Ivan Marković received funding for a new trilateral project by the Croatian National Science Foundation through the Weave initiative. HORACE is a trilateral project between UNIZG-FER, Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland, and Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia.

In HORACE, we will go beyond Euclidean distances between two points and instead consider distances between other geometric objects and account for manifolds that are not Euclidean. HORACE will lead to novel methodological developments yielding more efficient human-robot collaboration and a better understanding of its inherent geometrical structure. For more details, follow the link.

Mirjana Stjepanović, AIFORS Project manager took part in the study visit at the Robotics Innovation Center of the German Research Center for AI (DFKI) in Bremen, Germany, which was organized by NCP_WIDERA.NET and held from October 15 to 17, 2024.

The study visit proved to be an excellent platform for fostering networking and sparking innovative project ideas, paving the way for future collaborations on joint proposals under Horizon Europe and other related funding initiatives. Participants from 13 widening countries were provided valuable opportunities to exchange expertise and explore promising partnerships for upcoming robotics and artificial intelligence projects. 

The ICRA@40, the 40^th Anniversary of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation took place from September 23 to 26 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Prof. Bonsignorio actively participated, discussed research and future projects with colleagues and presented two papers about bio-inspired space robotics:

• Fabio Bonsignorio, Enrica Zereik. Distributed BSP Control for Low Earth Orbit Service Operations, 40th Anniversary of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation - ICRA@40, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 23-26, September 2024.
• Fabio Bonsignorio, Enrica Zereik. BSP Control for Visual Pointing of Satellite Directional Antennas for Geostationary Earth Orbit Service Operations, Anniversary of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation - ICRA@40, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 23-26, September 2024.

For more information click here.

(Hyper)Complex Seminar 2024 took place from September 14 to 18, 2024 in Lodz, Poland. It was organized in memory of Prof. Julian Ławrynowicz under the auspices of the Senate of the Republic of Poland.

Prof. Bonsignorio was invited to give a lecture and his talk entitled “Towards Physical AI” (online participation) was recorded and is available at the YouTube link. 

More on this seminar can be found here.

The CASE 2024 Summer School on Autonomous Systems for Smart Cities was held on August 28, 2024 in Bari, Italy during the IEEE CASE 2024 conference, which is the most important conference on Automation organized by IEEE.

Prof. Fabio Bonsignorio was one of the organizers and of the lecturers. 

Click here for more information.

The AIFORS Workshop on European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers and Gender Analysis in Research was organized by the AIFORS Lab and LAMOR and took place on Thursday 04, 2024 at UNIZG-FER.

The workshop was divided into two training courses. In the morning session, the speakers talked about compliance with the European Charter of Researchers and its role in fostering the creation of a fully functional, globally competitive, just, and inclusive European Research Area, and of the principles and requirements of the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers:

• Fabio Bonsignorio: Building a fully functional European Research Area – The cornerstone of the Renaissance 2.0, from Europe
• Miroslav Rajter: Development of university academic potential using HRS4R
• Nada Čikeš: Strategic multilateral development of HR excellence in research - the case of Alliance4Life

The afternoon session's topic was sex or gender analysis in research and the assessment of the current situation,

The AIFORS team, professors Fabio Bonsignorio, Ivan Petrović and Ivan Marković, together with Juraj Peršić from Callirad d.o.o., went to Osijek to visit companies Protostar Labs and Orqa. Together with companies' representatives, they discussed possible cooperation and joint project proposals for relevant incoming calls. You can find more in the detailed news content.

The AIFORS project offers positions for several researchers with a profile from R1 to R3 according to the European Framework for Research Careers to be part of the ERA Research Group for Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, established in the framework of the H2020 project AIFORS.

For the full Job Announcement please click here.

Applications are open until all vacancies have been filled.

Interested applicants should contact us at aifors@fer.hr.  

AIFORS project manager Mirjana Stjepanovic took part in another event related to the HORIZON Europe programme: HORIZON Europe Implementation Day in Croatia which was organized by the Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes, Ministry of Science and Education and EC on April 11, 2024.

The firsthand information regarding the entire process, from project proposal preparation, finding the project partners and submitting the proposal to the relevant Call to the information about the regulatory rules that need to be followed, was presented by experts in this field. 

A series of Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication (DEC) training sessions were included in the AIFORS work program to build the capacity of researchers, and two training sessions were organized in March 2024 at UNIZG FER.

