2009-11-10 Lab hike
The pictures of our lab hike in Valais are online.
2009-06-15 New visitors at DISAL
Welcome to Prof. Prithviraj Dasgupta (University of Nebraska, Omaha, NE, U.S.A.) who will spend one month with DISAL as visiting professor and Elsa Le Caignec (ENSAM, Angers, France) as visiting bachelor student during the summer.
2009-05-01 Career success
Prof. Nikolaus Correll, a former PhD student at DISAL, has been nominated tenure-track Assistant Professor in the department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, U.S.A. His research and teaching activities will be in the area of artificial intelligence with focus on distributed robotics. Check out the website of his brand new lab!
2009-04-30 Poster awards for DISAL members
Thomas Lochmatter was award the best poster award (Distributed and Mobile Robotics category, 18 posters) at the 2009 EPFL Research Day dedicated to robotics. Grégory Mermoud was the runner-up in the same category.
2009-04-01 New people at DISAL
Welcome to Albrecht Lindner as research assistant and José Nuno Pereira as affiliated PhD student (co-advised by Prof. P. Lima).
2008-11-10 Hiking day
The 2009 DISAL annual hiking day was organized by Corinne Farquharson-Grandjean in the beautiful Lavaux. Photos are online.
2008-10-07 Move to GR building completed
We completely moved our location: our offices and most of the lab facilities are located in the GR building on the EPFL campus.
2008-10-04 Magistrale 2008
Two research assistants of DISAL were awarded for their excellent work during their master studies at the Magistrale 2008. Sven Gowal was awarded the Elca Prize for the best final average grade in Computer Science. Loïc Matthey received the prize of the Société Suisse d’Informatique (2nd best average grade in Computer Science) and the Annaheim prize for his master project. Congratulations to both of them!
2008-07-01 Riccardo Falconi joins DISAL
Riccardo Falconi (University of Bologna) joins DISAL for 6 months as visiting PhD student.
2008-05-01 New people at DISAL
Welcome to Sven Gowal (from May 15) and Amanda Prorok as research assistants, Pascal Gilbert as R&D engineer, and Corinne Farquharson-Grandjean (from May 15) as administrative assistant.
2008-05-06 SWIS becomes DISAL
Starting from May 1, 2008, the SWIS group is the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Laboratory (DISAL) affiliated with the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ISTE) of the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).
2008-04-08 Alcherio Martinoli appointed Associate Professor
On April 4th, the Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology appointed Alcherio Martinoli an associate professor of distributed intelligent systems at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). Read the press release.
2008-01-31 DISAL research featured in the New Scientist
A video featuring our research within the Europen Project Leurre has been selected by the New Scientist magazine among the top 5 tech videos of 2007.
2007-11-16 Leurre project results published in Science
The key results of the European Project Leurre focusing on mixed insect-robot societies published in Science. Here are the details of our article.
2007-10-19 SWIS annual hiking day
The 2007 SWIS annual hiking day was organized by Denis Rochat in the beautiful Jura, at the border between Switzerland and France. Photos are online.
2007-10-12 PhD student graduation
Dr Nikolaus Correll has successfully graduated with his PhD thesis entitled “Coordination schemes for distributed boundary coverage with a swarm of miniature robots: synthesis, analysis and experimental validation”. He is joining the CSAIL at the MIT as a postdoctoral fellow starting from November 1, under the supervision of Prof. Daniela Rus.
2007-08-21 New PhD student joining SWIS
Shravan Kumar Sajja joins SWIS as a PhD student.
2007-06-29 Outreaching and media coverage
Our research on Swarm-Robotic Distributed Coverage was highlighted in the National Geographic Magazine, “Swarm Theory”.
2007-05-09 Outreaching and media coverage
The movie “Alice in cockroach land” that documents the European project Leurre received the “Innovation Science Prize” at the International Science Film Festival 2007 in Athens, Greece.
2007-01-27 Best Paper Award
Vlad Trifa won the best paper award at the Int. Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics (AROB) for his paper Automated wildlife monitoring using self-configuring sensor networks deployed in natural habitats (work conducted during his master’s thesis at the Center for embedded networked sensing (CENS), UCLA.
2007-12-18 Outreaching and media coverage
Thomas Lochmatter’s work on odour source localization was awarded the Picture of the Month by the Swiss National Science Foundation (in french, in german)
2006-11-03 SWIS annual hiking day
Our annual hiking day was kindly organized by Gregory Mermoud and his family in beautiful Valais. Photos are online.
2006-10-19 Best Presentation Award
Thomas Lochmatter received the Best Presentation Award at the NCCR MICS Scientific Conference 2006 (Zurich, 17 – 19 October 2006) for his presentation “Distributed Odor Source Localization”.
2006-10-01 Visiting PhD students joining SWIS
Iñaki Navarro-Oiza (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid) and Teodora Miteva (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) join SWIS as Visiting PhD Student (6 months internship).
2006-09-01 New PhD Student joining SWIS
Grégory Mermoud joins SWIS as a PhD student.
2006-07-13 Best Paper Award
From left to right: Prof. Alcherio Martinoli, Nikolaus Correll, Prof. Richard Voyles
Nikolaus Correll and Alcherio Martinoli receive the Best Paper Award for their paper System Identification of Self-Organizing Robotic Swarms presented at the International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems in Minneapolis, USA.
