home_page – Specularia

Meeting with Agrivi

specularia — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 13:02:28 +0000

On 24 April 2019, members of LARICS working on the project went to Agrivi, a company specialized in applying the newest software and technological innovations to agriculture. Matko, Ivana, Antun and Marsela talked to them about which agricultural crops and cultures they should use as part of the project and which activities can be done with the individual plants in their various stages of growth. They also learned a lot about Agrivi’s work and how they use these innovative technologies, which they could also apply to the project in a number of ways.

Panel discussion – The Future of Agriculture in the EU

specularia — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 12:17:43 +0000

Asst. Prof. Matko Orsag was invited to be a speaker in the panel discussion titled “The Future of Agriculture in the EU” organized by the Economics Clinic (Ekonomska klinika) as part of the “My voice in the EU” (“Moj glas u EU”) event, held on 24 and 25 April 2019 in Zagreb. Together with other speakers at the panel discussion, he talked about his research field, particularly the Specularia project and the application of robotics in agriculture, as well as about future plans, trends and expectations in agricultural sciences and practical applications. Together the speakers answered the listeners’ questions. More info on the event can be found here. Photos by Ekonomska klinika:

Zagreb Energy Congress 2019

specularia — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 08:14:40 +0000

LARICS Asst. Prof. Matko Orsag took part in the Zagreb Energy Congress – ZEC 2019, organized by the IEEE Student Branch University of Zagreb on 10-14 April, 2019 at our Faculty. He held a lecture titled “Robots in Service of Human Kind” during the Academy Day of the event and told the attending students and listeners about what robots are doing for humans and what they could potentially do in the future, particularly in relation to agriculture and our Specularia project, but also in relation to the energy sector. LARICS was a silver sponsor of this event.

Lecture abstract:

In a world with increasing pollution, organic agriculture is a step forward. By reducing the amount of pesticides and GMO cultures, the amount of human labour with lower yield increases. Human labour in organic agriculture can be replaced with robot labour, so the SPECULARIA project proposes a heterogeneous system which goes beyond existing agricultural robots. This makes this system ideal for family farms. At the same time, this same technology can easily be used in the energy sector, particularly for electroenergetic system surveillance and maintenance.

All pictures are by ZEC 2019:

DroneDays 2019

specularia — Sat, 30 Mar 2019 10:58:00 +0000

The first edition of LARICS’ two day aerial vehicle end-user workshop, DroneDays2019, was held at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb on March 26 and 27, 2019. The event was a great success and it exceeded all our expectations. As part of this event, the SPECULARIA project was presented at the Laboratory’s expo booth. During the event, project team members introduced the public and DroneDays participants with the robot arm Franka, as well as the unmanned aerial vehicle with its manipulator, which are used as part of the project.

Specularia at ERF 2019

specularia — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 11:33:00 +0000

Members of LARICS went to Bucharest, Romania, on 19 to 24 March, to take part in the European Robotics Forum 2019 to represent the robotics@fer.hr brand, which includes three robotics laboratories from the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing: LARICS, LABUST and LAMOR. There they took part in lectures and workshops, presented their work and some of the laboratories’ robots and brought our work closer to the public and the robotics community. Specularia was one of the projects featured in the Agricultural Robotics Workshop.

Asst. prof. Matko Orsag held lectures in two workshops: the first one was an Aerial Robotics Workshop where he presented the newest research results in the field of aerial robotics. The second workshop was Agricultural Robotics Workshop, where Matko presented the Specularia project. He talked applying technology available in the market for indoor farming which offers structured environments, specifically by deploying a heterogeneous team of robots to work together to complete certain asks. He also explained the team’s plans for future projects, where they will apply similar solutions for vineyards and even in mariculture in fish farms.

You can see some photos from the event by following this link.

Managing Knowledge in Agriculture

specularia — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 14:05:16 +0000

Asst. Prof. Matko Orsag, Specularia Project Coordinator and Researcher, went to Čakovec on 28 February 2019 to take part in an conference on agriculture titled “Managing knowledge in agriculture” (“Upravljanje znanjem u poljoprivredi” in Croatian), where he attended lectures, met experts in this area, and presented the project, as well as its importance for potential users. Matko also talked about the use of robotics in agriculture in general and its potential future impact and uses in this field of economy and everyday life.

Conference on smart agriculture

specularia — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 21:24:25 +0000

The Croatian Innovator Association, together with the Nikola Tesla Innovation Center, organized a conference with the title “Smart agriculture – use of the technologies in agriculture” on October 18, 2018. Matko Orsag took part in the conference with a presentation entitled “Autonomous Robots in Indoor Agriculture”, presenting the new ideas and concepts developed and worked on as part of the Specularia project and LARICS‘ research. Further details on the conference can be found by following this link, whereas Marko Orsag’s presentation can be seen its entirety here.

New robotic arm arrived

specularia — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 21:23:32 +0000

Our new robotic arm has just arrived at the Laboratory, which is great news for the project, as it means that we will now be able to continue our efforts and start working on new things. This compliant multi-degree-of-freedom manipulator has the task of performing delicate handling of plants, such as flower and fruit manipulation, and plant pruning. It will work together with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), and these three robots will together form a system which can be applied to achieve versatile goals in an unstructured environment, which an indoor organic farm most certainly is.

Specularia members at IROS 2018

specularia — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 21:21:46 +0000

Our hardworking team members went to Madrid to attend another International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) to present their own, the project’s and the Lab’s work. LARICS members, including our Matko Orsag, Marsela Polić and Antun Ivanović were in Spain from 1st to 5th October and actively participated in the conference. Marsela and Matko took part in a workshop for Specularia and Antun presented an article titled: “Impedance based force control for aerial robot peg-in-hole insertion tasks”.

IROS 2018 paper accepted

specularia — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 21:20:37 +0000

Together with our partners from MORUS, the Specularia team worked hard to present an Impedance based force control for aerial robot peg-in-hole insertion tasks. Our team developed inverse kinematic solution and workspace analysis as well as the control for the arms attached to the body of the UAV. This type of robot could be used for planting and soil inspection. Feel free to read more about this experiment in the paper and we are looking forward to seeing you this September in Madrid.