ETH awards Rössler Prize to world-leading robotics inventor
Published: Friday, Jun 21st 2024, 11:10
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His highly mobile robots are designed to help with search and rescue work or to explore other planets: ETH Zurich has awarded the Rössler Prize, worth 200,000 Swiss francs, to Professor Marco Hutter from the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering.
Hutter's work on the mobility and autonomy of walking robots has fundamentally changed robotics research, ETH Zurich announced on Friday. His revolutionary locomotion control based on machine learning is now a standard.
The professor's pioneering scientific achievements have also helped to establish ETH Zurich as a world-leading institution in robotics.
Ten years ago, robots were barely able to move, but now they are able to navigate over the most difficult terrain, Hutter is quoted as saying in the press release.
Walking robots for inspection work
"Our walking robots are now used commercially for industrial inspection work." New capabilities are now to be researched that would enable exploration or rescue missions in completely unknown environments.
Marco Hutter's team has been relying on artificial intelligence (AI) for years. Machine learning is used to teach the robot to understand its environment and interact with it.
Like an inquisitive dog
When the robot encounters an obstacle, it uses a camera and an artificial neural network to recognize what kind of obstacle it is. It then executes the movements that it has previously learned in training as promising.
The four-legged robot, which acts like an inquisitive dog, is called "Anymal" - an artificial word made up of "anywhere" and "animal". The Rössler Prize is the most highly endowed research award at ETH Zurich.
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