Dario FloreanoProf. Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2010, he is the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics, a research program that brings together more than 20 labs across Switzerland. Prof. Floreano holds an M.A. in Vision, an M.S. in Neural Computation, and a PhD in Robotics. He has held research positions at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, at Caltech/JPL, and at Harvard University. His main research interests are Robotics and A.I. at the convergence of biology and engineering. Prof. Floreano made pioneering contributions to the fields of evolutionary robotics, aerial robotics, and soft robotics. He served in numerous advisory boards and committees, including the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, the World Economic Forum Agenda Council, the International Society of Artificial Life, the International Neural Network Society, and in the editorial committee of several scientific journals. In addition, he helped spinning off two drone companies (senseFly.com and Flyability.com) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub.org). Books
Manuale sulle Reti Neurali, il Mulino (in Italian), 1996 (first edition), 2006 (second edition)Evolutionary Robotics, MIT Press, 2000
Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 2008
Flying Insects and Robots, Springer Verlag, 2010
Herbert SheaExpertise
soft robotics, wearable haptics, electrostatic actuators, EHD
Mission
My lab develops flexible polymer-based actuators for a wide range of applications including haptics and soft robotics. More info at https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lmts/
Links from EPFL-LMTS Lab webpage People Research ActivitiesPublications TeachingPublications and Conference papers Link to my lab Education PhD | Physics 1997 – 1997 Harvard University MA | Physics 1993 – 1993 Harvard University Francesco MondadaDr. Mondada received his M.Sc. in micro-engineering in 1991 and his Doctoral degree in 1997 at EPFL. During his thesis he co-founded the company K-Team, being both CEO and president of the company for about 5 years. He is one of the three main developers of the Khepera robot, considered as a standard in bio-inspired robotics and used by more than 1,000 universities and research centers worldwide. Fully back in research in 2000 and after a short period at CALTECH, he participated to the SWARM-BOTS project as the main developer of the s-bot robot platform, which was ranked on position 39 in the list of The 50 Best Robots Ever (fiction or real) by the Wired Journal in 2006. The SWARM-BOTS project was selected as FET-IST success story by the EU commission. He is author of more than 100 papers in the field of bio-inspired robotics and system level robot design. He is co-editor of several international conference proceedings. In November 2005 he received the EPFL Latsis University prize for his contributions to bio-inspired robotics. In 2011 he received the "Crédit Suisse Award for Best Teaching" from EPFL and in 2012 the "polysphère" award from the students as best teacher in the school of engineering. His interests include the development of innovative mechatronic solutions for mobile and modular robots, the creation of know-how for future embedded applications, and making robot platforms more accessible for education, research, and industrial development.
Mirko KovacExpertise
Aerial RoboticsEnvironmental SensingSustainability RoboticsPhysical Artificial Intelligence
Short Biography Prof. Mirko Kovač is Director of the Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics, jointly appointed at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in Zürich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). He holds an Honorary Professorship at Imperial College London, where he previously served as Full Professor and founded the Aerial Robotics Laborator
Auke IjspeertAuke Ijspeert is a full professor at the EPFL, and head of the Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob). He has a B.Sc./M.Sc. in physics from the EPFL (1995), and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh (1999). He carried out postdocs at IDSIA and EPFL, and at the University of Southern California (USC). He then became a research assistant professor at USC, and an external collaborator at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research institute) in Japan. In 2002, he came back to the EPFL as an SNF assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in October 2009 and to full professor in April 2016. His primary affiliation is with the Institute of Bioengineering, and secondary affiliation with the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are at the intersection between robotics, computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and machine learning. He is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of sensorimotor coordination in animals, and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and adaptive controllers. (see for instance Ijspeert et al Science 2007, Ijspeert Science 2014, and Nyakatura et al Nature 2019). He is also investigating how to assist people with limited mobility using exoskeletons and assistive furniture. He is regularly invited to give talks on these topics (e.g. TED talk given at TED Global Geneva, Dec 8 2015). With his colleagues, he has received paper awards at ICRA2002, CLAWAR2005, IEEE Humanoids 2007, IEEE ROMAN 2014, CLAWAR 2015, SAB2018, and CLAWAR 2019. He is an IEEE Fellow, member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science magazine, and associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics and for the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics. He has acted as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (2009-2013) and for Soft Robotics (2018-2021). He was a guest editor for the Proceedings of IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Autonomous Robots, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, and Biological Cybernetics. He has been the organizer of 7 international conferences (BioADIT2004, SAB2004, AMAM2005, BioADIT2006, LATSIS2006, SSRR2016, AMAM2019), and a program committee member of over 50 conferences.
Mihai Adrian IonescuAdrian M. Ionescu is Full Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland. He received the B.S./M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania and the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France, in 1989 and 1997, respectively. He has held staff and/or visiting positions at LETI-CEA, Grenoble, France and INP Grenoble, France and Stanford University, USA, in 1998 and 1999. Dr. Ionescu has published more than 600 articles in international journals and conferences. He received many Best Paper Awards in international conferences, the Annual Award of the Technical Section of the Romanian Academy of Sciences in 1994 and the Blondel Medal in 2009 for contributions to the progress in engineering sciences in the domain of electronics. He is the 2013 recipient of the IBM Faculty Award in Engineering. He served the IEDM and VLSI conference technical committees and was the Technical Program Committee (Co)Chair of ESSDERC in 2006 and 2013. He is a member of the SATW. He is director of the Laboratory of Micro/Nanoelectronic Devices (NANOLAB).
Qiyuan FuQiyuan Fu has been working in the Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob) at EPFL since May 2023. He is currently working on the Salamandra project to decode the organization and regeneration of locomotor neuronal networks in tetrapods. His major role is to develop the next-generation robotic platform to investigate the role of sensory feedback in salamander locomotion. Prior to coming to EPFL, he studied snake and snake robot locomotion in complex, 3-D terrain in the Terradynamics Lab at Johns Hopkins University.
Daniel BurnierExpertise
Altium Designer CADDigital ElectronicsTechnical support
Mission
Electronic SupportAltium Designer support
Giovanni De CesareExpertise
Numerical simulation and physical modeling of hydraulic works and schemes; reservoir sedimentation and turbidity currents; reservoir sediment management; Ultrasonic Doppler flow measurement; river training work and restoration; soil bioengineering and nature based solutions; fluvial eco-morphology; rapid transients in pressurized waterways; technology transfer, commissioned studies and expert reports in applied hydraulics, hydraulic constructions and infrastructures; organization of continuous edu
Paolo PeronaExpertise
River mechanics and morphoydnamics, Erosion processes, Ecohydraulics, Plant roots biomechanics, Watershed and catchment hydrology, Water Resources Management, General hydraulics, Time Series Analysis, Dynamical Systems Theory, Stochastic Processes
Expertise
River mechanics and morphoydnamics, Erosion processes, Ecohydraulics, Plant roots biomechanics, Watershed and catchment hydrology, Water Resources Management, General hydraulics, Time Series Analysis, Dynamical Systems Theory, Stochastic Proces
