D-INFK news channel

The indoor drone company Tinamu Labs, a spin-off from the Department of Computer Science, has secured fresh capital in a pre-series A financing round of CHF 1 million to speed up growth and development.

ETH AI Center fellow Elvis Nava teaches robots to carry out oral and written commands. To this end, he sends them to “training camps” where they learn to combine image, text and motion data.

From robots that offer solace to algorithms that help judges make fact-​based decisions, robotics and machine learning are entering new domains that were once the preserve of humans.

Alexis Block, a doctoral fellow with the Advanced Interactive Technologies Lab at ETH Zurich and the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems, has developed HuggieBot, a hugging robot, to improve emotional well-being during the pandemic.

Styrofoam fascinates with its many possible applications. Complex, curvy shapes, however, are difficult to produce with conventional cutting tools. For this, Simon Dünser puts a robot to work that efficiently and precisely wields a hot wire.

How do you calculate the coordinated movements of two robot arms so they can accurately guide a highly flexible tool? Our researchers have integrated all aspects of the optimisation calculations into an algorithm. The hot-​wire cutter will be used, among other things, to develop building blocks for a mortar-​free structure.

D-INFK is headed to Davos during the World Economic Forum, January 22-25. A visit to ETH Zurich's Pavilion will have you RETHINKING DESIGN in an entirely new context: design your own robot, meet SAM the soft robotic hand, and play a video game you built yourself.

Producing realistic animated film figures is a highly complex technical endeavour. ETH researchers have now shown how drones can be used to greatly reduce the effort required in the process.

Fuelled by a recent surge in artificial intelligence technologies, robotics is on the verge of taking centre stage in our society. Nevertheless, before robots can assist us with everyday chores at work and at home, they will need the skills to perform an increasingly diverse array of tasks. Professor Stelian Coros, leader of the Computational Robotics Lab within the Department of Computer Science, is developing the mathematical foundations for new algorithms that address this fundamental challenge.

Filming of spectacular action scenes is expensive and the creative possibilities are often limited. A D-INFK doctoral student has developed an algorithm that allows drones to implement the desired picture compositions independently.

Researchers at ETH Zurich, Disney Research Zurich, and Carnegie Mellon University have developed a software tool that empowers average users to design custom robotic creatures and their movements.

Computer scientists and roboticists at ETH Zurich have developed a robotic walker that makes senior citizens more mobile. Now SmartWalker is waiting for an industrial partner to come along and help get the technology ready for mass production.

Lorenz Meier, a doctoral student in computer science at ETH Zurich, created the PX4 software that is already being used to pilot many drones. Now, one of the world’s biggest electronics manufacturers has adopted the software as standard.

A new generation of flying robots is ready: equipped with on-board cameras and a mini-computer, they are capable of navigating indoors as well as outdoors. (German)