The first DEC training, which took place on March 20, 2024, focused on networking skills, communication, dissemination of research results and intellectual property rights (IPR):

• Fabio Bonsignorio: Overcoming your Asperger syndrome: why networking is important for your research
• Mirta Anjoš: Unlock Your Network
• Ivan Petrović: IP management in Horizon projects and at UNIZG-FER
• Gordon Cheng: The importance of answering the "why" question when communicating research results
• Nicola Nosengo: How the Nature news team works

The second DEC training, which took place on March 28, 2024, focused on oral presentation of research papers and writing scientific publications:

• Ivan Marković: Oral presentation of research work
• Calogero Maria Oddo: Tactile Sensors for Collaborative Robotics: case studies and scientific publications

The target audience of these training sessions were the members of the ERA Chair team as well as the doctoral students and postdocs of LAMOR and UNIZG-FER. 

Prof. Bonsignorio participated at the European Robotics Forum 2024 (ERF ’24) in Rimini, Italy which was held from March 13-15, 2024, where he organized and chaired the Workshop on Trustable and Dependable Intelligent Robots for Smart Societies followed by the Insight Session on the same topic. He presented three AIFORS Lab students’ posters and participated in the work of the euRobotics General Assembly.

Prof. Bonsignorio also served as a member of the jury of the Georges Giralt Ph.D. Award.

Prof. Fabio Bonsignorio, in collaboration with prof. Ivan Petrovic established the AIFORS Colloquia on Natural and Artificial Intelligence as a series of small, invitation-only, face-to-face group meetings focusing on a small number of important research questions in the field of AI and robotics, with the aim to open up new avenues of research, propose solutions and strategies for theoretical, technological and societal problems, and build fruitful new collaborations.

The 1^st AIFORS colloquium, held on March 19, 2024 at UNIZG FER, focused on the research challenges and the potential enormous synergies arising from the fusion of (physics-aware) deep neural networks, soft robot and agent embodiments, and neuromorphic computing. The program included the talks of prof. Bonsignorio and invited speakers from Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany who shared their research results, visions and strategies: 

• Fabio Bonsignorio: Towards a new paradigm AI for new paradigm (soft) robotics
• Enrica Zereik: Distributed Emergent Control System for heterogeneous robotics applications
• Jens Kober: Robots Learning Through Interactions
• Yulia Sandamirskaya: Brain-inspired computing: next step in embodied AI?
• Gordon Cheng:  Purposive-AI: The Next Frontier

AIFORS postdoc. researcher Luka Petrović participated in the kick-off meeting of the DRUMS project that took place on 27-28 February 2024 in Bremen.

The project partners used the opportunity to present their institutions and discuss the work packages and Luka presented the plan for the development of resources for vocational and educational trainings, which will be led by UNIZG-FER. 

AIFORS' PhD students Vladimir and Athanasios participated in the COST Action: CA21160 - Non-globular proteins in the era of Machine Learning, 2nd ML4NGP Training School, which took place from 13-16 February 2024, at the University Pablo de Olavide, Carmona, Spain.

The school provided a dynamic and immersive learning experience of computational tools for proteins with theoretical lessons in the morning followed by hands-on practical sessions in the afternoon. It was led by 12 world-leading researchers providing comprehensive insight into recent advancements in computational resources, along with hands-on training for the study of non-globular proteins. 

For more information click here.

UNIZG is a partner in a new Erasmus+ project titled DRUMS - Deep Tech & Robotics for Human-Centered Manufacturing Systems, a three-year project with the University of Bremen, Germany as the Project Coordinator and 5 project partners: UNIZG, CETEM (ES), TECOS (SI) and EIT Manufacturing (FR). 

In the DRUMS project, a learning platform, didactic guidelines and teaching materials for Vocational and Educational Trainings (VETs) and learning materials for their students will be created. The learning platform, the didactic guidelines, and the teaching and learning materials should provide approaches to further automate the manufacturing sector, make it more efficient and, above all, more sustainable.

Prof. Bonsignorio participated at the euRobotics Topic Group coordinators and Board of Directors meeting as coordinator of the Topic Group for Standardization in the discussion and collection of ideas for the EU research strategy. The meeting took place on November 21, 2023, in Hannover, Germany and was organized by euRobotics aisbl to provide inputs to the EU Commission for the 2025-2027 Work Program in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics and the subsequent framework program.

The 2023 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023) that took place on October 1- 5, 2023, in Detroit, USA featured plenaries by world-renowned roboticists, a robot exhibition hall, special sessions, and events, as well as hundreds of technical talks on the state-of-the-art in robotics.

Prof. Bonsignorio led and held the workshop on Methods for Objective Comparison of Results in Intelligent Robotics Research and also gave an invited lecture as part of the workshop It Works Really Well!: Verification in Theory and Practice.

AIFORS' team attended the 11^th European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR 2023), which took place from 4 to 7 September in Coimbra, Portugal where researcher Karlo Koledić presented the article:

• Karlo Koledić, Ivan Marković, Ivan Petrović. Towards camera parameters invariant monocular depth estimation in autonomous driving. 2023 European Conference on Mobile Robots (ECMR 2023), Coimbra, Portugal, September 4 – September 7, 2023. 

