by cold temperatures, the project team also used this opportunity to thoroughly test the Ouster lidar by mapping the pylons and using them as a reference for autonomous navigation.