Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems
Department of Control and Computer Engineering
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, The University of Zagreb

January 07, 2013 - Maja Varga held the lecture “Increasing autonomy of the fixed wing robots”

Maja Varga, LARICS young scientist, currently a Ph.D. student at the EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland held a very interesting lecture about the fixed wing robots being used in numerous outdoor applications, such as providing area coverage, mapping applications, providing communication relay, environmental monitoring. In many of those applications, exact path of the robot is preprogrammed and mission is usually planned in advance. Each flying robot needs dedicated human operator to provide safe flight. The question arises, what is  necessary to add to the functionality of fixed wing robots to make them more autonomous, reactive and less dependent on the human intervention. In her talk, she presented control methodologies to overcome unicycle dynamics of the fixed wing flying robots to make the platforms more reactive and control architecture to enable switching between different flying robot behaviors.

January 03, 2013 - Successfully finished project related to control of small electric vehicle

LARICS successfully finished a two year project named “Electronic differential for small electrical vehicle” funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) and EXOR. The result of the project is electronic differential, comprising the traction control system (TCS), the anti-lock braking system (ABS) and the electronic stability control (ESC). Along with simulation conducted on nonlinear car model, experiments were also conducted on the laboratory system developed for testing TCS, as well as on the electric car developed by Croatian company DOK-ING.

December 19, 2012 - Prof. Nikos Tsourveloudis held the lecture” Bio-inspired Robotic Entities: Coping with Bounded Rationality”

Within the series of colloquia organized by the FP7 project ACROSS , an international research advisor of the ACROSS project, Prof. Nikos Tsourveloudis, who is a professor of manufacturing technology at the Technical University of Crete (TUC), Chania, Greece, where he leads the Intelligent Systems and Robotics Laboratory (www.robolab.tuc.gr ) and the Machine Tools Laboratory, held a very interesting lecture about the ability of living organisms to successfully cope and provide good solutions to almost all robotic related problems. The research that was presented in his talk was an outgrowth of previous research on the navigation and control of autonomous robots. The objective was to present, define and discuss the required level of cognitive capabilities needed for robotic navigation and coordination purposes. Emphasis was given on the fact that humans and animals make inferences about unknown features of their world under constraints of limited time, limited knowledge, and limited computational capacities. And despite their cognitive limitations (bounded rationality) they tend to build and use domain specific heuristics that allow for fast “problem solving” (and task specific successful behaviors). The afterwards discussion raised questions such as how can robotics be benefited from these facts?

December 17, 2012 - LARICS Humanoid Robots at the 5th CSR Workshop "Robotic Systems 2012"

Croatian Society for Robotics (CSR) with support of the Croatian Association of Technological Culture (CROTEC) organized the 5th CSR Workshop "Robotic Systems 2012". About thirty people gathered in the Great Hall of the CROTEC headquarters in Zagreb to listen to the presentations about contemporary humanoid robots, including more detailed presentations of two humanoid robots, Robotis Bioloid and Aldebaran Robotics NAO H25 ATOM, which were demonstrated at the Workshop. Larics team (Zdenko Kovacic, Damjan Miklic, Tamara Petrovic, Frano Petric, Edin Koco, Anja Babic, Kruno Hrvatinic) worked hard to prepare the practical presentations enjoyed by the workshop participants as the most interesting part of this event. More information about the Workshop can be found at CSR Workshop 2012.

December 15, 2012 - Croatian Robotics Association has been founded

Symbolically, eighteen years after founding the Croatian Society for Robotics (CSR) the process of robotics popularization and expansion of the robotics activist base resulted with the foundation of the Croatian Robotics Association (CRA). Delegates of five founder entities, CSR Zagreb, Society for Robotics Split, Robofreak Varazdin, Robotics & Informatics Club Popovaca, and Society for Robotics Istria Pula, gathered in the Great Hall of the CROTEC seat in Zagreb to elect the members of the CRA bodies and express firm determination to continue with popularization of robotics in all Croatian regions. Prof. Zdenko Kovacic and Mr. Igor Ratkovic were unanimously elected for the President and the Secretary of the CRA, respectively.

December 14, 2012 - LARICS works on new Steam Generator Inspection System of Hrid Zagreb

HRID d.o.o. Zagreb and LARICS are working together on the project of modernization of the Steam Generator Inspection System (SGIS). The goal of the project is to build a new improved version of SGIS with modular system design by using Beckoff intelligent peripheral units communicating over EtherCAT, instead of one central control unit used before. Goran Vasiljevic is a key LARICS person in this development.

December 13, 2012 - Employing NAO robots in autism diagnosis

LARICS received a description of research protocol to study the possible use of humanoid robots in autism diagnosis. As a part of this research, our NAO robots will work with children aged 2-6, and should be able to detect some basic forms of communication, such as gaze, gests and vocalization. Research protocol is based on ADOS - Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, and was written by Maja Cepanec, Sanja Šimleša and Jasmina Stošić, researchers from the Faculty of Education and Rehabillitation Sciences, University of Zagreb. To formulate this protocol several meetings were held, where LARICS was represented by Damjan Miklić, Frano Petric and our NAO robot Herr Flick.We are looking forward to extend our NAOs functionality and are hoping to achieve results which will help both the autistic children and people working with them.

November 30, 2012 - Successful testing of distributed Multi-LGV control algorithm in the Martinovka Gym

It was a long night in Martinovka. Basketball, volleyball and other sports activities were replaced by exciting first experiments with four Pioneer mobile robots controlled simultaneously with a new distributed control algorithm being developed within the FP7 project EC-SAFEMOBIL. The players of the LARICS „Night Owls“ team were Damjan Miklic, Tamara Petrovic, Ivica Draganjac, Frano Petric, and Tomislav Haus. The results were very promising and inspiring for further research work.

November 27, 2012 - Matko Orsag and Marko Filipovic passed the doctoral qualification exam

On November 27, 2012 two LARICS Ph.D. students, Matko Orsag and Marko Filipovic (both advised by Prof. Stjepan Bogdan) successfully passed their doctoral qualification exams thus making the first step towards the formal definition of the topics of their dissertations. Matkos presentation was entitled "Unmanned aerial vehicles in contact with environment", while Markos presentation was "Fault recovery in manufacturing systems using Petri nets".

November 23, 2012 - Tomislav Haus received the Bronze Plaque Josip Loncar Award

Every year the celebration of the Day of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing starts with a ceremony of receiving the „Josip Loncar“ Awards for the best achievements in the former academic year. A young LARICS researcher Tomislav Haus was the recipient of the Bronze Plaque Josip Loncar for remarkable results achieved in the 5-year studying period (he has a perfect exam score 5.0).

November 12, 2012 - LARICS received one EMoRo mobile robot for evaluation from Inovatic d.o.o. Zagreb

The robotics enthusiast, Boris Anic-Curko, also the owner of Inovatic ICT d.o.o., Zagreb,  visited our laboratory and donated one EmoRo mobile robot (EmoRo IR Radar) for professional testing and evaluation. A brand new series of EmoRo mobile robots has been just put on the Croatian market by Inovatic. Many times Boris was helping our students to make electronic modules using the SMD technology, and now we were delighted to help Boris with our professional opinion, particularly when it was quite obvious that the EMoRo robot looked very impressive.

November 09, 2012 - Dr. Ivana Palunko held the lecture “Load Transportation Using Quadrotors”

Within the series of colloquia organized by the FP7 project ACROSS , Dr. Ivana Palunko, the ex-LARICS student and former Ph.D. student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA, currently being employed at the Faculty of EE&C in Zagreb as the ACROSS postdoctoral researcher, held a very interesting lecture about the load transportation using quadrotors. In her talk, she investigated problems that occur during load transportation using small scale quadrotors. First, the problem of quadrotor stabilization and trajectory tracking with changes of the centre of gravity of the system was addressed. Then she addressed the problem of a swing-free transport of suspended load using quadrotors. Flying with a load can be a very challenging and sometimes hazardous task as the load significantly alters the flight characteristics of the quadrotor.  Besides the swing-free manoeuvres with suspended load, load trajectory tracking is another problem she defined and presented.  At the end, she proposed an algorithm for navigation in cluttered environments considering a quadrotor with suspended load.

November 03, 2012 - Croatian daily newspapers “24 sata” published an article about NAO robots

On November 03rd, the best-selling Croatian newspapers 24 sata published an article about the humanoid robots in our Lab. The article was entitled "Croats teach robots to dance". We would like to thank Anela Kuburas, a 24 sata journalist, for her enthusiasm to popularize robotics among the numerous readers of 24 sata.

October 26, 2012 - Dr. Domagoj Tolic held the lecture “Stability of Nonlinear Control Systems Under Intermittent Information with Applications to Multi-Agent Robotics”

Within the series of colloquia organized by the FP7 project ACROSS , Dr. Domagoj Tolic, the ex-LARICS student and former Ph.D. student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA, currently being employed at the Faculty of EE&C in Zagreb as the ACROSS postdoctoral researcher, held a very interesting lecture about the investigation of stability of nonlinear control systems under intermittent information. This means that the traditional periodic paradigm, where up-to-date information are transmitted and control laws are executed in a periodic fashion, is replaced with the event-triggered paradigm. In other words, based on the currently available (but outdated) measurements of the outputs and external inputs of a plant, a simple expression for when to obtain new up-to-date measurements and execute the control law is provided.

