First Croatian business conference on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was held on March 30th 2016 in Zagreb. The one-day conference, organized by IN2 group, has sold out in three weeks and attracted more than 350 attendees from business sector, regulators, and academia.
The conference, held in the HUB385 co-working space, was set-up in three parallel tracks: lectures and discussion, workshops, and flying area. Several keynote speeches were given at the beginning of the conference with speeches by Marina Fekonja Dragan (CCAA), Marinko Keser (CroControl Ltd), and Ivan Landek (DGU) stirring the most interest from the UAV operators.
In the second part of the conference, a series of case studies were presented by business and military organisations. Mr. Haris Balta, from the Belgian Royal Military Academy, presented the results of the ICARUS and TIRAMISU projects which showed cutting-edge robotics research in the field of search and rescue.
In the last part of the conference, several presentations were given by members of the academic community. Short presentation about integration of the UAV technology in the Masters degree study program at the Department of Aeronautics was given by dr. sc. Tomislav Radišić. Afterwards, a panel discussion was held on possibilities of commercialization of the research produced at the higher-education institutions.
Overall, the conference attracted a lot of attention from all stakeholders and even more ambitious plans for the next year are already underway.