Welcome to the LARICS Home Page!
LARICS - The Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control
Systems is a research laboratory within the Department
of Control and Computer Engineering at the Faculty
of Electrical Engineering and Computing, The University of Zagreb.
Here we present information about our activities, achievements
and plans. Learn about our research projects, browse through our personal
pages, discover what opportunities we may possibly offer to you. As a control
people, we would appreciate receiving your
feedback.
May 01, 2012 - The 10th Festival of Science - Larics Workshop on Walking Robots
| Our laboratory was present at the 10th Festival of Science held in the Technical museum in Zagreb with the interactive workshop entitled "Walking robots - from mimicking of animals to mimicking of humans”. Since the very beginnings of robotics people have imagined robots as intelligent artificial beings that by their appearance, working ability and intelligence emulate and even surpass humans. Such a view of robots has become even more relevant today when reached technological development enabled the realization of all the attractive robot forms. In the last few years LARICS students intensively study different kinds of walking robots - biped (humanoid), four-legged (horses, dogs) and six-legged walkers in different structural designs. The workshop demonstrated the operation of a four-legged robot Dynarobin and a humanoid robot NAO Atom H25. For kids who were present at the workshop, the most interesting activities were the dance of a group of five NAO robots, remote control of the NAO robot with the Kinect sensor, and "Robotic alka" - remote control of the Dynarobin robot aiming to hit the center of alka (circular shaped target). | 
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April 06, 2012 - Croatian weekly magazine Nacional published article about our NAO robots
| In the March issue (No. 854, pp. 42-45), one of the most popular Croatian weekly magazines Nacional contains a very nice article about the humanoid robots NAO produced by French company Aldebaran Robotics that came in our Lab through realization of a 3.5 million EURO FP7 project ACROSS. The article is entitled "FER folks got the toys which women adore". We would like to thank Tanja Simic Jelaca, a Nacional journalist, and Mateja Vrckovic, a Nacional photographer, for their much appreciated popularisation of robotics and automation among wide population of Nacional magazine readers.
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March 13, 2012 - 2012 UZ Rector Best Student Work Award competition is open
A competition for the annual University of Zagreb Rector Award for the best student's works is now open. We would like to see some LARICS students work hard for this prestigeous award. This is also a great opportunity to remind our students that LARICS has a remarkable list of Rector Award winners: 2001 - Bruno Birgmajer; 2002 - Ivan Ljubic; 2003 - Goran Genter and Ranko Munk; 2005 - Alan Mutka, 2006 - Andrija Ersek and Ivana Palunko; 2007 - Maja Varga, Matko Orsag and Mario Dogan; 2008 - Davor Mihaljevic, Robert Rantes and Petar Mateljak; Zoran Vrhovski, Ivan Jakus and Natasa Kovjanovic; 2009 - Kristian Hengster Movric; 2011 - Grgo Cupic; Frano Petric and Ivan Rajkovic. Who is next ?
March 08, 2012 - Bio-inspired robotic project "Roboticka alka"
Last three years LARICS students were developing different bio-inspired robots. The main driving force is our wish to develop a four-legged robot that will be able to walk, trot, pace, bound, run and jump carrying a robotic rider on its back whose mission is to hit a small round target "alka" with the tip of a spear held in his hand. The inspiration for that effort comes from the legendary Croatian knight's tournament "Sinjska alka" held every year since 1715 on the first Sunday in August in the picturesque Dalmatian town Sinj, which is situated very close to the second-largest Croatian city Split. This tournament with such long tradition was recognized by UNESCO as the heritage of world culture. The idea to organize the robotic tournament in the year 2015 in the honor of the 300th aniversary of "Sinjska alka" was born in the Croatian Society for Robotics, with the clear motive to popularize robotics among scholars and students, and to join rich cultural heritage of Croatia with the state-of-the-art technology. So far, our students have designed several robots "alkars", which they presented in public, and they got a lot of attention from different media. For example, Croatian national television visited our lab and made a story about our student's robots (see video).
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The latest results of our research can be seen in the video clip acompanying the conference paper submitted to the IEEE MSC 2012, Dubrovnik, October 03-05.
