Building robots, playing with AI.

Robotic and AI Food Lab

A robotic platform that automates food science experiments, using AI to optimize recipes such as plant-based milks and coffee creamers. The system, built at EPFL in collaboration with Nestlé R&D, handles everything from ingredient dosing to cleaning, and measures viscosity, pH, and stability. Formulations are optimized in as few as 20 trials.

• Fully automated workflow from ingredient dosing to cleaning and measurements.
• AI-driven optimization using Bayesian methods for rapid formulation discovery.
• Combines large-scale robotics, lab automation, and AI-driven experimentation in one platform.

Vertical Farming Robot

A robotic platform for autonomous crop management in vertical hydroponics. It is designed to interact with plants across multiple growth stages, from planting and monitoring to harvesting, in a controlled indoor farming environment.

• 8-degree-of-freedom robotic base with modular end effectors adapted to different plant stages.
• Integrated hydroponic system with marker-based plant indexing and computer vision for detection.
• Achieved precise planting and monitoring, with successful harvesting of different plant types.

First-author paper submitted to IROS 2026.

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Vacuum Regeneration in Whale Tag Suction Cups

Part of Project CETI, this work extends the attachment time of non-invasive whale tags by using pressure changes during dives to regenerate suction inside the suction cups and preserve data collection for longer deployments.

• Built a thermodynamic model of the pump and optimized the design with a genetic algorithm.
• Developed a robust prototype for 800m deep-sea deployments.
• Achieved vacuum regeneration up to 881% of the starting pressure after five cycles.

First author paper - DOI: 10.1109/JOE.2025.3595607

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Multimodal Soft Sensor to Assess Food Doneness

A robot fingertip sensor designed to combine tactile, electrical, thermal, vision, and sound information to assess food doneness and help robotic systems make the perfect meal.

• Combined stiffness, permittivity, conductivity, temperature, vision, and sound in a single fingertip-like package.
• Designed and fabricated a soft pressure sensor cast in silicone together with the other sensing modalities.
• Distinguished cooking-time differences on toast samples as small as 30 seconds.

Paper presented at RoboSoft 2024 - DOI: 10.1109/RoboSoft60065.2024.10521945

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Intuitive Teleoperation Device for Neuroendovascular Surgery

Designed a force-feedback teleoperation for catheter translation and rotation that aims to preserve surgical dexterity while reducing the direct exposure of surgeons to X-ray imaging.

• Two scroll wheels control catheter translation and rotation with force feedback.
• Developed the concept through functional decomposition, a morphological matrix, and a decision matrix.
• Built a working device reaching 100 um precision with force feedback up to 10 N.

Patent pending EP25181805

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Morphogenesis-Inspired Reconfigurable Robots in Aquatic Environments

A system inspired by natural adhesion and de-adhesion phenomena to control the configuration of floating objects in water using stochastic behavior and Markov-chain-based control.

• Built an experimental setup with a controllable bubble wall and computer vision tracking.
• Modeled stochastic object interactions through state-transition probabilities and Markov chains.
• Achieved successful state transitions with experiments following the predicted trend.

Paper presented at RoboSoft 2025 - DOI: 10.1109/RoboSoft63089.2025.11020845

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Characterizing and Refining a Novel Metallic FDM Process

Characterization of a lower-cost metal additive manufacturing process based on polymer loaded with metallic particles and later sintered in an oven, focusing on repeatability and mechanical anisotropy.

• Refined a metallic FDM workflow using particle-loaded polymer followed by oven sintering.
• Ran tensile tests across layer orientations and tracked layer behavior with computer vision.
• Identified print-orientation anisotropy together with elongation limits caused by sintering porosity.

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