The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) is one of the two federal technical Universities in Switzerland. With its 200 Professors, 2000 researchers and over 4700 students it is the second largest research center for engineering sciences of Switzerland.

Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL1)

The ‘Institut de Systèmes Robotiques’ (ISR) at EPFL is part of the Department of Microengineering at EPFL. Its research focus is on autonomous robots, parallel robots and micro-robots that find their applications in industry, space, medicine, service, education and micro-manufacturing.
The Institute (ISR) has a staff of 3 professors, 1 assistant professor, around 5 postdoctoral researchers, 5 technicians, 20 project engineers and around 25 PhD students.
The ‘Institut de Systèmes Robotiques’ has a lot of industrial collaboration and links. Currently around 20 projects with industrial partners are running e.g. in the field of micro-manufacturing, high precision robotics, mobile robots for inspection and teleoperation. Partners are ABB (parallel robots), NOVARTIS (micro-robots), SEGATE (hard disc drives), Astrium (space rovers), LEICA (optical assembly), ESEC (chip assembly), AGIE (micro-robotics), SYSMELEC (micro-robotics), K-TEAM (mobile robots) and other smaller companies. The Institute is also involved in various space rover projects with ESA. Recently three spin-off companies where founded to commercialise the research results.
The Autonomous Systems Lab led by Professor Roland Siegwart is part of the ISR and focuses on mobile robotics and human-robot interaction. Important contributions have recently been made in the following main fields:
Probabilistic mobile robot localization and map-building by fusing different sensor signals: We are combing feature based metric navigation (Kalman filter) with topological navigation using a Bayesian approach. This results in very compact maps with reliable global localization and map-building. Due to the compactness of our environment representation we reach update rates for the position estimation of over 10 Hz.
New mobile robot locomotion concepts for rough terrain: In the context of different ESA projects we developed very innovative wheeled locomotion concepts that allow to overcome obstacles as high as twice the wheel diameter. The innovative robots are currently used for research in outdoor navigation based on stereo vision.
Human-robot interaction with mobile robots: Just recently we started a large research project in the field of personal robotics. Different tools and hardware for human-robot interaction like face detection and tracking, speech communication and gesture generation have already been established. In a next step enhanced human-robot interaction will be developed with the help of Hidden Markov Models. The benchmark of this project is to install around 10 mobile personal robots at an exhibition in 2002.
Highly integrated mobile micro robots weighting only a couple grams: Through a consequent application of scaling laws and new technologies a series of mobile robots sizing less than 2x2x2 cm have been developed. These fully autonomous mobile robots are equipped with basic behaviors (obstacle avoidance, follow wall ..) and are used for experiment in collective robotics and map-building. The acquired competence enabled us also to realize and deliver a first prototype of a micro rover for planetary exploration to ESA. The robot weighs only 50 g including an on-board CCD camera.
Robots for research and education: Mobile robots are an excellent tool for hands-on engineering education. We therefore developed various mobile robot platforms and plugand- play sensor and actuator modules for education. They are used for robot competitions but also within our research projects.
Throughout the large variety of research project in the field of mobile robotics the lab has established a high competence in design and navigation of mobile platforms. Over 20 different types of mobile robots have been developed and realized in the last years. Most of our robots are used on a daily base in research and education. The acquired competence in mobile robot design and navigation motivated us to found the spin-off company BlueBotics. The primary objective of this newly founded company is to commercialize our existing and future mobile robot platforms and to open the market for mobile robot applications.

Team leaders

Roland Siegwart (born in 1959) is a full professor at EPFL. He received his M.Sc. ME in 1983 and his Doctoral degree in 1989 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. After his Ph.D. studies he spent one year as a postdoc at Stanford University where he was involved in micro-robots and tactile gripping. From 1991 to 1996 he worked part time as R&D director at MECOS Traxler AG and as a lecturer and deputy head at the Institute of Robotics, ETH. During this time he was mainly involved in magnetic bearings, mechatronics and micro-robotics. In 1997 he became a full professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) where he establish a research lab for Autonomous Systems and Robots. His current research interests are robotics and mechatronics, namely high precision navigation, network base robotics (Internet, space exploration), human-robot interaction, all terrain locomotion and micro-robotics. He lectures various courses in robotics, mechatronics and smart product design at the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and is cofounder of several spinoff companies. Roland Siegwart published more than 60 papers and is member of various scientific committees. He is the Swiss delegate for the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), member of the Advisory board for the European Robotics Network (EURON), Swiss representative for Automation and Robotics (AGAR) at ESA and general chair of the 2002 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'2002).

Francesco Mondada

Gilles Caprari was born in Locarno, Switzerland in 1972. He graduated as electrical engineer (MS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich (ETH) in 1996 with a diploma thesis about mobile mini robots. After 1 year as scientific fellow at the same institution, he joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL Lausanne. At the Institute of Robotic Systems of EPFL, he is preparing for a PhD degree in the field of mini mobile robotics. His axes of research are miniaturization, system integration and micro robotic applications. He is the developer of Alice, probably the most evolved mini mobile robot of the world and one twice the International Micro Robot Maze Contest in Nagoya.

Contributors

• Masoud Asadpour
• Walter Karlen
• Fabien Tâche

Swarm-intelligent Systems Group (SWIS)

The Swarm-Intelligent Systems Group (SWIS) research group has been founded in September 2003. SWIS is structurally integrated in the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory and is affiliated with the National Center of Competence in Mobile Communication and Information Systems. Among other research activities, SWIS has inherited those of the Collective Robotics (CORO) research group founded in December 1999 at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, U.S.A.

SWIS' research mission focuses on the development of (automatic) design, modeling, control, and optimization methodologies for self-organized, collectively intelligent, distributed systems. A special emphasis is currently set on real-time, embedded systems such as multi-robot platforms, sensor and actuators networks, and intelligent vehicles.

SWIS' teaching mission is to reinforce the diffusion of ideas and principles of Swarm Intelligence and to contribute to the education of a new generation of interdisciplinary engineers and computer scientists.

Team leader

Alcherio Martinoli has a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He has more than ten years expertise in robotics, including one year of research activities at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering of the ETHZ, one year at the Institute of Industrial Automation of the Spanish Research Council in Madrid, Spain, and four years at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, U.S.A. He is currently NSF Professor for Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL and head of the Swarm-Intelligent Systems Research Group. His research interests focus on swarm intelligence and techniques to design, control, model, and optimize self-organized, distributed, embedded systems, including swarm of robots, sensor networks, and intelligent vehicles.

Contributor

• Nikolaus Correll

  After receiving his "Vordiplom" from the Technical University of Munich in 2000, Nikolaus graduated in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) in spring 2003 (Dipl. Ing. ETH). During his master's studies, he spent a term at Lunds Tekniska Högskola (Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden) as an exchange student at the Department of Automatic Control. Nikolaus wrote his master's thesis at the Collective Robotics Group at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, about collaborative coverage.

  After graduation, Nikolaus worked as a research assistant in the Collective Robotics Group at Caltech. Now, he is pursuing his graduate studies in Computer Science in the Swarm Intelligent Systems Group (SWIS).

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