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Francesco Mondada

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Francesco Mondada
Born
Locarno, Switzerland
NationalitySwiss
CitizenshipSwitzerland
Alma materEcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Known forKhepera mobile robot, E-puck mobile robot, Thymio
AwardsLatsis Foundation University Prize, Credit Suisse Best Teaching Award
Scientific career
FieldsRobotics, Computer Science
InstitutionsEcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Francesco Mondada (born 17 March 1967) is a Swiss professor[1] in artificial intelligence and robotics. He got a Master's degree in Microengineering at the EPFL in 1991 and a PhD degree in 1997. He is one of the creators of the Khepera and directed the design of the S-bot, the e-puck, the marXbot and the Thymio mobile robots. Together, these robots are mentioned in more than 9000 research articles.[2] In particular the Khepera robot[3] is a milestone in the field of bio-inspired and evolutionary robotics.

He was one of the founders and director of K-team SA from its creation 1995 to 2000,[4] and one of the founders of Calerga Sarl in 2001[5] and Mobsya in 2010.[6]

His recent work concerns collective robotics and education.

Early Life and Education

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Mondada was born in Locarno, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, Switzerland.[7] He grew up in a mountain village in Ticino, where his father’s mechanical workshop sparked his early passion for engineering and building things.[8] As a teenager, he developed an interest in both mechanics and computers – at one point winning a personal computer in a lottery, which led him to start programming and interfacing his own homemade devices.[8] This naturally evolved into building his first small robots by combining mechanical contraptions with computer control.

After finishing secondary education, Mondada chose to attend EPFL in Lausanne in 1986, specifically because it offered a “Microengineering” program (microtechnique) not available at ETH Zurich at the time.[9] He earned his Master’s degree in Microengineering at EPFL in 1991, and stayed on to pursue a doctorate. During his graduate studies, he joined the robotics research group of Professor Jean-Daniel Nicoud at EPFL (Laboratory of Microinformatics, LAMI), where he worked on projects in artificial intelligence and mobile robotics alongside collaborators like Dario Floreano and Alcherio Martinoli.[8] Mondada received his Ph.D. in 1997 from EPFL; his doctoral research included the creation of the Khepera mobile robot, a small wheeled robot platform for research, which would become one of his most celebrated achievements.[7]

Awards and honours

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  • University Latsis[10]
  • Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching.[11]
  • 2012 Polysphère, award for the best professor from the School of Engineering at EPFL given by the students.[12]
  • Member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences (SATW)[13]
  • Several best poster/paper/demo awards, for instance the Best Paper Award Design at the HRI 2017 conference.

Selected publications

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  • F. Mondada, M. Bonani, F. Riedo, M. Briod, L. Pereyre, P. Retornaz, S. Magnenat. Bringing Robotics to Formal Education: The Thymio Open-Source Hardware Robot. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 77–85, March 2017. Bringing Robotics to Formal Education: The Thymio Open-Source Hardware Robot
  • J. Halloy, G. Sempo, G. Caprari, C. Rivault, M. Asadpour, F. Tache, I. Said, V. Durier, S. Canonge, J. Ame, C. Detrain, N. Correll, A. Martinoli, F. Mondada, R. Siegwart, and J.-L. Deneubourg. Social Integration of Robots into Groups of Cockroaches to Control Self-Organized Choices. Science, 318(5853):1155-1158, 2007. - Infoscience Social Integration of Robots into Groups of Cockroaches to Control Self-Organized Choices
  • F. Mondada, G. C. Pettinaro, A. Guignard, I. Kwee, D. Floreano, J.-L. Deneubourg, S. Nolfi, L. Gambardella, and M. Dorigo. SWARM-BOT: a New Distributed Robotic Concept. Autonomous Robots, special Issue on Swarm Robotics, 17(2-3):193-221, 2004. September - November 2004 Sponsor: swarm-bots, OFES 01-0012-1. [1]
  • D. Floreano and F. Mondada. Evolution of Homing Navigation in a Real Mobile Robot. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Part B : Cybernetics, 26(3):396-407, 1996. [2]
  • F. Mondada, E. Franzi, P. Ienne, T. Yoshikawa, and F. Miyazaki. Mobile Robot Miniaturization: A Tool for Investigation in Control Algorithms. In Experimental Robotics III, volume 200 of Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, pages 501-13. Springer, London, 1994.

References

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  1. ^ "Press Release of the ETH Board, about the nomination of professors on May 24, 2013".
  2. ^ "Google Scholar". scholar.google.ch.
  3. ^ "Google Scholar". scholar.google.ch.
  4. ^ Official Trade and Companies Register of Canton de Vaud, data about K-Team SA, see cancellations for the history
  5. ^ Official Trade and Companies Register of Canton de Vaud, data about Calerga SàrL
  6. ^ Official Trade and Companies Register of Canton de Vaud, data about Mobsya Association, see cancellations for the history
  7. ^ a b "Roboticist Detail". www.ieee-ras.org.
  8. ^ a b c "Getting into Robotics: Francesco Mondada".
  9. ^ "Oral-History:Francesco Mondada". ETHW. December 14, 2020.
  10. ^ "List of Latsis prizes given to the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne". Archived from the original on January 15, 2013.
  11. ^ "List of Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching laureates at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne". Archived from the original on 2014-06-17. Retrieved 2013-08-04.
  12. ^ "AGEPoly". agepoly.ch.
  13. ^ "Full Members". www.satw.ch. January 28, 2025.
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