The 22^nd World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC 2023) took place from July 9-14, 2023 in Yokohama, Japan with participation of prof. Bonsignorio and prof. Petrović.

In addition to the technical sessions, the congress program also included a series of workshops and tutorials and prof. Bonsignorio participated in the workshops on Port-Hamiltonian Systems and Applications, Gaussian Process Learning for Systems and Control and Distributed Control, Optimization and Learning for Network Systems and the tutorial on Control Systems in Synthetic Biology. He also presented two papers that he co-authored with Dr. Enrika Zeriek:

• Fabio Bonsignorio, Enrica Zereik. Merging BSP based swarm dynamics and distributed ledger technologies for smart marine infrastructures. IFAC World Congress, Yokohama, Japan, July 09-14, 2023. 
• Fabio Bonsignorio, Enrica Zereik. Belief Space Planning for Robust Humanoid Locomotion. IFAC World Congress, Yokohama, Japan, July 09-14, 2023. 

The purpose of the conference Establishment of Network of Scientific Managers which was organized by the Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes (AMPEU) and the Ministry of Science and Education, in Zagreb on June 15, 2023, was to explain the role and the significance of scientific managers in the European Scientific Area, and to present the relevant Calls of HORIZON Europe programme to the participants.

AIFORS project manager Mirjana Stjepanović received useful information related to training, networking, strengthening, and recognition of the profession of scientific managers and had an opportunity to connect with other scientific managers in Croatia.  

The AIFORS Project manager Mirjana Stjepanović participated at Info day on Widening Actions for Croatian Participants which took place on June 13, 2023 at UNIZG-FER. The event was organized by the Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes (AMPEU) and national and inernational experts presented information on the forthcoming Widening calls within HORIZON Europe and Widening evaluation process and gave useful tips for proposal writters. 

Within the 40th IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation conference (ICRA 2023) which took place from May 29 to June 2, 2023, in London prof. Bonsignorio attended the Workshop on Bio-inspired, Biomimetics and Biohybrid (Cyborg) Systems and participated in several IEEE meetings, such as the IEEE SA Working Group on Robot Agility, the IEEE SA Coordination Meeting, the IEEE RAS Technical Activities Board meeting and also the Automation Cluster meeting. He actively took part in the forum organized by the Automation Cluster and further discussed possible collaborations with potential international research partners.

On May 24, 2023 prof. Bonsignorio became a member of the UNIZG-FER Committee for Ensuring Equal Opportunities which has been established by the Faculty Council based on the joint initiative of Assoc. Prof. Anamari Nakić, PI of the CALIPER project, and prof. Fabio Bonsignorio, AIFORS ERA Chair to monitor the enforcement of the Gender Equality Act and other regulations regarding gender equality.

Prof. Bonsignorio has already been a member of the Research and Innovation Committee of the Faculty Council since October 1, 2022 and has been contributing to promoting new measures for ensuing gender equality - in research and innovation.

AIFORS' PhD students Vladimir and Athanasios together with prof. Bonsignorio attended the COST Action CA17137 - 4^th G2net Training school on Gravitational Waves, Geophysics and Machine Learning in Thessaloniki Greece, from March 28-31, 2023. The school was focused on neural networks for sensing low-frequency signals, accelerating surrogate models with machine learning, and denoising using machine learning. 

Vladimir actively participated in the school and took the bronze place at the hackathon where the goal was to determine the range of signal-to-noise ratios of different signals. Apart from that, there was an outreach activity of short storytelling, understanding the target audience and preparing a script for a monologue/video and Vladimir was selected as one of the best.

The Europe's largest robotics conference, European Robotics Forum (ERF 2023) took place from March 14-16, 2023 in Odense, Denmark with the participation of prof. Fabio Bonsignorio and prof. Ivan Petrović.

Prof. Bonsignorio co-chaired the workshop on trustworthy and reliable intelligent robots for smart societies, organized and participated in several meetings with potential European research partners as well as took part in the work of the euRobotics General Assembly. He also participated as a member of the jury of the Georges Giralt Ph.D. Award, award given to showcase PhD theses defended during the previous year  in European Universities from all areas of robotics.

Prof. Bonsignorio has published the editorial: Novel methods in embodied and enactive AI and cognition, Front. Neurorobot., 07 March 2023, Volume 17 - 2023 which is part of the research topic Novel Methods in Embodied and Enactive AI and Cognition. The editorial is available at link.