October 01, 2012 - Tomislav Haus and Frano Petric are new LARICS researchers

Our laboratory has become much younger by employing Tomislav Haus and Frano Petric to work on the research topics related to the FP7 projects in which LARICS is a research partner. Both Tomislav and Frano were among the best students in their generation, so we believe that their contribution to our Lab will be immense.

September 27, 2012 - Alan Mutka passed the doctoral qualification exam

On September 27, 2012 a LARICS Ph.D. student Alan Mutka (advised by Prof. Zdenko Kovacic) successfully passed a doctoral qualification exam. Alans presentation was entitled "Motion of two-legged and four-legged walking robots". He has shown that he is fully prepared for a formal definition of the topic of his doctoral dissertation.

September 25, 2012 - Croatian Airlines in-flight magazine Croatia published article about Inteco robot R Jet 062

An article about the Inteco robot R Jet 062 was published in the 2012 Autumn issue (pp. 132-136) of theCroatian Airlines inflight magazine Croatia. This robot was developed in collaboration of Inteco Ltd. Zagreb and LARICS. The article written by a Croatia journalist Davorka Vukov-Colic describes in detail the characteristics of the robot, as well as its potentials for successful commercialization.

September 24, 2012 - LARICS team was on air at the Croatian television channel HRT2

Thanks to the invitation of Mr. Ante Glibo from the Croatian television, the LARICS team (Prof. Zdenko Kovacic, Tamara Petrovic, Damjan Miklic, Anja Babic, and Kruno Hrvatinic) took part in the very popular morning broadcast for scholars “Skolski sat”. We brought our NAO H25 robots and showed few demonstrations with robots dancing and playing a board game. We had a lot of fun, and according to the reaction of those few who saw the show, they say that it was pretty cool.

September 20, 2012 - Zdenko Kovacic participated in the First Croatian Computer Vision Workshop (CCVW2012)

Prof. Zdenko Kovacic participated in the First Croatian Computer Vision Workshop (CCVW2012) that was held in Zagreb, Croatia with the presentation “Computer vision for robotics” shared with Prof. Bojan Jerbic and Prof. Ivan Petrovic. Workshop is organized by the newly established "Center of Excellence for Computer Vision" and is sponsored by the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, and by the IEEE Croatia Section. We were pleased to welcome Dr. Max Blanco in our laboratory after his very interesting lecture at the CCVW2012.

September 07, 2012 - Goran Vasiljevic presented the paper at SyROCO 2012

Prof. Zdenko Kovacic and Goran Vasiljevic were participants of the 10th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control that was held in Dubrovnik, Croatia on September 05-07, 2012. The Symposium was very well organized by a team led by Prof. Ivan Petrovic who served as a General Chair. Goran Vasiljevic presented the paper entitled “Kinect-based Robot Teleoperation by Velocities Control in the Joint/Cartesian Frames“, while Prof. Kovacic chaired the session „Telemanipulation“.

July 16, 2012 - Tamara Petrovic was at the Multicopter Girls Camp in Ilmenau, Germany

Larics young researcher Tamara Petrovic participated in the International Multicopter Girls Camp, which was held on July 2 - 15, 2012 in Ilmenau University of Technology. Ilmenau is a town in the German federal state of Thuringia. At the camp Tamara had the opportunity to work with international colleagues in the area of autonomous navigation of a hexacopter. In particular, the goal was to develop a software solution that will navigate a hexacopter to find and follow a radio-signal transmitter. All in all, it was really fun and an interesting experience!

June 20, 2012 - LARICS students are the recipients of the 2012 Rector Award

We have new Rector Award laureates! LARICS students Josip Cesic, Jurica Goricanec, and Tomislav Haus have become the recipients of the 2012 Rector Award for their student work entitled "Self-spinning Unmanned Aerial Vehicle". As we do this almost every year, we proudly present a remarkable list of LARICS 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, 2012 - Josip Cesic, Jurica Goricanec, and Tomislav Haus. Who is going to be next?

June 08, 2012 - Tamara Petrovic and Zdenko Kovacic were at the training in Aldebaran Robotics

Prof. Zdenko Kovacic and Tamara Petrovic spent three days in Paris at the seat of Aldebaran Robotics where they participated in a three-day training session for advanced programming of NAO H25 ATOM robots. Although sessions were quite demanding, some energy still remained saved for visiting the most attractive landmarks of the beautiful French capital.

May 23, 2012 - Zdenko Kovacic presented R-JET 062 robot at MIPRO-INOVA 2012

On May 22nd Prof. Zdenko Kovacic held the presentation of the robot R-JET 062 at the MIPRO 2012 MIPRO-INOVA - Innovative High-Tech Products and Services track held in Opatija, Croatia. The intention of the organizers was to gather presenters from industry and academia who have some innovative solutions of potential commercial value. Our research partner Inteco d.o.o. wanted to present their robot for hydrodynamic treatment of concrete and metal surfaces from a new R-JET robot series.

May 04, 2012 - Zdenko Kovacic presented the paper at the Austrian Robotics Workshop ARW2012

Prof. Zdenko Kovacic was a participant of the Austrian Robotics Workshop held in Graz where he presented the paper entitled „A Four-flipper Tracked Robot for Exploration & Inspection in Life-threatening Environments“. The conference had a goal to gather the participants of neighboring countries in the area. The workshop focused on current research themes and topics in the field of mobile, medical, field and industrial robotics, with service robotics as a special area of interest.

April 27, 2012 - LARICS Workshop at the Festival of Science in Zagreb

LARICS was present at the Festival of Science held in Zagreb, April 23-28 2012 with the workshop entitled „Walking robots – from mimicking of animals to mimicking of humans“. The festival was traditionally organized by the Technical Museum Zagreb, British Council and the University of Zagreb. The workshop was designed as a one-hour interactive performance where Prof. Zdenko Kovacic, Alan Mutka, Damjan Miklic, Tamara Petrovic, Anja Babic, Kruno Hrvatinic, and Ivan Domladovec demonstrated six-, four- and two-legged walking robots from our laboratory. The aim of the workshop was to raise interest of students and pupils in the area of biologically inspired robotics. The workshop also supported the initiative of the Croatian Society for Robotics to maintain the robotic competition Robotic Alka in Sinj in 2015 to mark the 300th Anniversary of the famous Sinjska Alka. On that course, LARICS is developing a robotic knight – „alkar“ with a spear riding on a horse (four-legged walking/running robot).

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.

April 04, 2012 - A new chapter in a book published

We are pleased to announce that the book chapter "Influence of Forward and Descent Flight on Quadrotor Dynamics" co-authored by M. Orsag and S. Bogdan has been just published in the book "Recent Advances in Aircraft Technology", edited by Ramesh K. Agarwal, Washington University in St. Luis. Publisher of the book is InTech, ISBN 978-953-51-0150-5, 2012, pp. 141-156.

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).

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

December 17, 2011 - R-Jet 062 Advanced Control System received the VIDI Magazine 2011 e-nnovation Award

VIDI e-nnovation Awards are organized annually by VIDI Magazine and Ruđer Bošković Institute. For the year 2011 the members of the evaluation committee have decided that the Nikola Tesla Silver Egg Award goes to  Inteco Robotics for the originality of the R-Jet 062 Robot Advanced Control System. Being developed by our Ph.D. students Matko Orsag and Kristijan Brkic in collaboration with colleagues from Inteco, it represents an excellent example of successful partnership between academia and industry. A broadcast made by Privredni.hr television team shows a story about this collaboration where people from LARICS and INTECO ROBOTICS gave short interviews. You can see the story at the following link. Let us just mention that in October 2011 the robot R Jet – 062 also received the ARCA Innovation Award and FIRI Diploma for Innovation at the 9th International Innovation Exhibition – ARCA held at the National University Library in Zagreb.

December 14, 2011 - Establishment of the two new research laboratories at FER

FER's Faculty Council, on its meeting held on December 14, 2011, adopted a decision on establishment of the two new research laboratories at FER:

• Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems (acronym: LARICS); Head of the laboratory: Professor Zdenko Kovačić; 
• Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies (acronym: LABUST); Head of the laboratory: Professor Zoran Vukić;

Founded in 1996 as the Fuzzy Logic and Robotics Control Group, changing its name to the Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems in 1999, LARICS went a way from the informal research group to the first formally established research laboratory at FER. We would like to thank all young researchers and students who worked in our lab and made this happen.

November 21, 2011 - The Faculty Day - Poster Presentations of Three LARICS Projects

Poster presentations of three LARICS projects, "Exploration robot for fire fighting units", "Electronic differential for small electric vehicle" and FP7 project EC-SAFEMOBIL "Estimation and Control for Safe Wireless High Mobility Cooperative Industrial Systems" will be held on November 25th, 2011 as a part of the Faculty Day programme. The posters presentations (in Croatian) can be seen by visiting the following links: Exploration robot VIV, EC-SAFEMOBIL.