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March 02, 2012 - New book chapter on Internet Accessible Laboratory published by IGI Global
| We are pleased to announce that the book chapter "Matlab RTW-Based Internet Accessible Remote Laboratory for Teaching Robot Control" co-authored by Z. Kovacic, D. Jerbic D, V. Vojvoda, and S. Dujmovic has been just published in the book Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable E-Learning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines, Editor(s): Abul K.M. Azad (Northern Illinois University, USA); Michael E. Auer (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria); V. Judson Harward (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA), IGI Global, ISBN13: 9781613501863, 2012, pp. 362-379. | 
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March 01, 2012 - Croatian television (HRT) visited our Lab to make a broadcast about exploration robot VIV
We had a visit from the Croatian state television team led by Mrs. Lidija Gasparovic who wanted to make a broadcast about the exploration robot for fire-fighting units that was developed within the homonymous project financed by the Croatian Foundation for Science (HRZZ) and Hrid d.o.o. Zagreb. Filming took part in our Lab where Goran Vasiljevic and Alan Mutka showed excellent talent for editor assistants. The broadcast was dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the HRZZ, and our project was chosen to represent the HRZZ "Partnership in Research" program.
February 28, 2012 - INTECO ROBOTICS received the Croatian Chamber of Economy Award Zlatna Kuna for Innovation
| The Croatian Chamber of Economy has awarded the annual prizes Zlatna kuna for the best achievements in the Croatian economy in 2012. The prize for Innovation was given to INTECO ROBOTICS for the development of Autonomous mobile robots for hydrodynamic treatment of concrete and metal surfaces – the R Jet – 062. It was a special moment for our Laboratory, especially for our Ph.D. students Matko Orsag and Kristijan Brkić, who were the key developers of the advanced remote control system for this robot. More information about the ceremony and other details you can find at: Inteco robotics and Croatian Chamber of Economy (HGK).
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February 24, 2012 - Six Pioneer P3-DX Robots Arrived for FP7-IP EC-SAFEMOBIL Project Research
These days LARICS has experienced the invasion of new robots, which rushed in good hands of our students. Six mobile robots Pioneer P3-DX from Adept mobilerobots will be used in research pursued within the 6.2 M EUR FP7-IP project Estimation and Control for Safe Wireless High Mobility Cooperative Industrial Systems - EC-SAFEMOBIL. This will allow practical demonstrations of distributed safe reliable cooperation and coordination of many high mobility entities. The aim is to precisely control hundreds of entities efficiently and reliably and to certify developed techniques to support the exploitation of unmanned platforms in non-restricted areas. This development will be validated in two scenarios: industrial warehousing involving a large number of autonomous vehicles and surveillance also involving many mobile entities.
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February 23, 2012 - Six NAO Robots Arrived for Cooperative Robotics Research
| LARICS is participating in the 3.5 M EURO FP7-CSA project ACROSS – Centre of Research Excellence for Advanced Cooperative Systems funded by the European Commission in the period 2011-2015. One of several project goals is to strengthen the research in the area of cooperative robotic systems. For this purpose, six humanoid robots NAO H25 ATOM of Aldebaran Robotics have arrived in our laboratory. Besides for the research of Ph.D. students, these robots will also be used for many undergraduate and graduate level student projects. First impressions about NAO H25 robots can be seen in this short video.
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February 09, 2012 - LARICS is the member of the Center for Computer Vision at the University of Zagreb
| The University of Zagreb has approved the project "Center for Computer Vision" that is funded through the University development fund. Prof. Z. Kovacic is one of the members of the Center interested in the areas of robot vision and vision-based control systems. Other members are coming from four Faculty of EE&C departments (ZESOI, ZEMRIS, ZARI, ZRK) and six other Faculties of the University of Zagreb (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, Faculty of Graphic Arts, Faculty of Kinesiology, Faculty of Forestry, and Faculty of Geodesy). The center promotes collaboration between its members in the topics of computer vision and image understanding, pattern recognition and digital image processing and analysis. | 
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Laboratory
for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems