Vladimir Slošić, Luka Mandić, Juraj Obradović, Matko Batoš, Igor Kvasić, Matej Fabijanić
Over the course of 2024 the IEEE OES University of Zagreb Student Branch Chapter (SBC) has, as always, been active in organizing and taking part in a variety of events for deepening the understanding and appreciation for marine robotics, with a particular focus on engaging our students. Through workshops, lectures, competitions, and hands-on demonstrations, these events have aimed to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical experience. From participating and presenting in most of the marine robotics related conferences such as OCEANS and IROS, inviting distinguished professors and lecturers to present new hot topics, organizing various competitions, the yearly activities culminated with hosting the flagship SBC event of the year, Breaking the Surface 2024 workshop. More on that and other exciting recent events in the next few pages!
Breaking the Surface Workshop 2024
After 15 successful workshops, and the first edition held outside Croatia in 2023, the “Breaking the Surface” (BtS) international workshop on marine robotics and its applications returned to Croatia in 2024. The workshop was held on the stunning Dalmatian coast and saw another successful gathering of nearly 200 international experts and enthusiasts coming from a variety of marine disciplines. Focused on the latest in maritime robotics and marine technology, BtS attracted professionals in fields like maritime robotics, marine biology, maritime archaeology and marine geology from 25 countries worldwide. Across seven days, attendees engaged in a comprehensive program featuring 14 plenary lectures, 10 demonstrations, 11 interactive hands-on tutorials and 3 company presentations.
Each morning, participants enjoyed engaging plenary talks led by distinguished speakers presenting their work and most recent research results, interspersed with coffee breaks that encouraged networking and conversation. Afternoons were packed with three parallel tracks of hands-on tutorials, demos and presentations from leading marine industry companies. Maintaining the BtS tradition of its famous social events, evenings featured the signature IEEE OES party, an International Night, Pub Quiz, Karaoke Night, and a closing ceremony that honored outstanding contributions and celebrated another memorable edition of BtS with a gala dinner. The traditional Saturday field trip provided a scenic bus tour along the Dalmatian coast towards the historical city of Šibenik, offering opportunities to soak in the region’s cultural and natural beauty. Closing of yet another successful workshop was rounded off by the exciting announcement of Breaking the Surface 2025, which for the next edition is moving to the coast of Cyprus.
Challenges and CompetitionVisit Site
s at BtS 2024
For the third year in a row, participants of the BtS workshop had the opportunity to take part in the Localization challenge, organized by Newcastle University, University of Haifa, INESC-TEC, and LABUST. The task was to locate a hidden acoustic modem within a 700 by 1200-meter search area, using acoustic data, signal processing, and other engineering skills.
After an initial day of introductory presentations and familiarization with the equipment and software, each team was given 45 minutes of boat time to record data for post-processing. Teams had complete freedom in selecting their localization strategies and determining both the number and location of their boat recordings. Ultimately, Team THM from Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen emerged as the winner, based on criteria evaluating the hidden modem’s most innovative and accurate position estimate.
Following their victory at MBZIRC 2023 competition, the University of Zagreb’s Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies shared a detailed demonstration at the 2024 BtS workshop. Workshop attendees explored the strategies, innovations, and behind-the-scenes work that helped UNIZG-FER secure top honors in this challenging robotics competition.
Demonstration highlights included a breakdown of the catamaran’s search and detection techniques, a look into visual servoing processes, and an overview of their docking system, which uses suction cups and hooks to stabilize the vessel. The presentation concluded with insights into the team’s drone operations, giving participants a clear view of the coordinated effort behind their successful run. This presentation gave BtS attendees an inside view of the innovation and teamwork that led to UNIZG-FER’s success at MBZIRC 2023.
OES SBC Presentations at conferences in 2024
During April 2024, several OES members actively participated at the OCEANS 2024 conference in Singapore organized by the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society (OES) and the Marine Technology Society. Namely, Luka Mandić presented the tutorial “Data meets Model Predictive Control: From classical MPC to an online adaptive direct data-driven navigation and control of autonomous vessels.” In addition, Assist. Prof. Fausto Ferreira presented three articles: one related to the uBlueTec project, one related to an ROV simulator and one dealing with boat detection and classification using machine learning.
In September 2024, two OES PhD students, Juraj Obradović and Luka Mandić, presented their work at the CAMS conference, which was held in Blacksburg, Virginia (USA). Luka Mandić presented his work entitled “Adaptive and Robust Direct Data-Driven Controller for Surface Vessel Navigation,” where he introduced and applied an extension of the DeePC algorithm as the vessel controller. This approach aligns with the increasing trend of data-driven reference tracking in control system theory. Juraj Obradović presented his work titled “Analysis of LiDAR-Camera Fusion for Marine Situational Awareness with Emphasis on Cluster Selection in Camera Frustum,” where he introduced a method that integrates LiDAR and camera data for precise 3D object detection and tracking.
During the week of September 23-26, 2024, the work and MBZIRC competition demonstrations were presented at the 40th Anniversary of the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA@40) in Rotterdam, Netherlands, with the extended abstracts titled “Autonomous Surface Vehicle for Search and Intervention in GNSS-Denied Operations” by Luka Mandić, Matko Batoš, Juraj Obradović, Natko Kraševac, Fausto Ferreira, Barbara Arbanas Ferreira, Nikola Mišković, and “Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Team for Maritime Inspection and Intervention in GNSS-Denied Scenarios” by the same group of authors together with LARICS lab members.
Barbara Arbanas Pascoal Ferreira, Matej Fabijanić, and Nadir Kapetanović attended the IROS 2024 conference held in Abu Dhabi on 14-18 October2024. Barbara presented our MBZIRC competition experiences at the Maritime Heterogeneous Unmanned Robotic Systems workshop. Matej presented his work on biofouling estimation in a poster session at the Autonomous Robotic Systems in Aquaculture: Research Challenges and Industry Needs workshop, while Nadir presented the overview of the results of the HEKTOR project at the same workshop. In addition to presenting fruitful results of their recent work, conferences in 2024 were a great opportunity for OES members to socialize and gather ideas for future research.
Expert visits and invited lectures at University of Zagreb
The University of Zagreb fosters an engaging academic atmosphere by hosting expert visits and invited lectures, enriching both students and faculty with cutting-edge knowledge from global thought leaders. As part of the SEATECHHUB project, the university welcomed Dr. George Rossides from the Cyprus Marine & Maritime Institute (CMMI) for a two-day workshop on January 9th and 10th, 2024. Dr. Rossides presented innovations in autonomous underwater and surface marine robotics, focusing on their application in environmental monitoring, maritime surveillance, and digitalizing the Cypriot maritime industry. He also conducted a hands-on training session on integrating robotic platforms with IoT and computer vision technologies, emphasizing skill development and mutual learning.
In March, IEEE OES University of Zagreb SBC, hosted Asst. Prof. Alberto Testolin from the University of Padova. Prof. Testolin delivered a lecture titled “The Recent Excitement Around Generative Artificial Intelligence,” exploring the latest advancements in AI. Following this, in April, OES welcomed Prof. Emeritus Craig Smith from the University of Hawaii, who presented “Mining the Deep-Sea Floor: Treasure versus Destruction in the Oceans’ Most Pristine Ecosystems,” offering a nuanced view of deep-sea resource extraction. In May, 2024, Liisa Janssens from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, shared her expertise on “Responsible AI and Rule of Law.” Her lecture delved into scenario-based methods for integrating AI in civil-military contexts, shedding light on NATO’s recent AI design report. These engagements highlight the university’s commitment to advancing interdisciplinary learning and fostering global academic collaboration.
Field experiments and data collection
Researchers from OES UniZg SBC have been steadily working toward advancements in situational awareness technology for autonomous boating. Recently, the team conducted a focused data collection effort as part of this ongoing project, which aims to refine and test a sensor system for improved navigation. The team, working towards a June 2025 completion, has developed a sensor rack for motorboats equipped with two cameras, LIDAR, dual GPS antennas, multiple IMUs, and AIS receiver. Over two days in early October, the team visited several marinas around Croatia’s Zadar archipelago, collecting data that will be instrumental in refining navigation algorithms. “The whole Smart Blue Tourism team prepared intensely for several weeks leading up to the planned data collection date to give us the best possible chance of actually going out to the sea and getting useful data, and it paid off!” says Matej Fabijanić, one of the researchers working on the project.
In the months ahead, this data will be analyzed to support the development of an algorithm designed to enhance situational awareness, an essential element for safe autonomous boating. This research seeks to advance both maritime technology and sustainable navigation, potentially contributing to safer and more efficient boating practices for the tourism industry and beyond.
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.