November 18, 2011 - The Lecture of Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka, Japan)

On Thursday, November 17th, our Faculty had an eminent guest, professor Hiroshi Ishiguro from the Osaka University, Department of Systems Innovation, Japan, who is one of the most well-known roboticists in the world. His astonishing achievements in development of hyper-realistic android robots have been recognized even by Hollywood film makers (see film Surrogates). At the lecture, Prof. Ishiguro presented most of the results for which he is well-known, but also he presented the newest results related to the investigation of optimal humanoid robot form (appearance) which would most of the human population accept.

The perfection of androids developed in prof. Ishiguro's lab allow them to act in the android theater, and he has announced to the audience that in April 2012 he is coming with such theater in Zagreb.

October 24, 2011 - Branislav Konjevic defended his Master Thesis

Branislav Konjevic successfully defended his master thesis and received a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Branislav's thesis was entitled "Analysis and comparison of jerk-free trajectory planning methods". The main result of his work are two trajectory planning methods, one based on the use of the 5th-order splines, and the other based on the so called Yakimenko method adapted for robotic applications. The results of his work were published in the Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics ICINCO 2011, Nordwijkerhout, Netherlands.

October 01, 2011 - FP7-CSA Project ACROSS takes off

The European Commission, under the 7th Frame Program, has provided funds to perform the project  ACROSS (Centre of Research Excellence for Advanced Cooperative Systems). The ACROSS project aims to unlock and strengthen research potential of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb (UNIZG–FER) for the benefit of the national, as well as the regional and EU community with the global objective to create a Centre of Research Excellence for Advanced Cooperative Systems within UNIZG–FER. The Centre will be at the forefront of research and development of novel methodologies and  advanced engineering approaches for cooperative systems in general and will act as a point of contact between academia and industry, providing an infrastructure for scientiic exchange in the area of cooperative systems related to robotics, networked embedded systems and renewable energy systems. LARICS is actively participating in the project focusing on the cognitive cooperative robotic systems.

July 15, 2011 - Fp7-IP project EC-SAFEMOBIL takes off

The European Commission, under the 7th Frame Program, has provided funds to perform the project SAFEMOBIL (Estimation and Control for Safe Wireless High Mobility Cooperative Industrial Systems), recognizing the growing importance of the UAV market and applications, which in the case of SAFEMOBIL project, are related to the utilization of autonomous systems in general and UAVs in particular, in many applications that cannot be accomplished with manned systems for including disaster management, the monitoring and measurement of events, rescue missions, particularly in stormy conditions and, in general all mission where there are risks for human beings.The awarded consortium includes the most important organizations and companies within the European sector and represents and appropriate mixture of research organizations and key players at industry level. FADA-CATEC acts as the project leader and the consortium team includes DLR, Astrium, Indra, SELEX GALILEO, Euroimpianti, University of Seville, University Duisburg-Essen and University of Zagreb. The EC-SAFEMOBIL project is devoted to the development of sufficiently accurate motion estimation and control methods and technologies in order to reach levels of reliability and safety to facilitate unmanned vehicle deployment in a broad range of applications. It also includes the development of a secure architecture and the middleware to support the implementation. The EC SAFEMOBIL project will develop world first technology demonstrators in several applications dealing with the landing of UAVs on mobile platforms in challenging conditions, the launching of an UAV from a manned vehicle, the surveillance, and the warehousing involving a large number of autonomous vehicles.

October 14, 2010 - Darko Duzanec defended his doctoral dissertation

Darko Duzanec successfully defended his doctoral dissertation and received a Doctor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Darko's thesis was entitled "Improved microgenetic algorithms in control of robot systems". The main results of his work are the method for determining optimal parameters of microgenetic algorithms based on known parameters of the optimal genetic algorithm, a thorough analysis of the microgenetic algorithm based on the use of Markov chains, and introduction of a new solution space contraction parameter which increases the precision of the solution. The results of his thesis were published in several conference papers: 1, 2, 3.

February 09, 2009 - Darko Duzanec and Zdenko Kovacic had the paper at the IEEE ICIT 2009, Gippsland, Australia

LARICS Ph.D. student Darko Duzanec and Prof. Zdenko Kovacic were participants of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology that was held at the Monash University near to Melbourne. There Darko presented the newest results of his work on doctoral dissertation in the paper entitled „Performance Analysis-based GA Parameter Selection and Increase of μGA Accuracy by Gradual Contraction of Solution Space“. Prof. Kovacic chaired two sessions related to robotics and control. The conference organization was threatened by fierceful fires which severely hit the state of Victoria. Hundreds of victims and thousands of homes burnt in fire was the worst natural catastrophy in the history of Victoria. Although all participant felt deep compassion, the impression of all of us was that this was one of the most friendliest conferences we have been ever. Sharing experience of watching koalas in their natural habitat, or watching the parade of the smallest Australian penguins while returning from the sea to their sleeping beds was heartwarming and breathtaking. Tasting some genuine australian food in the fine restaurants in Melbourne was also a very good decision.

February 04, 2009: Ivan Hosko and Sasa Mesaric have become diploma engineers

On February 04, 2009 two LARICS students, Ivan Hosko (advised by Prof. Bogdan) and Sasa Mesaric (advised by Prof. Kovacic) successfully defended their diploma theses and became diploma engineers. Ivans thesis was entitled "Image processing on Gumstix microprocessor system", while Sasas thesis was "The use of RFID technology in flexible manufacturing system". The results they achieved will be very useful for gaining experience with the state-of-the-art control hardware, as well as with the technology which can increase the FMS flexibility.

January 15, 2009: New project of LARICS and INTECO d.o.o., Zagreb

LARICS and INTECO d.o.o. Zagreb signed a one-year contract to work together on the R&D project "Control of a robot for hydrodynamic processing of concrete and metal surfaces". The project consists of two parts – improving the existing robot prototype R-JET 061, and developing a first commercial robot with improved control characteristics R-JET 062. Both partners have prepared a collaborative project application that was submitted to the state agency BICRO – IRCRO. As a part of this application, a one-year annex to the aforementioned contract was signed whose aim is to develop some advanced control features of the robot.

December 22, 2008: Ivica Draganjac and Alan Mutka returned from San Antonio, USA

Ivica Draganjac and Alan Mutka spent two weeks in San Antonio, USA where they worked together with colleagues from Hrid d.o.o, Zagreb on testing of developed applications for robot control and 3D visualization of robot for inspection of nuclear reactor vessels. This work was performed withing the collaboration on the project " Control system for a reactor vessel inspection manipulator".

December 16, 2008: Maja Tomic and Vedran Vojvoda have become diploma engineers

On December 16, 2008 two LARICS students (both advised by Prof. Kovacic) successfully defended their diploma theses and became diploma engineers. Majas thesis was entitled "Control of planar manipulator with electronically commutated motors", while Vedrans thesis was "Multi-user interface for access to robotic laboratory via internet". We beleive that the results they achieved will serve as a basis for building a well structured internet accessible laboratory (IAL).

December 12, 2008: 2nd CSR Workshop "Robotic Systems 2008"

Croatian Society for Robotics (CSR) organized the 2nd CSR Workshop "Robotic Systems 2008" which was held in the National Technical Centre in Kraljevica. About thirty people from the Croatian technical high schools community and Croatian academia gathered together to discuss their ideas about possible ways of introducing elective robotics courses into the technical high school curriculums. Prof. Zdenko Kovacic and Prof. Stjepan Bogdan played important role in the organization and participation in the event.

December 01, 2008: Kristijan Brkic and Marko Cukon are employed as collaborators on the LARICS project "Exploration robot for fire fighting units"

By obtaining the grant for the project "Exploration robot for fire fighting units", we have got funds to engage two more people to come to work in LARICS! Kristijan Brkic who just graduated (see the news from November 18) and Marko Cukon (still the student of the Mechanical Engineering) are new employees who will work together on the construction and building of the exploration robot prototype.

December 01, 2008: LARICS has got a grant from the National Foundation for Science, Higher Education and Technological Development of the Republic of Croatia for the scientific project

Great news have come to LARICS! The National Foundation for Science, Higher Education and Technological Development of the Republic of Croatia has given a grant for the two-year scientific project "Exploration robot for fire fighting units", which is also financially supported by our industry partner Hrid d.o.o., Croatia. The goal is to develop a fully functional robot prototype able to find and get in contact with victims of fire, eartquakes and other sources of life danger.

November 25, 2008: New project of LARICS and HRID d.d., Zagreb

LARICS and HRID d.d. Zagreb signed a four-months contract to work together on the project "Control system for a reactor vessel inspection manipulator". The project consist of two parts - making an application for advanced servo control of the robot, and an application for robot guidance and 3D visualisation of robot-based inspection. The manipulator to be controlled is built in San Antonio, USA. The robot control system uses the state-of-the-art servo controller Aerotech A3200.

November 18, 2008: Kreso Kordic, Vladimir Grabovac, and Kristijan Brkic have become diploma engineers

On November 18, 2008 three LARICS students (first two advised by Prof. Bogdan, and the third by Prof. Kovacic) successfully defended their diploma theses and became diploma engineers. Kresos thesis was entitled "Control of assembly line", Vladimirs thesis was "Interaction of agents in the flock following the predator-prey principle", while Kristijans thesis was "Modeling and Construction of a self-balancing mobile robot with two parallel wheel drives". The results they obtained were really excellent.

