Dario Floreano

Expertise Aerial RobotsEvolutionary RobotsSoft RobotsWearable RobotsBio-inspired RobotsBio-inspired Artificial Intelligence Prof. Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Between 2010 and 2022, he was the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics, a research program that graduated almost 200 PhD students and more than 100 postdocs, funded two professorships at EPFL and University of Zurich, created the EPFL Master's program in Robotics and the annual Swiss Robotics Day, helped launch Cybathlon, and generated more than 15 robotics spinoffs that created several hundred jobs.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 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 three drone companies (senseFly.com, Flyability.com, Elythor.com) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub.org). Books:Tales from a Robotics World: How intelligent machines will shape our future, MIT Press, 2022Flying Insects and Robots, Springer Verlag, 2010Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 2008Evolutionary Robotics, MIT Press, 2000Manuale sulle Reti Neurali, il Mulino (in Italian), 1996 (first edition), 2006 (second edition) Teaching & PhD PhD Students Shuhang Zhang, Erikas Simanaitis, Alexander Dittrich, Julius Wanner, Simon Jeger, Andrea Vicari, Alexander Ertl, Benjamin Jarvis, Hongze Wang, Jack Zeng Past EPFL PhD Students Joseba Urzelai, Daniel Roggen, Jean-Christophe Zufferey, Claudio Mattiussi, Markus Waibel, Mototaka Suzuki, Antoine Beyeler, Walter Karlen, Daniel Marbach, Sara Mitri, Sabine Hauert, Mirko Kovac, Severin Leven, Peter Dürr, James Roberts, Timothy Stirling, Adam Klaptocz, Michal Karol Dobrzynski, Pawel Lichocki, Thomas Schaffter, Adrien Briod, Jürg Markus Germann, Ludovic Daler, Andrea Maesani, Meysam Basiri, Maja Varga, Jun Shintake, Nicolas Dousse, Carine Rognon, Julien Lecoeur, Przemyslaw Mariusz Kornatowski, Matteo Macchini, Davide Zappetti, Vivek Ramachandran, Fabian Schilling, Enrica Soria, Enrico Ajanic, Charalampos Vourtsis, Yegor Piskarev, Valentin Wüest, Mohammad Askari, Shin Won Dong Courses Aerial robotics MICRO-502 The course provides an introduction to the design, control, and applications of aerial robots. Students will be able to translate theoretical concepts into practice by means of hands-on exercises with simulated and real drones. Evolutionary robotics MICRO-515 The course covers theories, methods, and technologies for designing robots and artificial systems inspired by evolution, development, and learning. It shows how robotic models help understand biological systems and includes programming exercises using MuJoCo and gym. Robotics practicals MICRO-453 The goal of this lab series is to practice the various theoretical frameworks acquired in the courses on a variety of robots, ranging from industrial robots to autonomous mobile robots, to robotic devices, all the way to interactive robots. Awards Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) IEEE Robotics and Automation Society 2022 Fellow of the ELLIS Society European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems 2021 Julian Francis Miller Award The Species International Society 2024 SNSF Assistant Professorship Swiss National Science Foundation 2000