On November 16, 2021, as part of the cooperation between Croatia and India, a lecture entitled Development projects in advanced, precision and predictive agriculture: new areas in Indian-Croatian cooperation was held. In the introduction, Professor Emeritus Nedjeljko Perić – Director of the Innovation Center Nikola Tesla (ICENT) pointed out the importance of Nikola Tesla for the development of today’s civilization. Nikola Tesla – a visionary with ingenious ideas, a versatile inventive researcher and innovator and an inspirer of the scientific and innovation community – contributed enormously to the second and third industrial revolutions with his epochal discoveries. Stressing the importance of cooperation between India and Croatia, he stressed that he expects future joint work to build a long-term and sustainable platform in the fields of science, technology and business, especially in the development and application of digital and green technologies and sector. Therefore, it is necessary, stressed prof. Peric, to establish contacts between relevant institutions and people in India and Croatia as soon as possible.
Continuing the presentation of prof. Perić, doc. dr. sc. Vinko Lešić, employed at FER and ICENT, gave a comprehensive overview of FER and ICENT projects related to digitalization in agriculture, and in good part in cooperation with the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb. By applying digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, computer vision and sensors and sensor networks, advanced robot control solutions can be achieved, and are already being achieved, especially air robots (drones) to monitor crop development. A particularly interesting part of the lecture was doc. dr. dc. Lešić, which referred to the project Advanced and predictive agriculture resistant to climate change (AgroSPARC). He ended his presentation with information about the student program Imagine, Create, Innovate, which will be continued after the end of this corona pandemic.