AeRoTwin Coordinators prof. Stjepan Bogdan and Ivana Mikolić participated at the national Horizon 2020 Info Day on Spreading excellence and widening participation programme on 24th October 2019. Stjepan presented Twinning project AeRoTwin as an example of excellent written proposal and implemented project. Stjepan and Ivana then participated in a Q&A session with representatives from other faculties and institutes in order to share their knowledge and experience and increase proposal submission from Croatia.

Ivana Mikolić held an invited lecture " Managing EU scientific-research projects " at the University of Dubrovnik on 10th of October 2019 . More than 30 University's teaching and administrative staff participated in the lecture. The lecture was organized in the scope of AeRoTwin project and by the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society University of Zagreb Student Branch Chapter. The lecture presented in detail all phases of the projects - from proposal writing, to project implementation, and to evaluation. The possibilities of using EU funds from different programmes were presented. Project preparation and management were elaborated through practical examples. All project phases were presented from a technical, managerial, financial and administrative perspective. The aim of the lecture was to gain a better understanding of EU projects, proposals and calls, as well as the tools used to manage them.

Within NATO SfP project MORUS and EU project AeRoTwin, Lovro Marković and Marko Car attended the European Control Conference from 25th to 28th of June, 2019 in Naples, Italy . At the conference Lovro presented their paper titled Geometric Tracking Control of Aerial Robots Based on Centroid Vectoring . Their paper focuses on presenting the concept of geometric tracking control for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based on variations in centerof gravity (CoG). The proposed UAV model has the ability to exploit its dynamic CoG as a means of stabilization and control. A mathematical model of such a system is used as a base for developing the nonlinear geometric tracking controller on the special Euclidean group SE(3). Finally, two unique UAV models, presented with a trajectory tracking problem, are simulated in a realistic simulation environment. Performance of the selected control terms is analyzed based on relevant simulation results.

The paper titled Centroid vectoring control using aerial manipulator: Experimental results was presented by Antun Ivanović at the international conference IEEE International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems within projects Specularia and AeRoTwin. The conference was held 11-14 June 2019 in Atlanta, USA . This paper addresses the issues of aerial manipulation and its dynamic center of mass variations by deriving a control principle capable of exploiting this disturbance as a means to stabilize the UAV. The UAV utilizes both rotors variations and centroid vectoring for attitude control and the control structure was further augmented with position control. The main focus is on experimental validation of the system.

The first edition of the two-day end-user aerial vehicles workshop DroneDays , held at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb, Croatia, on 26 and 27 March 2019 , was a great success and exceeded all expectations. Over 200 participants listened to 17 lectures by aerial robotics experts from 7 countries, there were 9 demonstrations in the flying zone, and some 2000 visitors came to the company expo to learn about aerial vehicles and their applications. DroneDays was organized by AeRoTwin partner UNIZG-FER and LARICS as part of the EU H2020 project AeRoTwin. Read more about the exciting event in the detailed news.

AeRoTwin team member LARICS ' project manager Ivana Mikolić went on 29th March 2019 to the LEAP Summit in Zagreb , Croatia, where she held a lecture at the EU & ME Stage titled " Increasing robotics research excellence with the EU ". Ivana talked about her experiences in managing EU and Croatian projects, why they are important and how they can be used to advance our scientific and technological potential. Ivana also gave some recent examples of LARICS projects, such as AeRoTwin and DroneDays , to show how EU funding can successfully be applied in the context of robotics in Croatia and the EU.

Members of the AeRoTwin project team went to Bucharest, Romania, from 19 to 24 March, to take part in the European Robotics Forum 2019 . There they attended lectures and workshops, presented their work and some of the robots they work on, and brought their work closer to the public and the robotics community. Project team members who went to ERF2019 representing their institutions and AeRoTwin are the following: Mirko Kovac (Imperial College London), Anibal Ollero (University of Seville), Zdenko Kovačić, Matko Orsag, Ivana Mikolić, Antun Ivanović, Barbara Arbanas and Bruno Marić (UNIZG-FER LARICS). The event's programme can be found here .

Professor Stjepan Bogdan of LARICS went to Abu Dhabi to take part in the 2019 International Symposium on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence on March 10 and 11, where he held a lecture in the Aerial and Underwater Systems session. The lecture was titled "Aerial Robotics – manipulation and interaction with the environment" , dealing with the topic of present results in aerial robotics done in LARICS, particularly when it comes to the problem of controlling the force of interaction between an aerial vehicle equipped with a dexterous manipulator and the environment. You can find more info on the event, as well as a book of abstracts, by following this link .