Tech
This amazing robot swims like an eel AND detects pollution
Inspired by one of nature’s most efficient swimmers, bio-roboticist Auke Ijspeert and his team are building a sinuous robot that can venture into toxic waters.
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Auke Ijspeert works at the intersection of robotics, biology and computational neuroscience.
Why you should listen
Auke Ijspeert is a professor at the EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne), and head of the Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob). He has a BSc/MSc in Physics from the EPFL and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh, with John Hallam and David Willshaw as advisors. He carried out postdocs at IDSIA and EPFL with Jean-Daniel Nicoud and Luca Gambardella, and at the University of Southern California, with Michael Arbib and Stefan Schaal.
Ijspeert is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of animal locomotion and movement control, and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and locomotion controllers.