ZAGREB, January 21, 2018 - DOK-ING, a Croatian privately-owned company specialising in the production of robotised and special purposes systems and equipment, has recently presented its project of a remote-controlled vehicle that can operate in extreme conditions, and this 16.5-million kuna project about the vehicle that can operate in conditions of nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological and explosive threats is being developed in cooperation with the Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER).
The project was launched last October and is likely to be finalised in September 2019. Its purpose is to develop a prototype of a remote-controlled system for managing crisis situations.
The European Union has allocated 8.9 million kuna to co-fund the project under the Competitiveness and Cohesion programme.
The DOK-ING owner, Vjekoslav Majetić, said he was satisfied with the launch of a new technology and explained that the aim of the project was to create an independent remote-controlled vehicle that can help people in the worst conditions such as nuclear disasters, biological disasters and similar catastrophic situations.
DOK-ING was established in Zagreb in 1991 and at the beginning it was actively engaged in demining activities. It "has gathered vast experience in different types of landmine clearance, on all types of terrain in the Republic of Croatia, as well as in the surrounding countries," the company says on its website.
"This experience was the basis for designing and manufacturing the first remotely controlled demining systems, constructed exclusively for humanitarian demining. As those were upgraded, improved and enlarged, the company has been doing R&D projects with various international and domestic organisations, including the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport and the State Maritime Institute (Brodarski Institut), the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing of the University of Zagreb, and the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD). The demining systems were at the same time sold to more than 20 countries worldwide, a number of government agencies and humanitarian organisations, as well as to commercial companies. Altogether, more than 250 light and medium size demining systems were produced so far."
The company's motto is "Don't send a man to do a machine's job".