November 14, 2008: Zdenko Kovacic presented the paper at the IEEE ICELIE 2008, Orlando,USA

Prof. Zdenko Kovacic was a participant of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on E-Learning in Industrial Electronics where he presented the paper entitled „An Internet-based System for Remote Planning and Execution of SCARA Robot Trajectories“. The conference was organized in parallel with the 34th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON-2008). It was nice to find out that our concept of internet accessible laboratory was competitive with similar concepts developed by research groups from Vienna, Maribor and Athens. Prof. Nedjeljko Peric and Ph.D. student Mato Jelavic, both from the Department of Control and Computer Engineering in Zagreb were there too. Prof. Peric and Prof. Kovacic used the opportunity to watch the NBA game Orlando Magic vs. Portland Trail Blazers and visit a really fantastic Disneyland theme-park Epcot dedicated to technology and energy. It was quite amazing that in only one day they became big stars of Disney (see the cartoon (AVI 15 MB) if you do not beleive).

November 01, 2008: Ivica Draganjac, Maja Varga, and Matko Orsag have become young scientists

After Alan Mutka had broken ice in October, LARICS students Ivica Draganjac, Maja Varga, and Matko Orsag have also got 6-year contracts to work as young scientists in the LARICS research team. Ivica is going to work on the research project 036-3017 "Integrated Control of Robotic Systems in Complex Environments", while Maja and Matko will work on the research project 036-3016 "Task Planning & Scheduling in Robotic and Autonomous Systems".

October 31, 2008: LARICS has got a high performance IP camera MOBOTIX as a donation from KOLNOA, Croatia

We have received a valuable donation from Kolnoa, Croatia: a MOBOTIX IP camera that has many advanced features: 1280 x 960 Megapixel resolution, 30 frames/s, weatherproof, video motion, night/day etc. The camera will be used for development of intelligent security video-based applications. We express our gratitude to our donator, Mr. David Geras, and his colleagues from Kolnoa.

October 30, 2008: Damir Arbula defended his Master Thesis

On October 30th 2005, Damir Arbula successfully defended his master thesis and received a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Damirs thesis was entitled "Distributed algorithm for anchor-free network localization based on the determined direction of signal arrival". The main result of his work is a distributed localization algorithm which minimizes the need for extensive communication and computing effort. Congratulations!

October 21, 2008: Vinko Krsnik, Damir Rezdevsek, Dinko Bogunovic, and Tihomir Bosanac have become diploma engineers

On October 21, 2008 four LARICS students (all advised by Prof. Bogdan) successfully defended their diploma theses and became diploma engineers. Vinkos thesis was entitled "Model reference-based adaptive control by using Lyapunov method", Damirs thesis was “Adaptive system control with Honeywell PLC”, Dinkos thesis was "System parameter identification algorithm as a function block for Simatic PLC", while Tihomirs thesis was "Control of Mitsubishi robot by using program Leonardo". They all did excellent jobs and some of the results they obtained are already used in a new set of laboratory exercises.

October 13, 2008: Croatian television (HRT) visited our Lab to make a broadcast about robots on Mars

On October 13, a broadcast about robots on Mars was emitted on the Croatian state television channel 2 (HRT2). One part of it was made in our Lab where Tamara Petrovic, Ivica Draganjac, Alan Mutka, and Andjelko Katalenic dragged out our Wifibot robots and also showed some results of their research work. The broadcast was dedicated to younger scholars so we all had a lot of fun. Ivica recorded the show when it was on air to keep something to show to Marsians if they ever come to our Lab.

October 08, 2008: LARICS team conquered the top of Bijele stijene (White rocks)

In the wide expanse of Kapela a very special place belongs to the complex of Bijele stijene (White Rocks), quite unique, indeed incomparable, in their splendour (read more). LARICS team decided to get there and climb to the top and thus prove that even impossible can be possible. A brave group of climbing enthusiasts did not give up even in the moments when hazy and foggy athmosphere hid the most of the beauty around them when they reached the top. Slightly frozen and fairly tired, we were delighted to find a shelter with a fire stow where we ate and drank everything we had in our sacks.

October 01, 2008: Alan Mutka has become a young scientist

LARICS research team has become stronger as our project collaborator Alan Mutka has got a 6-year contract to become employed as a young scientist working on the research project 036-3017 "Integrated Control of Robotic Systems in Complex Environments". His main topic of research is intelligent environment interpretation by using robot vision.

September 25, 2008: Demonstration of INTECO robot for hydrodynamic processing of concrete surfaces

LARICS took part in the presentation of a robot for hydrodynamic processing of concrete elements that was built by the Croatian company INTECO, Zagreb. LARICS built a command console for that robot. Demonstration carried out at the location of the hydro power plant Varazdin was very successful and plans for future collaboration between INTECO and LARICS were discussed during and after the event.

September 20, 2008: LARICS received PLC Modicon M340 and two BLDC motor drives as a donation from Schneider Electric, Zagreb

LARICS has got a valuable donation from Schneider Electric, Zagreb – latest version of PLC Modicon M340 and two brushless DC motor drives to be mounted on a planar robot arm. Motors are equipped with precise gearboxes and resolvers. This will allow our Lab to develop a new robot that will be useful for demonstration of modern robot control concepts.

September 16, 2008: Ivan Pankretic has become a diploma engineer

On September 16, 2008 LARICS student Ivan Pankretic (advised by Prof. Bogdan) successfully defended his diploma thesis and became a diploma engineer. Ivans thesis was entitled "Microprocessor system for control of a 2 DOF platform". The results he obtained will serve for further work on that subject.

September 15, 2008: LARICS has got a planar robot as a donation from DAMCO, Croatia

We have received a valuable donation from DAMCO, Croatia: a planar robot MAJA. The robot will be a very important element of an Internet Accessible Laboratory (IAL). We express our gratitude to our donator, Mr. Vladimir Dam, the owner of the company and the member of the alumni of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb.

September 15, 2008: Stjepan Bogdan presented the paper at the MSC 2008 in San Antonio, USA

Prof. Stjepan Bogdan attended 2008 IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control in San Antonio, USA. He presented the paper "Fuzzy logic navigation in multi agent systems". During his stay in San Antonio, Prof. Bogdan met with chairmen of the previous and the future IEEE MSC conferences. It is our pleasure to announce that 2012 IEEE MSC will be held in Dubrovnik.

September 04, 2008: We are building new laboratory and industry equipment

Larics student Kristijan Brkic is building a two-wheel self-balancing mobile robot as a part of his diploma thesis. So far the body of the vehicle as well as the power and control modules are finished and prepared for functional testing (see the picture).
Also, Larics Ph.D. students Ivica Draganjac and Alan Mutka have built a console for control of robots developed by Croatian company Inteco used in the sanation of concrete buildings (see the picture).

August 29, 2008: Larics has a paper in the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems

It is our great pleasure to announce that the latest results of the research work on the control of a helicopter as an unmanned aerial vehicle are presented in the paper Palunko I.; Bogdan S.; Small Helicopter Control Design Based on Model Reduction and Decoupling that is published in the Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, DOI: 10.1007/s10846-008-9260-3, 2008.

July 15, 2008: Larics student Maja Varga received a Top Stipendship for the Top Students Award

It is our great pleasure to inform you that Larics student Maja Varga has become a recipient of the Top Stipendship for the Top Students Award for the year 2008. Her perfect accomplishments during  studying qualified her for this prestigious award. Congratulations!

July 15, 2008: Ivana Palunko and Domagoj Tolic have got a scholarship at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA

Two excellent ex-Larics students Ivana Palunko and Domagoj Tolic will join Larics Ph.D. student Damjan Miklic in the laboratory of Prof. Rafael Fierro at the Electrical & Computer Eng. Department of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. They have received a full scholarship and they will be enrolled in the Ph.D. program under advisorship of Prof. Fierro.

July 15, 2008: Damjan Miklic has got a Fulbright Scholarship Award

Larics Ph.D. student Damjan Miklic received a Fulbright Scholarship Award for the period of August 01, 2008 - May 31, 2009. He is going to the laboratory of Prof. Rafael Fierro at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA. The subject of his research there will be control of robot formations.

July 14, 2008: Davor Bakovic, Lana Doric-Pecina, Luka Miljak, Denis Namlic, Matko Orsag, Mario Samardzija and Maja Varga have become diploma engineers

On July 10, 2008 seven LARICS students (all advised by Prof. Bogdan) successfully defended their diploma theses and became diploma engineers. Davors thesis was entitled "Mathematical model of a current transformer", Lanas thesis was "Grid based formation control", Lukas thesis was "Swarm simulation and modeling", Denis thesis was Fuzzy state controller, Matkos thesis was "Hybrid control of quadrotor", Marios thesis was "Hovercraft based on asymmetrical condenser", and finally, Majas thesis was "Fuzzy control of quadrotor". They all did excellent jobs and they picked a perfect timimg for graduation before a long hot summer.

