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 Vuković , Teo Putarek , and Marko Šimić  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 Crnković and Antonio Čogelja 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 Erić as researchers, and Saša 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 Petrović 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 Barišič Kulaš 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 Zorić successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled " Semi-Autonomous Aerial Manipulation for Service and Maintenance Tasks. " His mentor was Prof. Zdenko Kovačić . Congratulations on your well-deserved PhD degrees!

Two LARICS members attended the 33rd Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM 2025) , which took place from September 18-20, 2025 at the Radisson Blu Resort Hotel in Split, Croatia. On September 18, Marko Kozlik presented the paper entitled " Graph Neural Networks for Minimum Independent Dominating Set Problem ", which he co-authored with Marko Križmančić and Stjepan Bogdan. On September 19, Zdenko Kovačić gave an invited talk entitled " Application of AI in Agricultural Robotics ". Many new contacts were made and possible future collaborations were discussed, which will hopefully come about soon.

From September 2 to September 5, 2025 , three members of our laboratory Marin Maletić, Antonella Barišić Kulaš, and Nikica Perić presented their research at the European Conference on Mobile Robots 2025 (ECMR 2025) , held in Padua, Italy. ECMR is a biennial conference that brings together leading researchers in the field of mobile robotics. This year’s edition recorded the largest number of in person participants so far, providing an excellent opportunity for knowledge exchange and discussion of the latest advances in the field. Our laboratory was strongly represented through three research contributions: Marin Maletić, Marijana Peti, Tamara Petrović and Stjepan Bogdan. "Spatial Semantic Reasoning using Large Language Models for Efficient UAV Search Operations" Preprint: https://zenodo.org/records/15847320   Antonella Barišić Kulaš, Andreja Jurasović and Stjepan Bogdan "Unlocking Thermal Aerial Imaging: Synthetic Enhancement of UAV Datasets" Preprint: https://arxiv.org/html/2507.06797v1   Nikica Perić, Luka Ćuk, Goran Vasiljević and Stjepan Bogdan "Collection and Analysis of Soil Samples using a Mobile Robot"