Promotion of technology

Goal

Technology is often seen as magic, able to solve any problem, using complex physics and accessible only to some very intelligent people. This vision is false and misleading, keeping people away from the understanding and correct use of technology.

Our goal is to demystify technology, allow concrete and intellectual access to this tool. It is essential to have new generations of people who know what's behind technology and how they can use it as a tool to achieve their life goals.

We also want to bring the message that technology does not exist for itself, but exist as a tool for humans to achieve their goals. Technology for itself can bring to technology addiction and destruction of more important life goals.

Visits of our laboratory

Photo A. Herzog

We organize in a regular way visits of our laboratory to explain what we are doing and how we use which technology. Classes, official or occasional visitors of EPFL are welcome. Contact Francesco Mondada to organize such a visit.

Training in our laboratory

In addition to training of EPFL students, we welcome, in a more limited number, students from other schools or technicans/engineers who want to train on our field, for instance because of uneployment.

Robotic contests

We organize an annual robotic contest, see the robotic contest page. We support several other contests such as the firedays of robopoly and, in some occasions, some teams participating to EuroBot.

Educational tools

We develop robotic educational tools such as the e-puck robot. We spread these developments with open hardware licenses.