July 14, 2008: Larics has a paper in the Journal on Transportation Research Part C

It is our great pleasure to announce that the results of the work on the project "Advanced Control of Industrial Plants - Road Tunnel Ucka Ventilation Control System" are presented in the paper Bogdan S.; Birgmajer B.; Kovacic Z.; Model predictive and fuzzy control of a road tunnel ventilation system, that was just published in the Journal on Transportation Research Part C, Vol. 16, No. 5, 2008, pp. 574-592.

July 12, 2008: Alan Mutka presented the paper at the 17th IFAC World Congress in Seoul, Korea

IFAC World Congress is organized by the International Federation of Automatic Control every three years. This year at the 17th IFAC World Congress in Seoul, Korea, LARICS Ph.D. student Alan Mutka defended LARICS colors by presenting the paper "A low cost vision based localization system using fiducial markers". Alan was impressed by the size of the event and perfect organization which included presentation of new humanoid robots designed especially for research.

July 08-09, 2008: First Bachelors of Science from LARICS

In two hot July days we have got first 16 LARICS Bachelors of Science who successfully defended their Bachelor Theses and thus finished the three-year studying program according to the "Bologna agreement". Their names are as follows: Ivan Dijan, Ivan Jakus, Davor Jerbic, Luka Kalinovcic, Ante Kapuralic, Tomislav Kavur, Natasa Kovjanovic, Petar Mateljak, Lovro Milankovic, Sime Mrsa, Dijana Namlic, Isak Nuhić, Marijo Radman, Robert Rantes, Marko Rudman, Zoran Vrhovski. We hope to see them all advancing towards the M.Sc. degree.

July 04, 2008: Presentations of LARICS papers at the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics – ISIE 2008, Cambridge, Great Britain

This year LARICS was very active at the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics – ISIE 2008 that was held in Cambridge, England, at one of the most famous and oldest universities in the world. ISIE is one of the major conferences organized by the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society. Zdenko Kovacic was the Track Co-Chair for Control, also he chaired two sessions (one oral and one poster). Ivica Draganjac and Damir Arbula presented their papers, "Dual Camera Surveillance System for Control and Alarm Generation in Security Applications" and "Distributed Algorithm for Anchor-Free Network Localization Using Angle of Arrival", respectively. On July 03, 2008 we were sightseeing London during the sunniest day ever (we had only three heavy showers which was excellent).

June 29, 2008: Stjepan Bogdan presented the paper at the 16th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation MED08

There is a tradition of active participation of Larics researchers at the Mediterranean Conferences on Control and Automation. This year at the MED'08 held in Ajaccio, France, Stjepan Bogdan presented the paper entitled "Dynamic Routing in Multi-AGV Systems Based on Extended Banker Algorithm" showing the latest results in this attractive research area.

June 26, 2008: Ivana Palunko presented the paper at the International Symposium on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Orlando, USA

Although she was that close to Disneyland, Ivana found enough inspiration to first successfully present her paper "Small Helicopter Control Design Based on Model Reduction and Decoupling" at the International Symposium on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that was organized by Prof. Kimon Valavanis in Orlando, USA. Do not worry, she had enough time to visit Disneyland and besides many nice gifts, she brought nice memories back home.

June 14, 2008: Tamara Petrovic presented the paper at the 2008 American Control Conference

Tamara had her first-ever paper presentation in Seattle, the hometown of Microsoft, where she actively participated in the prestigious 2008 American Control Conference. The title of the paper was "Matrix-Based Approach to Sequence Analysis in Multiple Reentrant Flowlines" where a method for extension of matrix model of manufacturing system was presented in order to provide an efficient tool for analysis of systems with various dispatching sequences of shared resources. After she broke the ice, we expect from Tamara to continue with her successful work.

June 13, 2008: Two LARICS student groups are the recipients of the 2008 Rector Award

Nominated as the first and second best candidates of the Faculty of EE&C, two LARICS student groups: i) Davor Mihaljevic, Robert Rantes and Petar Mateljak, ii) Zoran Vrhovski, Ivan Jakus, Natasa Kovjanovic, have become the recipients of the 2008 Rector Award for their student works entitled "Robotic Alka" and "Visual feedback-based RC blimp control". We are really proud that a nice tradition is continued  - eight Rector Awards of students from our Lab received in the last eight years.

June 10, 2008: Prof. Miklos Vajta held the lecture "Stabiliy and blow-up of a nonlinear heat process"

Our distinguished guest, Prof. Miklos Vajta, visited the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing and held the invited lecture on the stability and approximate solution of a second order, nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation with given boundary- and initial conditions. A typical problem is to determine the transient temperature distribution of solids for given initial- and boundary conditions.

June 05, 2008: Interview in FunkyMem On-line Magazine

FunkyMem is a new on-line magazine that covers different themes of human life including ethics, philosophy, sports, technology, culture and many others. FunkyMem issue No.4 brings an interview with Prof. Zdenko Kovacic who spoke about the future of robotics and its influence on our everyday lives.

April 21, 2008: LARICS Workshops at the Festival of Science

LARICS has been present at the Festival of Science held in Zagreb, April 21-26 2008 by organizing two Workshops, Fifi - Remotely controlled mobile platform, and Smart Zeppelin. The festival is traditionally organized by the Technical Museum Zagreb, British Council and the University of Zagreb.

March 04, 2008: Nikola Rosic successfully defended diploma thesis

LARICS student Nikola Rosic succesfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "Control system for a 2 DOF platform". The task Nikola successfully solved was to develop a nonlinear dynamic model of a 2 DOF platform using Matlab. Then he developed a linear control program for positioning of a ball on the real laboratory platform. The positioning was accomplished by controlling two servo motors using the information from a mounted video camera.

March 01, 2008: Tamara Petrovic has become a young scientist

LARICS research team has become stronger as our ex-student Tamara Petrovic has got a 6-year contract to become a young scientist working on the research project 036-3016 "Task Planning & Scheduling in Robotic and Autonomous Systems". Her main topic of research is advanced control of discrete event systems.

January 18, 2008: Presentation of the 3rd-year student projects

New study program at our Faculty gave the chance to the students of the third year to work together in the groups of 6-8 people on some practical projects. Twenty students advised by Larics teachers worked on three projects: "Smart Zeppelin Control", "4-legged horse robot", and "Knight with a spear robot". To the big surprise of all students, who were not yet aware of their great capabilities, the results of the projects and related project presentations were really excellent.

A SolidWorks model of a robot knight and a 4-legged robot horse	A construction of four robot legs (see also a short one-leg movie)

January 08, 2008: New R&D project "Exploration robot for fire fighting units"

Excellent news for LARICS in the first days of New Year! The project proposal "Exploration robot for fire fighting units" that was prepared in collaboration with Ziegler d.o.o. Zagreb and submitted to the National Foundation for Science, Higher Education and Technological Development of the Republic of Croatia (NZZ), has been positively assessed by international reviewers and accepted for funding during a two-year period (2008/09). The main objective of the project is to build a mobile robot for use in fire fighting units for exploration of buildings in case of fire, earthquake or other disaster. The aim of the robot is to explore unknown buildings, detect various sources of danger (explosive gases, various obstacles etc.), and locate people possibly hurt in the accident before the firemen start their intervention.

November 20, 2007: Miroslav Kovac successfully defended diploma thesis

LARICS student Miroslav Kovac succesfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "Modeling, simulation and control of city traffic". It is well known that traffic jams are part of our everyday life in big cities. Miroslav attempted to create a nonlinear model of city traffic regulated by traffic lights, taking into account the number of vehicles and their speed. The whole work was done using Matlab and the simulation results showed very useful and interesting relations between the frequency of vehicles and the duration of traffic lights` turn on-turn off intervals.

November 16, 2007: 1st Scientific-professional CSR Workshop "Robotic Systems 2007"

Croatian Society for Robotics (CSR) organized the 1st Scientific-professional CSR Workshop "Robotic Systems 2007" which was held in the National Technical Centre in Kraljevica. About thirty people from Croatian robotic industry and Croatian academia gathered together to present their work and discuss possible ways of bilateral and multilateral collaboration. During the round-table discussion, the representative of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, Mrs Gordana Prutki-Pecnik presented possibilities of submitting the collaborative project proposals to the Eureka and FP7 funding programs. Larics team (Zdenko Kovacic, Stjepan Bogdan, Alan Mutka, Ivica Draganjac) played important role in the organization and participation in the event.

November 14, 2007: Stjepan Bogdan has become an Associate Professor

In only three years Professor Stjepan Bogdan fulfiled all conditions necessary to get a promotion to the Associate Professor position. Professor Bogdan will be remembered as the first Assistant Professor working at the Faculty of EE&C who advanced to higher position two years before the expiration of a usual five-year election period. Congratulations!

November 11, 2007: LARICS student Luka Kalinovcic has qualified for the World Student ACM-ICPC competition

It is our great pleasure to inform you about great success of the Zagreb University Informatics teams at the CERC 2007 - The 2007 ACM Central European Regional Contest that was held in Prague, November 09-12, as a part of the International Collegiate Programming Contest. Among 67 teams from 34 Central-European universities, the first Zagreb team led by third-year LARICS student Luka Kalinovcic won the second place and thus, qualified for the world competition of 80 world best teams, that is going to be held at the Banff Springs University, Alberta, Canada. The second Zagreb team, whose member was LARICS student Davor Jerbic, won the fifth place, which is also an excellent result.

