The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and is located in Lausanne. EPFL is ranked as Europe’s #2 and world’s #18 university in the field of “Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences” in the 2012 academic ranking of world universities (ARWU) by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. EPFL participation will be through the Biorobotics laboratory (BIOROB). BIOROB works on the computational aspects of movement control, sensorimotor coordination, and learning in animals and in robots. We are interested in using robots and numerical simulation to study the neural mechanisms underlying movement control and learning in animals, and in return to take inspiration from animals to design new control methods for robotics as well as novel robots capable of agile locomotion in complex environments. The BIOROB Lab has worked extensively on dynamical system control for articulated robots (snake-like, salamander-like, quadruped and humanoid) and for exoskeletons. It has developed several control architectures for locomotion based on the biological concepts of central pattern generators and motor primitives. The group also develops new types of robots such as amphibious salamander-like robots. BIOROB is part of the of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics. BIOROB participates/participated in the following EU-funded projects: RobotCub (IP, FP6), Lampetra (STREP, FP7), LOCOMORPH (STREP, FP7), ANGELS (STREP, FP7), EVRYON (STREP, FP7), and AMARSi (IP, FP7).

website: http://biorob.epfl.ch/