The workshop was organized by the COST Action G2Net (CA17137) and took place on September 28-30, 2022 at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Casina, Pisa, Italy. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss the state-of-the-art, as well as future challenges of machine learning applied to gravitational wave research.

Prof. Bonsignorio gave a talk entitled Pros and Cons of Mobile Sensors on September 28, 2022 and also held a series of informal meetings with the workshop participants in which he introduced them to the AIFORS project and expressed interest in a possible collaboration.

Prof. Bonsignorio served as the President of the PhD Committee at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, for the PhD defense held on September 23, 2022. 

On September 21, 2022, prof. Fabio Bonsignorio gave an invited talk entitled Towards Intelligent Soft Robotics – A New Paradigm Physical AI unifying Robust and Adaptive Soft Robotics and AI at the 7^th International Workshop on Advanced Cooperative Systems, organized by the National Center of Research Excellence for Data Science and Cooperative Systems and coordinated by prof. Ivan Petrović, the AIFORS coordinator.

This was a good opportunity to present the research strategy of the ERA Chair to the local community, as the workshop was attended by more than 70 professors, postdocs and PhD students from UNIZG-FER. This led to a series of follow-up meetings between prof. Bonsignorio and colleagues from UNIZG-FER, where the possibility of mutual collaboration was discussed.

Prof. Bonsignorio (co)organized the tutorial Blockchain technologies for robotic systems at IEEE Ro-man 2022 conference, Naples, September 2, 2022.

The program and more details can be found at the link.

Prof. Bonsignorio (co)organized the workshop Progress in reproducibility of robotics research and benchmarking at the European Robotics Forum, Rotterdam, Netherlands, June 29, 2022.

Prof. Bonsignorio delivered the presentations HumaBelief. Belief Space Planning for Robust Humanoid Locomotion and HumaBiMan. BiManual Manipulation by DL and Fractional Control on TEO Humanoid Robot at the Eurobench Summit - An essential meeting for robotics benchmarking in Europe, Madrid, Spain, on June 22, 2022.

For both presentations check the YouTube link at 30’ mark.

Project AIFORS is looking for an expert, we are announcing an open position for Grant proposal writing and project management specialist position (Project Manager) in the framework of the H2020 EU funded project AIFORS.

For the full Job Announcement please click on the above link.

The deadline for the job application is July 15, 2022.

Interested candidates should contact us at aifors@fer.hr.  

Prof. Bonsignorio (co)organized the workshop New Research Paradigms in Robotics and AI which he presented at IAS-17 conference, Zagreb, Croatia on June 13, 2022.

Prof. Bonsignorio (co)organized the tutorial How to write an R-article and benchmark your results and presented it at ICRA 2022 conference, Philadelphia, PA, USA on May 27, 2022.

Prof. Fabio Bonsignorio has recently joined the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER) having been appointed for the position of ERA Chair Holder following an international open call. As a part of the project AIFORS, he will lead the Research Group for Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, assigned to the FER's LAMOR lab, which aims to take intelligent soft robotics to the next stage complementing the existing expertise and research direction of the LAMOR lab. 

For his short Bio see here.

Project AIFORS extended the deadline for open positions for

• PhD students in Artificial Intelligence for Robotics       – 3 positions
• Postdoctoral Fellows in Artificial Intelligence for Robotics – 2 positions

to be part of the ERA Research Group for Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, established in the framework of the H2020 project AIFORS.

For the full Job Announcements please click on the above links.

The deadline for applications for both positions is June 3, 2022.

Interested candidates should contact us at aifors@fer.hr.  

Project AIFORS is looking for an expert! 

We are announcing an open position for ERA Chair in Artificial Intelligence for Robotics to establish and lead a Research Group for Artificial Intelligence for Robotics.

For detailed job description please read the Job Announcement.

The deadline for the job application is November 10, 2021.

Interested candidates should contact us at ivan.petrovic@fer.hr

Croatian daily newspaper Poslovni dnevnik and web portal Poslovni.hr have published an article introducing the AIFORS project, created within the Laboratory (LAMOR) under the coordination of professor Ivan Petrović, as one of two new research projects with Artificial Intelligence application started by FER.

Professor Petrović has pointed out that although Artificial Intelligence has been known and applied for some time we still aim to achieve the predictable and reliable behaviour of robots, which may in near future become possible with the application of advanced artificial intelligence methods. With the AIFORS project a new research group in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics will be established at FER, which will enable the Faculty to attract top researchers who will independently implement an ambitious research strategy in intelligent robotics. 

The AIFORS project formally started on January 1, 2021.

On the virtual Kick-off Meeting that was held on January 7, 2021 the project team has agreed on the first steps to be made being setting up the project website and announcing a job opening for ERA Chair holder position.

We are looking forward to the beginning of the realization of this project.