November 06, 2007: LARICS has got one SolidWorks Educational License

Our laboratory has purchased and installed an educational version of SolidWorks - software for 3D design of mechanical constructions. The software will be used by the third-year LARICS students who are working on their projects - the construction of Alkar - a robotic knight on a horse with a spear used to hit alka (a metal cast circular object).

October 23, 2007: Three LARICS students have become diploma engineers

It is a great pleasure to announce that three LARICS students, Ivana Palunko, Mario Dogan, and Danijel Milisic successfully defended their diploma works. Ivana worked on modeling, simulation and control of a helicopter. Mario used genetic algorithms to generate control sequences for a straight and circular motion of a hexapod robot. Just to give you a flavour of what has been done, you can see a short movie (13 MB) showing the straight-forward motion of the hexapod robot with the blocked front right-hand leg. Danijel developed an application for face recognition using a low cost web camera.

October 08, 2007: Impressions from the IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control, October 01-03, 2007, Singapore

Stjepan Bogdan and Zdenko Kovacic were participants of the 2007 IEEE Multi-conference on Systems and Control that joined two well established annual conferences of IEEE, International Conference on Control Applications (CCA), and International Symposium on Intelligent Control (ISIC), this time in Singapore. Spending several days in a tropical paradise with palm trees and orchides at every street corner of extremely beautiful Singapore city, was a great experience (“Image courtesy of the Singapore Tourism Board”).

September 18, 2007: Nine LARICS students have become diploma engineers

It was a day to remember! Nine LARICS students (eight of them advised by Stjepan Bogdan) successfully defended their diploma works: Robert Pavlovic, Vedran Bobanac, Borna Buntic, Andrija Ersek, Matko Medenjak, Sasa Oreskovic, Tamara Petrovic, Domagoj Tolic, and Tomislav Vlah. There is no need to mention that all of them did excellent jobs. Tamara graduated with highest honors - her score through all five years of studying is unbeatable - 5.0 ! Others were not far from that. It will be interesting to see whether we will have such extraordinary graduation day again. We wish all of them have great professional careers!

September 17, 2007: LARICS students Maja Varga, Matko Orsag and Mario Dogan are recepients of the 2007 Rector Award

Again three (see the previous news), but different LARICS students, being the third best candidates of the Faculty of EE&C, Maja Varga, Matko Orsag and Mario Dogan have become the recipients of the 2007 Rector Award for their student work entitled "AHRS-based control of a quadrotor". Let us just proudly say that LARICS students have continued a remarkable achievement - ten Rector Award laureates from our Lab in the last seven years. Let`s celebrate!

July 10, 2007: LARICS students Tatjana Djebro, Ivana Fazinic and Vedran Sesar have become diploma engineers

Three LARICS students, Tatjana Djebro, Ivana Fazinic and Vedran Sesar, successfully defended their diploma works. Tatjana built a mathematical model of a Zeppelin type of a blimp and designed an LQ controller for navigation control. Ivana designed a fuzzy controller for control of a 2 DOF laboratory aeroplane by using fuzzy Lyapunov stability criteria and fuzzy numbers. Vedran added a client application to Leonardo program which enabled control of SCARA robot Kiwi via TCP/IP. Now it is possible to plan trajectories by using Leonardo, send references to Kiwi and execute the trajectories.

July 03, 2007: Participation in the Workshop on Networked Systems for Intelligent Sensing and Control in Kalamata, Greece

Stjepan Bogdan and Zdenko Kovacic participated in the MED07 post-conference Workshop on Networked Systems for Intelligent Sensing and Control organized by Professors Panos Antsaklis and Manolis Christodoulou in Kalamata, a pictoresque Greek resort known worldwide for extra quality virgin olive oil. Stjepan`s paper "Decentralized decision making in multi agent systems" presented a methodology for decision making in the systems with multiple agents driven not only by repulsion and attraction forces, but also by a self-generated force. Zdenko`s paper "Network-based System for Intelligent Video Surveillance, Control and Alarm Generation in Security Applications" described the implementation of an integrated video-based surveillance system able to perform different tasks such as detection of human motion, recognition of human objects, counting people traffic, as well as keeping record of a current number of people in the surveyed area.

July 02, 2007: Successful presentations of LARICS papers at the 15th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation MED07 in Athens, Greece

This year LARICS was very active at the 15th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation in Athens, Greece. Zdenko Kovacic was a Program Chair, Stjepan Bogdan was a Paper Review Process Coordination and Program Logistics Chair, while Tomislav Reichenbach was responsible for the Paper Submission Coordination. Darko Duzanec, Stjepan Bogdan and Zdenko Kovacic presented their papers in front of the elite audience. On June 26, 2007 we were sightseeing the Acropolis during our hottest day ever (thermometers registered unbeleivable 47 degrees Celsius). The photo below was taken the same day by Tomislav around 7 p.m. at the Divani Caravel hotel pool.

July 02, 2007: Nenad Smolic-Rocak presented the paper at the International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation REV07 in Porto, Portugal

Although challenged by a rich social program of the REV07 Conference, let us just mention the visit to the famous Taylor`s porto winery, Nenad Smolic-Rocak found enough time and inspiration to present the paper entitled "Matlab Real-Time Worksho-based Internet Accessible Robot Control Laboratory". He returned to our lab with a lot of enthusiasm regarding our ambitious plan to build a virtual and remote control laboratory.

July 01, 2007: Damjan Miklic has become a young scientist

LARICS Ph.D. student Damjan Miklic has become a young scientist working on the research project 036-3016 "Task Planning & Scheduling in Robotic and Autonomous Systems". His main topic of research is advanced control of robot formations. Besides, he will continue collaborating at the technological project "Autonomous mobile sensor platform for closed space surveillance and cleaning".

May 03, 2007: LARICS signed a contract with Ziegler, Zagreb

It is our great pleasure that Ziegler d.o.o. Zagreb has decided to engage LARICS R&D team to develop a program simulator for training of firemen working with the command console for pumps on the Ziegler`s fire fighting vehicles. We beleive that this is only a beginning of a fruitful long-term collaboration. You can see below the vehicle manufactured for the Zagreb Airport (the courtesy of Ziegler).

April 11, 2007: LARICS signed a new contract with Exor Control Engineering, Zagreb

Our long-term collaboration with Croatian company Exor Control Engineering, Zagreb, has been confirmed by signing a new contract for the year 2007. Main LARICS contributions are expected in the improvement of the previously developed systems for paper machine control.

April 03, 2007: LARICS student Sinisa Dujmovic has become a diploma engineer

A LARICS student Sinisa Dujmovic successfully defended his diploma work entitled "Control of SCARA robot Kiwi from Matlab via TCP/IP". In his work the Matlab Real Time Workshop (RTW) is used as a backbone of the Internet accessible robot control laboratory. For this purpose server and client function blocks for Simulink were built as a connection to the Internet and target robot control hardware, respectively. The paper describing the implementation of the system has been submitted for possible presentation at the International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation.

March 02, 2007: LARICS students Zlatko Horvat and Vjeran Magdic have become diploma engineers

Two LARICS students, Zlatko Horvat and Vjeran Magdic, successfully defended their diploma works. Zlatko`s thesis was entitled "Development of Elements of SCADA System for Web Browsers", while Vjeran`s was "Supervision and Control of Gravel Separation Process". Both theses got excellent grades, first describing the implementation of the Web SCADA connected through the OPC server with the industrial PLC, while the second one describing the PLC-based solution of the automaton for the gravel separation facility. Good job, guys!!

January 25, 2007: LARICS has two R&D projects supported by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports

We are very pleased that two projects proposed to the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports are going to be sponsored in the period 2007-2009. The first one, "Integrated Control of Robotic Systems in Complex Environments," was proposed by Prof. Zdenko Kovacic, and the second one, "Task Planning and Scheduling in Robotic and Autonomous Systems" was proposed by Prof. Stjepan Bogdan. Both projects are also participating in the scientific program "Intelligent Robotic Systems and Autonomous Vehicles" led by Prof. Ivan Petrovic.

December 19, 2006: LARICS students Marko Karas and Danijel Krapinec are new diploma engineers

We are happy to announce that two LARICS students successfully defended their diploma works. Marko`s thesis was entitled "Control of Parker Servo System with Ultimodule Control Unit", while Danijel`s was "Self-learning Fuzzy Controller as a Simatic PLC Function Block". Both theses got excellent grades, first describing an Internet-based control of the industrial servo system (part of the Viremco project), while the second one describing the implementation of the sensitivity-based self-organizing fuzzy controller as a block for the widely used industrial PLC. Congratulations to both of them!

December 16, 2006: Professor Kovacic is a a new president of the Croatian Society for Robotics

Professor Zdenko Kovacic was elected for a new president at the annual summit of the Croatian Society for Robotics. Professor Stjepan Bogdan has become a member of the Executive Committee, and Nenad Smolic-Rocak is a new member of the Supervisory Committee. Croatian Society for Robotics gathers people interested in promotion of robotics in education, business, science, and arts.