2006-07-10 IFRR Travel Fellowship
Nikolaus Correll receives the International Foundation of Robotics Research Student Travel Fellowship Award for his paper Comparing Coordination Schemes for Miniature Robotic Swarms: A Case Study in Boundary Coverage of Regular Structures (joint work with Samuel Rutishauser and Alcherio Martinoli) presented at the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
2006-06-15 I&C Research Day
SWIS participates at the 2006 I&C Research Day (Flyer).
2006-04-01 2006 Teaching Excellence Award
Alcherio Martinoli wins the 2006 Best Teacher Award of the Computer and Communication Sciences School assigned by the EPFL Student Association (Association Générale des Etudiants de l’EPFL, AGEPoly) in particular for his course on Swarm Intelligence. The award was officially distributed at the EPFL Graduation Day (La Magistrale) 2006.
2005-11-11 EPFL Research Day
Graduate students Christopher Cianci, Nikolaus Correll, and James Pugh presented posters show-casing their work at the 2005 EPFL Research Day.
2005-10-26 Outreaching and media coverage
The international project Mascarillons focusing on self-assembling cubic blimps featured on Discovery Channel.
2005-10-01 New PhD student joining SWIS
Thomas Lochmatter joins SWIS as a PhD student working on distributed odor source localization.
2005-09-01 Visiting PhD student joining SWIS
Nidhi Kalra joins SWIS as visiting graduate student from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University till the end of 2005.
2005-07-01 New staff joining SWIS
Xavier Raemy joins SWIS as R&D FW and HW engineer.
2005-06-23 I&C Research Day
The SWIS group participates at the I&C School’s research day (check out our RD 2005 flyer) .
2005-05-18 Outreaching and media coverage
SWIS research is highlighted in the EPFL outreaching magazine Sciensationnel.
2005-05-18 Outreaching and media coverage
Swarm Robotics research done by SWIS is featured in a 9 day long exhibition during the Swiss-wide festival Science et Cite.
2005-05-04 Outreaching and media coverage
SWIS research is highlighted in the EPFL magazine Flash and on EPFL news.
2004-12-01 Outreaching and media coverage
The european project Leurre in which the SWIS group is involved has received extensive news coverage in international print-media.
2004-11-01 New PhD student joining SWIS
Pierre Roduit joins the SWIS group as PhD student.
2004-10-01 New postdoctoral fellow joining SWIS
Julien Nembrini joins SWIS as postdoctoral scholar.
2004-10-18 New course
In the winter semester of the AY 2004-05, SWIS will offer for the first time at EPFL its course on Swarm Intelligence.
2004-07-08 I&C Research Day
SWIS presents its research activities at the I&C School 2004 Research Day for the first time. Here is the RD 2004 flyer.
2004-06-01 Outreaching and media coverage
Prof. Martinoli’s research was highlighted in the Swiss NSF Activity Report 2003.
2004-03-24 Tech Transfert Award
Olivier Michel was awarded the second price in the first “EURON – Technology Transfer Award” for his robot simulator Webots.
2003-10-01 Moving the laboratory location
The research activities of the Collective Robotics Group at the California Institute of Technology have been integrated in the newly created Swarm-Intelligent Systems Group (SWIS) and in other research units at Caltech (Robotics Research Laboratory and Engineering Design Research Laboratory).
2002-09-10 Outreaching and media coverage
A show called “Bio-Inspiration” (excerpt, 24.5 MB AVI) edited by Mark Trottenberg went on air on Sep 10, 15, and 17. CORO’s research activities were mentioned together with those of other great scientists such as Prof. Robert Full (Berkeley University, insect locomotion), Prof. Edward O. Wilson (Harvard University, social insects), and Dr. Eric Bonabeau (Icosystems Inc., Boston, swarm intelligence). The experiment of self-organizing direction of motion performed with Alice robots was originally designed and implemented by Dr. Gilles Caprari (EPFL) and Dr. Guy Theraulaz (CNRS, Toulouse, France).
2002-06-01 Journal Cover
Some of the results achieved in the Odor Source Localization project were recently published in the IEEE Sensors journal. The cover of the journal presented an unusual look … Adam Hayes’ research highlighted on the IEEE Sensors Journal
2001-12-01 Inventor of the Year
Ian Kelly‘s robot “SlugBot” was nominated Invention of the Year 2001. More information can be found also on Wired News. This work was entirely carried out at Intelligent Autonomous Systems Engineering Laboratory at the UWE.
2001-06-01 Teaching Excellence Award
Kjerstin Easton was awarded for her teaching activities in labs, homework, and final projects in the Swarm Intelligence course (EE141).
2001-09-22 Career Award
Alcherio Martinoli was awarded with the KiTi 2001 Prize for Swiss-Italian people who have distinguished themselves in the field of science, art, or humanities. The prize was assigned by the Kiwanis Club Bellinzona e Valli and handed by the head of the Education Department of the Ticino State.
From left to right: Paolo Curti, Mino Valsecchi (also winner of the KiTi 2001 for his social involvment), Filippo Di Venti (president of the Kiwanis Club Bellinzona e valli), Alcherio Martinoli, and Wahib Aladin (president of the Kiwanis Club Switzerland). © Nicola Demaldi, CdTI, 09/22/01