A research team comprised of Khawaja Ghulam Alamdarn, Marijana Peti, Frano Petric, and Matko Orsag has been honoured with the Best Paper Award at the IEEE MRS 2025 conference, held at the Singapore University of Technology and Design this week. Their paper presents a novel approach to improving the efficiency and longevity of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication systems through decentralised, perch-aware control mechanisms. The award acknowledges the team's significant contribution to advancing multi-robot and multi-agent system technologies. The recognition was presented by the conference chairs, Jen Jen Chung, Malika Meghjani, Sungjoon Nam, and the award committee members Alcherio Martinoli and Lorenzo Sabattini. This achievement highlights the growing impact of innovative UAV research and marks an important milestone for the authors and the robotics community. We are extremely proud and grateful to have such people in our team!
Weāre excited to announce that our research paper, also a finalist for the Best Paper Award, has been officially accepted for presentation at the IEEE MRS 2025 conference in Singapore this week! In our paper, Perch-Aware Decentralised Control for Extending the Lifetime of UAV Communication Networks, we introduce a decentralised and energy-efficient strategy for prolonging the operational lifetime of aerial communication networks. By incorporating perching strategies together with a switching-controller algorithm, our approach maintains network connectivity for significantly longer periods while reducing overall power consumption. How did we do it? We thoroughly evaluated the method through diverse simulations in the Gymnasium environment, as well as real-world experiments using Crazyflie UAVs and the Scout Mini UGV. With ROS 2 integration ensuring seamless interaction between simulation and hardware, the results highlight the practicality, robustness, and scalability of the proposed solution. Learn more about this weekās conference . Wishing the LARICS team the best of luck at the conference!
We are pleased to announce that on 17 October 2025, the final review of the AeroStream project was successfully completed, and the unanimous conclusion of all present was that the project was a "great success". This three-year project aimed to improve the quality of innovation management, technology transfer, and citizen involvement at HEIs from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina . Numerous partners participated: University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (project coordinator), University of Zagreb Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb Faculty of Transport and Traffic Sciences, Protostar Labs (Croatia), Innovation Centre Nikola Tesla (Croatia), University of Sarajevo - Faculty of Electrical Engineering (Bosnia and Herzegovina), University of Seville (Spain), CTA - Technological Corporation of Andalusia (Spain), FADA-CATEC - Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies (Spain), University of Twente (Netherlands), and Czech Technical University in Prague - Faculty of Electrical Engineering. We believe that this successful cooperation will lead to many more fruitful collaborations in the future.
The students' team work " Design and development of a three-wing rotary unmanned aerial vehicle ", submitted by Toni VukoviÄ , Teo Putarek , and Marko Å imiÄ under the mentorship of Prof. Matko Orsag , has been awarded the Rector's Award of the University of Zagreb in the field of Technical Sciences for the academic year 2024/2025 . The work covers all phases of the development of an unmanned aerial system with a specific rotational configuration, from motivation and literature review, through mechanical and electronic design, software development, and communication algorithms, to experimental testing and discussion of results. In addition to ensuring stable flight, the system incorporates a unique safety mechanism based on autorotation of the three-wing design, enabling controlled and safe descent in the event of propulsion loss. The work was conducted in the Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems (LARICS). Congratulations on your remarkable success!
The students' work " BerryBot: Autonomous Soft Robotic System for Raspberry Harvesting ", submitted by Leticija CrnkoviÄ and Antonio Äogelja under the mentorship of Prof. Matko Orsag , has been awarded the Rector's Award of the University of Zagreb in the field of Technical Sciences for the academic year 2024/2025 . The work includes a description of the development of a complete robotic system for raspberry harvesting, covering the theoretical foundations, the design of a soft gripper, and the autonomous control of the robot in both simulation and real-world conditions. The work was developed in the Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems (LARICS) and carried out with the support of the Regional Centre of Excellence for Robotic Technologies CRTA . Congratulations on your remarkable success!
As new projects arrive, the need for qualified young researchers and skilled project administrators at LARICS also increases. We are pleased to announce the addition of three new members to the laboratory: Arijan Vidulin and Dorian EriÄ as researchers, and SaÅ”a Martinek as project administrator. We extend a warm welcome and wish them a smooth integration into our team.
As an example of a successful project, AeroStream was selected for the WIDERA Feedback to Policy Workshop , which took place in Brussels on October 2, 2025. During the workshop, Prof. Tamara PetroviÄ had the unique opportunity to present AeroStream project outcomes directly to national policymakers (WIDERA Programme Committee, ERA Forum, and Research Working Party), National Contact Points (NCPs), and the European Commission (Directorate-General for Research and Innovation and the REA). The workshop fostered community building, knowledge sharing, and helped shape future WIDERA policy.
This was a memorable week for LARICS. On September 29, 2025, Antonella BariÅ”iÄ KulaÅ” successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled " Synthetic Data and Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Aerial Object Detection ." Her mentor was Prof. Stjepan Bogdan . A few days later, on October 3, 2025, Filip ZoriÄ successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled " Semi-Autonomous Aerial Manipulation for Service and Maintenance Tasks. " His mentor was Prof. Zdenko KovaÄiÄ . Congratulations on your well-deserved PhD degrees!