December 12, 2006: Impressions from the USA Tour

Professors Zdenko Kovacic and Stjepan Bogdan were on the USA tour visiting two universities - The Oklahoma State University (OSU) in Stillwater and the University of Texas (UTA), The Automation and Robotics Research Institute (ARRI) in Arlington. They gave a thorough presentation of LARICS research work and had fruitful discussions with Professor Rafael Fierro and his colleagues about enhancing collaboration between two entities. During meetings with Prof. Reid (Dean of College of Engineering), Prof. Tree (Associate Dean for Research) and Prof. Teague (Head of School of EE&C), strong support was given to the further joint actions. At ARRI, Z.K & S.B participated in the two-day Systems Workshop on Adaptive & Networks SWAN 06 organized by Professor Frank.L. Lewis. In the very inspiring and friendly atmosphere, five generations of advisors - students gathered and presented their current research work. The peak of the social program was a dinner in one of the best US restaurants - Texas de Brazil.

November 21, 2006: LARICS students Lana Kusulja and Josip Nizetic have become diploma engineers

Another two students from our Lab succesfully defended their diploma theses. Lana`s thesis was entitled "Modeling and control of the FESTO assembly line", while Josip`s was "Control of a nonholonomic mobile robot formation". Both of them have achieved very good results - Lana was able to program the system with an arbitrary order of assembly operations, while Josip solved some problems related to changes of robot formations under serious constraints.

November 17, 2006: Technomobil donated books to department library

Tehnomobil j.t.d., Zagreb donated ten books Z. Kovacic, S. Bogdan "Fuzzy Controller Design: Theory and Applications" to the library of the Department of Control and Computer Engineering. Thanks to that valuable donation, books will be available to all students interested in this area of intelligent control. Tehnomobil and LARICS collaborated on the development of a complex simulator for testing equipment used in building automation.

October 09, 2006: Impressions from the 2006 IEEE CCA, CACSD and ISIC, October 03-06, 2006, Munich, Germany

Bruno Birgmajer, Zdenko Kovacic, Damjan Miklic and Nenad Smolic-Rocak presented their papers at the 2006 IEEE Conference on Control Applications (CCA), Symposium on Computer-Aided Control Systems Design (CACSD) and International Symposium on Intelligent Control (ISIC) that was held in Munich, Germany. Besides a busy conference schedule, the LARICS team (with Stjepan Bogdan) found enough energy to join the Oktoberfest festivities. For those who are curious how it was, there are some nice photos of the conference venue and its surroundings.

September 28, 2006: Bruno Birgmajer defended his Masters Thesis

On September 28th 2006, Bruno Birgmajer successfully defended his Masters Thesis and received a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Bruno`s thesis was entitled "Integrated vision system for supervision and guidance of a steam generator tube inspection manipulator". The main result of his work is a vision-based control system fully tested in the nuclear power plant in Lianyungang, China (see the news of July 19, 2006). Congratulations, Bruno!

September 25, 2006: Vecernji list is writing about LARICS mobile robot projects

Giving an emphasis on the mobile robots used in our homes, the leading Croatian daily newspapers "Vecernji list" is writing also about current LARICS mobile robot projects.

September 19, 2006: LARICS students Damir Dobrina and Alan Mutka have become diploma engineers

Two our students successfully defended their diploma theses and thus became engineers. Damir`s thesis was entitled "Automated design of fuzzy control algorithms by using state-space trajectories", while Alan`s thesis was entitled "Implementation of a control system for indoor cleaning mobile sensor platform". Both theses were excellent, Damir`s resulting with the accepted conference paper at the IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control 2006 in Munich, Germany, and Alan`s resulting in the successful integration of sonar and digital compass into the mobile sensor platform control system based on the donated state-of-the-art Ultimodule hardware.

July 19, 2006: Successfull inspection in China

As a part of a project with croatian company HRID-NDT d.d, specialized in non-destructive testing, LARICS has developed motion control and visual supervision systems for the HRID steam-generator tube inspection manipulator. The developed systems were put to the test during an inspection of Tianwan nuclear power plant in Lianyungang, China, and passed with flying colours. Bruno Birgmajer, who carried out most of the job, will present the results in his Master Thesis scheduled for defense in September, as well as in the conference paper accepted for presentation at the IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control 2006 in Munich, Germany.

July 12, 2006: A delegation from Albert Ziegler Gmbh visited LARICS

A delegation from Albert Ziegler Gmbh - Mr. Schelle, Mr. Habazin and Mr. Duzanec visited our Lab to investigate possibilities of starting a long-term R&D collaboration. Ziegler is a company specialized for manufacturing of fire-fighting vehicles and accompanying equipment. The main topic of discussions was an introduction of smart mobile robots for exploration of spaces burning in fire.

July 11, 2006: LARICS students Ivana Palunko and Andrija Ersek are the recipients of the 2006 Rector Award

Being the second best candidates of the Faculty of EE&C, LARICS students Ivana Palunko and Andrija Ersek have become the recipients of the 2006 Rector Award for their student work entitled "Fly-by-wire control of a helicopter model". We are really proud that Ivana and Andrija continue a tradition - seven Rector Award laureates from our Lab in the last six years. Bravo for both of you!!

July 11, 2006: Prof. Timothy Chang from NJIT visited LARICS

During his visit to the Faculty of EE&C, Prof. Timothy Chang from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, spent some time with us in our Lab. Since his research interests are in advanced servo systems and robotics, we had a great opportunity to discuss possible ways for intercontinental cooperation.

June 23, 2006: Prof. Frank L. Lewis held the lecture "Wireless Sensor Networks"

Our distinguished guest, Prof. Frank. L. Lewis, visited the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing and held the invited lecture on wireless sensor networks and their control based on the effective matrix-based approach.

June 21, 2006: Katarina Bodor has become a diploma engineer

Our student Katarina Bodor successfully defended her diploma thesis entitled "Implementation of a Two-way Communication Interface in Matlab for Control of Aeroplane Laboratory Setup" and thus became a diploma engineer. Her plans are to go to Spain and spend three months on practice in one Spanish company. Congratulations!

May 22, 2006: Springer Verlag London has published the book "Manufacturing Systems Control Design: A Matrix-based Approach"

The Springer Verlag London has just published the book "Manufacturing Systems Control Design: A Matrix-based Approach", coauthored by Stjepan Bogdan, Frank.L. Lewis, Zdenko Kovacic, and J. Mireles. The book is the result of a more than 10 years collaboration between LARICS and Prof. Lewis in the discrete events systems control area. The book contains valuable contributions of several  LARICS students.

May 16, 2006: Ivica Draganjac has become a diploma engineer

Our student Ivica Draganjac successfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "Control of a 2 DOF Aeroplane Setup" and thus became a diploma engineer. He did an excellent job as he succeeded to control a fully unstable setup of a two degrees of freedom aeroplane (see Figure). Congratulations!

April 14, 2006: LARICS received RFID equipment as a donation from Siemens, Zagreb

LARICS has got a valuable donation from Siemens, Zagreb - equipment for working with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology. This will allow our Lab to develop new concepts of RFID-based FMS control as well as other RFID-based applications (e.g. automated registration of garbage collection).

February 14, 2006: Croatian companies became the partners on the technological project

Croatian companies Alarm Automatika, Rijeka; EXOR, Zagreb, Telital mobitel, Zagreb, and XYLON, Zagreb signed contracts to collaborate on the technological project "Autonomous mobile sensor platform for closed space surveillance and cleaning" that is financially supported by Sitek S.p.A., Italy and by the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports.

February 13, 2006: New project of LARICS and HRID d.d., Zagreb

LARICS and HRID d.d. Zagreb signed a one-year contract to work together on the project "Control system for a 3DOF steam generator tube inspection manipulator". It is worth to mention that the result of the project will be the manipulator that is completely designed by Croatian engineers. The control system is based on the Ultimodule hardware already used in the Lab for control of a SCARA robot KIWI. Besides servo control, LARICS will develop integrated vision system for supervision and guidance of the manipulator.

January 31, 2006: Ranko Munk has become a diploma engineer

Our student Ranko Munk successfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "Control of SCARA Robot KIWI via Internet" and became a diploma engineer. Here you can see the outlook of user`s GUI (client) for control of the robot. Congratulations!

January 19, 2006: Colleagues from Rostock University visited our Department and LARICS laboratory

Dr. Wolfgang Drewelow and Dr. Olaf Simanski from the Institute of Automation, University of Rostock, Germany have come in Zagreb to spend one week in the Department of Control and Computer Engineering. Their visit is a continuation of the fruitful 45-years long collaboration between Rostock and Zagreb Universities. In the lecture entitled "Current Research Projects in the Institute of Automation", our guests presented their recent research results in the fields of marine control, automotive control and control in medicine. Dr. Olaf Simanski contributed to the book "Fuzzy Controller Design: Theory and Applications" (see previous news) with the chapter on fuzzy control of anaesthesia.

December 27, 2005: CRC Press has published the book "Fuzzy Controller Design: Theory and Applications"

We are proud to announce that the book "Fuzzy Controller Design: Theory and Applications", coauthored by LARICS lecturers Zdenko Kovacic and Stjepan Bogdan has been published by the CRC Press. The book is the result of 15 years of authors` work in fuzzy control area and it contains also many contributions from LARICS students.You can find more details in the book flyer (512 kB).

