Members from LABUST and LARICS, joined by colleagues from the project's partner institutions, took part in the last workshop of the MORUS project, which was held this summer, from the 2nd to the 6th of July, 2018 in Zagreb. The project will be finishing soon (02/2019) so it is good news that this final workshop was a great success.

MORUS project was presented at EMRA'18 workshop by Prof. Stjepan Bogdan from Laboratory for Robotics and Intelligent Control Systems. EMRA'18 workshop brought together a diverse range of speakers, from ongoing FP7/H2020 projects, industry, end-users, and stakeholders. The interdisciplinary event provided an excellent opportunity for networking and exchange of ideas in marine robotics, enabling technologies and applications. 

The maiden flight of the MORUS aerial vehicle powered by four internal combustion enginees took place in a military base in Udbina on November 17, 2017. The team (Stjepan Bogdan, Matko Orsag, Tomislav Haus, Antun Ivanović, Marko Car) spent a week in the base preparing the vehicle for experiments. In the final experiment, the vehicle was piloted through RC controller, with height, yaw, roll and pitch manually controlled by the pilot. This first flight demonstrated that the concept proposed within the project is feasible. There have been many lessons learned throughout the week spent in the base, which will be used to improve the vehicle design and performance.

2nd workshop took place at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, from 10th to 16th February 2017. All partners participated in preparation and execution of the workshop.

The goal of the 2nd workshop was twofold: first, UAV roll and pitch control loops, implementing a moving mass concept, were tested, together with low-level state machine; and second, integration of the Human Machine Interface with high-level state machine and overall system communication have been done. Upon successful integration of hardware, software and communication components of MORUS system, major functionalities have been tested through the HMI. Gazebo simulator was used as virtual world where UUV and UAV models executed missions by mimicking inputs from real vehicles, while in the same time high level controllers on real vehicles received positions from the simulator.

Dr Edin Omerdić from the University of Limerick attended the 14th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision - ICARCV 2016. The conference took place in Phuket, Thailand from 13th till 15th November 2016.

Edin presented a paper User Interface for Interaction with Heterogeneous Vehicles for Cyber-Physical Systems. ICARCV 2016 conference, organized by Nanyang Technological University and technically co-sponsored by IEEE Control Systems Society, was focused on both theory and applications, covering control, automation, robotics, vision and emerging technologies, including cyber-physical systems. The paper provides a brief overview of research activities about development of user interfaces for interaction with heterogeneous vehicles in smart cyber-physical systems.

Prof. Stjepan Bogdan held a lecture within Breaking the Surface 2016 Workshop on design and development of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) being developed within the MORUS project. Prof. Bogdan presented design and construction of the UAV, made of mostly carbon fibers, and a novel concept of a multirotor UAV which utilizes internal combustion engines (ICEs) and the shift of vehicle’s center of gravity (CoG) to enhance vehicle’s dynamical performance. A detailed stability and sensitivity analysis of the proposed control scheme was given and prof. Bogdan discussed its underlining effect on the construction design parametrization. At the end, simulation results from a Gazebo based simulator were given.

Multiple MORUS researchers attended the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2016). The conference was held in Budapest, Hungary during October 9-12, 2016. Mr. Nedim Osmić presented the paper "Detailed octocopter modeling and PD control"  by N. Osmic and M. Kuric. Mr. Osmić is a research associate at the ETF Sarajevo (University of Sarajevo) and he is a PhD student at the FER (Univeristy of Zagreb). He works on mission planning task within the MORUS project.

Another paper titled "A Receding Horizon Scheme for Constrained Multi-vehicle Coverage Problems " by A. Tahirović, M. Brkić, A. Bostan and B. Seferagić was presented at the conference. Mr. Tahirovic, an associate professor at the ETF and a co-director of the MORUS project, lead the session, while Mr. Brkić, a PhD student at the ETF Sarajevo working on the multi-vehicle coverage problem, presented the paper.

Prof. Nikola Mišković presented a paper at the Conference on Underwater Communications and Networking (UCOMMS'16) that took place on 30 August - 1 September 2016 in Lerici, Italy. The conference series is focussed on working towards an adequate physics-based understanding of the propagation of communication signals underwater and the performance of necessary higher-level protocols with the objective of supporting the intelligent choice of standards, as a foundation for interoperability.

Dr Daniel Toal and Dr Edin Omerdic attended the 10th IFAC Conference on Control Applications in Marine Systems (CAMS 2016). The conference took place in Trondheim, Norway, from 13th to 16th September 2016. Edin gave a talk on "Measurement of Network Latency in Remote Presence Applications". Results from this paper are used to optimise LabVIEW code and minimize latency in using shared variables for data exchange. CAMS 2016 provided an excellent opportunity for the presentation and discussion of research results and development in the areas of control applications for surface & underwater vessels, floating & sub-sea structures, and other marine systems. Apart from that, it also served as a meeting place for all interested in marine technologies to share ideas, experiences, and new perspectives resulting from recent innovation.

