University of Maribor - Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences

The initial laying stones for the University of Maribor (UM) date back to 1859. In time the university reached its current form becoming 1975 the second largest university in Slovenia. It now consists of 17 member faculties, with study programmes encompassing all current research and academic fields. Currently around twenty-five thousand students are studying at the UM. In Slovenia and abroad, UM is recognised as a university providing students with an excellent learning experience and producing top graduates. In 2017 the UM was ranked among the best global universities and earned the highest score among Slovene universities on Times Higher Education World University Rankings examining how universities fulfil their primary mission in different areas.

Faculty of Agriculture and Life Science

The Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences (FKBV) is one of the founding members of the University of Maribor, with history dating back in 19^thcentury, when archduke John of Habsburg planted the first wine grape varieties in Europe, brought from the Rhine and founded the viticulture school in 1832. Now the FKBV is located at the castle Pohorski dvor, managing 155 ha of arable land and 240 ha of forests, used for research and educational activities. The study programms include 12 different programs; 7 on the 1^st, 3 on the 2^ndand 2 on the 3^rdlevel.

Research activates play an important part of the daily activities conducted at the FKBV. This also emerging technologies such as agricultural robotics. The most active department at FKBV in this area is Biosystems Engineering, conducting a series of research activities, producing a state-of-the-art approaches, such as the new SLAM algoritm developed by Lepej and Rakun (2016, Biosystems Enginnering, vol. 150). The research activities also include the development of a small field robots build for research and educational purposes. For the past 10 years the department has been an active member of the Field Robot Event, achieving multiple top place positions (FRE2011 – 3^rdOverall, FRE2012 – 1^stplace – Freestyle,  FRE2014 – 3^rdplace – Basic Navigation, …).