December 20, 2005: Drazen Petrovecki has become a diploma engineer

Our student Drazen Petrovecki successfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "GSM/GPRS Technology-based Wireless Measurement and Control Device" and became a diploma engineer. Here you can see the device which is fully functional and allows further development of wireless measurement and control applications. Congratulations!

December 15, 2005: Journal VIDI is writing about LARICS robotic projects

One of the most popular Croatian computer journals VIDI in the December issue (No. 117, pp. 40-41) contains a very nice article about robotic projects that are going on in our Lab. The article is entitled "Terminator 4: LARICS online". We would like to thank Sasa Kovacicek, a VIDI journalist, for his much appreciated popularisation of robotics and automation among VIDI readers.

November 25, 2005: Nenad Smolic-Rocak defended his Master Theses

On November 25th 2005, Nenad Smolic-Rocak successfully defended his master theses and received a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Nenad`s thesis was entitled "FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS CONTROL BY USING MATRIX ALGEBRA". The main result of his work is a web tool for design, simulation and control of flexible manufacturing systems FlexMan. Congratulations!

November 23, 2005: LARICS has got a grant from the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports for the technological project

Great news have come to LARICS that the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports has given a grant for the two-year technological project "Autonomous mobile sensor platform for closed space surveillance and cleaning", which is also supported by the industry partners Sitek s.p.a., Italy, Exor Control Engineering, Croatia, Telital Mobitel, Croatia, Alarm Automatika, Croatia and Xylon, Croatia.

November 22, 2005: Siemens d.d., Zagreb and LARICS plan to work together on applications of the RFID technology

A very important meeting was hosted by LARICS, where representatives of Siemens d.d., Zagreb, CAKOM d.o.o, Cakovec, and LARICS found agreement to start joint cooperation on the development of applications based on the RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology. RFID is becoming more and more popular in many practical applications including intelligent material handling systems.

November 22, 2005: Goran Genter, Jurica Mikulic and Kristijan Kusec have become diploma engineers

Three LARICS students successfully defended diploma theses and became diploma engineers. Gorans thesis was entitled "Program Tool for Operation with Petri nets and Matrix Models" and the main result is Petri.NET Simulator which is turned into a commercial product (shareware SW) and already used by our students in the Flexible Manufacturing Systems course (see Figure).

Juricas thesis was "Vision System for Face Catching and Tracking of a Human in Motion" and the result is the program application FaceCatcher that finds and follows the humans face by controlling a pan-tilt-zoom camera (see short movie ( 974 kB) how it works).

Kristijans thesis was "Building a Double Pendulum Laboratory Servo System" which resulted in the first version of a double pendulum servo system driven by a Parker BLDC servo motor drive. Once it is finished, we plan to include this laboratory setup as a part of the ViREMCO Lab.

October 19, 2005: Kresimir Petrinec is the recipient of the silver plaque Josip Loncar for the outstanding Masters Thesis

We are very happy that Kresimir Petrinec has become the recipient of the Faculty of EE&C award for the academic year 2004/2005 - the silver plaque Josip Loncar for his outstanding Masters Thesis entitled "Internet-based System for Supervision and Control of the Fish-farm". Currently, Kresimir is working as a visiting researcher in the research lab of Prof. Marcian Cirstea, Anglia University, Cambridge, Great Britain. Bravo!

October 18, 2005: Davor Ujlaki has become a diploma engineer

Our student Davor Ujlaki successfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "Image Processing Algorithms for the Purpose of Access Control" and became a diploma engineer. Here you can see two applications, people counting and traffic counting, as the result of his thesis. Congratulations!

September 20, 2005: Mladen Tomic has become a diploma engineer

Our student Mladen Tomic successfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "Modeling, Simulation and Control of FESTO FMS" and became a diploma engineer. Here below you can see an interesting detail from his thesis. You may also see a short movie FlexMan_FESTO.avi showing the results of simulation. Congratulations!

August 31, 2005: We started assembling KIWI - a SCARA robot

Our planar robot iCAD900, a donation from Systems Extensione, Ferndale, Australia, is growing fast and soon it will become a real SCARA beauty. We named it KIWI, after a beautiful endangered bird from New Zealand. Mr. Zeljko Postruzin from HRID d.o.o., Zagreb designed the construction of a 2 DOF mechanical extension having 1 prismatic and 1 revolute joint. You can compare the results of todays assembly with real kiwi and KIWIs model below.

July 05, 2005: LARICS student Alan Mutka is the recipient of the 2005 Rector Award

Being the second best candidate of the Faculty of EE&C, LARICS student Alan Mutka has become the recipient of the 2005 Rector Award for his student work entitled "TELEGPRSm -Teleoperative Measurement System". We are very happy that Alan continues a fantastic line - five Rector Award laureats from our Lab in last five years. Congratulations!

July 06, 2005: Croatian computer journal VIDI plans to publish a series of articles about robotics technology

One of the most popular Croatian journals for computer fans VIDI has decided to write several articles about news in robotics technology.Few weeks ago they visited our Lab and discused with us about self-replicating robots designed at the Cornell University. Themes like robot soccer or control of robotized warehouses could be among the first that will appear in the next VIDI issues.

June 28, 2005: Two Parker SBC Elettronica Brushless DC motors and servoamplifiers are in the Lab

Two Parker brushless DC motors and servoamplifiers are new equipment acquisitions in the Viremco (Virtual and Remote Motion Control) Lab. These motors and amplifiers are directly compatible with lately donated ULTIMODULE servo controllers.

June 28, 2005: LARICS & HRID d.o.o., Zagreb build a SCARA robot

Today we have reached the agreement with colleagues from HRID d.o.o., Zagreb to build a four DOF SCARA robot based on the donated two DOF planar manipulator iCAD900. The whole project is expected to be finished until the end of July 2005.

June 28, 2005: LARICS has a chapter published in the book "Cutting Edge Robotics"

We are proud to announce that the latest results of the LARICS research are published in the chapter - Tomislav Reichenbach, Zdenko Kovacic, "Collision-Free Path Planning in Robot Cells Using Virtual 3D Collision Sensors ", pp. 683-706 of the book "Cutting Edge Robotics" published by ARS and edited by A. Lazinica.

June 03, 2005: Three Maxon Servoamplifiers are in the Lab

Two Maxon DC motor servoamplifiers and one brushless DC motor servoamplifier are new equipment acquisitions in the Lab. They will allow a construction of new servo devices with advanced control characteristics.

May 30, 2005: Five Wifibot mobile robots have arrived in the Lab

A conwoy of five Wifibots - four-wheeled mobile robots has arrived in our Lab. This is our biggest acquisition in this year as the whole investment was worth more than 16 thousand euros. We expect that new robots will boost our research in formation robotics, multi-robot control and control based on the usage of wireless sensor networks.

May 25, 2005: Tomislav Reichenbach and Mario Puncec defended their Master Theses

Two LARICS graduate students, Tomislav Reichenbach and Mario Puncec, successfully defended their master theses and received a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. Tomislavs thesis was entitled "Collision Avoidance in Virtual Robotized Plants", while Marios was entitled "Fuzzy and Adaptive Control Methods for Application in Servo Systems". Congratulations!

April 21, 2005: Prof.dr. Mario Essert gave the lecture "Live documents of Internet" at the LARICS seminar

Eminent Croatian scientist and professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture in Zagreb, prof.dr. Mario Essert delivered a very interesting lecture about the developed technology and software tool called Scriptrunner that allows everyone connected to the Web to create interactive digital books and live pdf documents in a very easy way. We also heard interesting presentations given by Ph.D. student Josip Kasac (Stability of fuzzy control systems), and by LARICS students Ivica Draganjac and Marko Sesar.

March 12, 2005: LARICS has got a planar robot iCAD900 as a donation from Systems Extensione, Australia

We have received a valuable donation from Systems Extensione, Ferndale, Australia: a planar robot iCAD900. The robot will be a very important element of a Virtual and Remote Motion Control Lab (VIREMCO lab). We express our gratitude to our donator, Mr. Ignac Popovic, the owner of the company and the member of the alumni of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing.

February 15, 2005: Damir Arbula has got the status of a young scientist

We are happy to announce that LARICS Ph.D. student Damir Arbula has got the official status of a young scientist. Welcome aboard! His topic of research is anchor-free localization and control of agents in mobile wireless sensor networks.

January 07, 2005: LARICS has a chapter published in the book "Deadlock Resolution in Computer-Integrated Systems"

We are proud to announce that the latest results of the researchcooperation with the group of professor Frank L. Lewis from the ARRI, Arlington, Texas, are published in the chapter - Mireles Jose, Lewis Frank L., Gurel Ayla, Bogdan Stjepan, "Deadlock Avoidance Algorithms and Implementation, a Matrix Based Approach", pp. 182-231 of the Marcel Dekker/CRC Press book "Deadlock Resolution in Computer-Integrated Systems" published in December 2004 and edited by Mengchu Zhou and Maria Pia Fanti.

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