Internal workshop of the MORUS project was held from 20.06. – 24.06.2016. at Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Zagreb, Croatia. The main purpose of the workshop was the knowledge transfer between the project partners as well as integration of developed software modules, particularly, the system state machine, models for Gazebo simulator and communication modules. On Thursday, 23.06.2016. the project partners visited lake Jarun where LABUST team demonstrated unmanned underwater vehicle behavior in real world conditions.

MORUS researcher Mr. Almir Salihbegović attended the the European Control Conference (ECC 2016),  that tool place on 29.6.-1.7.2016. in Aalborg, Denmark. He presented the paper "Multivariable Sliding Mode Approach with Enhanced Robustness Properties Based on the Robust Internal-Loop Compensator for a Class of Nonlinear Mechanical Systems" during . Mr. Salihbegović  is a research associate at the ETF Sarajevo (University of Sarajevo) and he is a PhD student. He is working on developing a low level controller for the UAV within the MORUS project.

MORUS researcher Dr. Edin Omerdic visited University of Tuzla as a part of Erasmus+ staff exchange programme in July 2016. During the 2 week exchange, Edin established stronger collaboration links between researchers at UL and FET (Faculty of Electrical Engineering Tuzla). In lectures on Marine Technologies for Challenging Off-Shore Applications, Control Allocation & Fault Tolerant Control, and User Interaction Interface & Remote Presence; and a hands-on tutorial on ROV Control Systems, Edin shared theoretical and practical knowledge with students and staff of the FET in the effort to increase both UL's and FET's scientific excellence and innovation capacity in marine robotics field.

During the CityOS Conference 2016, that took place in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on April 09-10, 2016 Assist. Prof. Ivana Palunko gave Invited Talk and presented the MORUS project. The CityOS brought together the region's brightest developers, makers and engineers to build a better smarter future for their city using smart technologies.

MORUS researcher Assist. Prof. Ivana Palunko held an IEEE lecture organized by Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology Osijek and Croatian IEEE Section. Prof. Palunko presented her research results on the topic of load transportation with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). She has also presented the MORUS project and addressed how to transfer existing knowledge and techniques to an application of transporting an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) by a UAV, which is an important topic of the ongoing MORUS project.

Morus project manager Ivana Mikolić visited AMOS - Centre for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway from 23 until 27 November 2015.AMOS is Centre of Excellence that brings together NTNU’s Departments of Marine Technology and Engineering Cybernetics. They have a highly developed management office that leads national and international research projects and Ivana Mikolić has worked alongside them for a week in other to get a broader insight in running a sustainable research centre.

Prof. Zoran Vukić (UNIZG-LABUST) gave invited talk titled “Unmanned Underwater Robotics in Dual Use Applications” at the "Innovation Driven Defence Enterprising" (IDDE) conference held at Croatian Military Academy on 19-20 October 2016. Prof. Vukić presented the research activities and projects within which LABUST is involved. The goal and scope of the MORUS project were also presented.

Another MORUS researcher, PhD Student Tomislav Haus (UNIZG-LARICS), gave talk at the same conference titled “Aerial Robots – Mobile Manipulation using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”. He presented LARICS research results in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles and their application in mobile manipulation. He has also presented LARICS role in the MORUS project.

Project Unmanned system for maritime security and environmental monitoring - MORUS was kicked-off on a meeting held at Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb on 10th of April 2015.

During meeting representatives of MORUS partners presented their Universities, team and projects they work on along with MORUS.

Attended representatives:

• Laboratory for robotics and intelligent control systems, Univeristy of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing: Prof. Stjepan Bogdan, Prof. Zdenko Kovačić, Dr. Matko Orsag, Tomislav Haus
• University of Limerick: Dr. Edin Omerdić
• University of Sarajevo Faculty of Electrical Engineering: Prof. Adnan Tahirović, Nedim Osmić
• Laboratory for Underwater systems and technologies, Univeristy of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing: Asst. prof. Nikola Mišković, Prof. Zoran Vukić, Antonio Vasilijević, Filip Mandić
• University of Dubrovnik: Prof. Ivana Palunko, Mirna Batistić, Rade Garić

The kick-off meeting was opened and coordinated by project coordinator and NATO country Director (NPD) Prof. Stjepan Bogdan. 

Vicedean Prof. Gordan Gledec held welcome note in the name of Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing.