!and yet it moves

Raffaello D'Andrea is a professor of engineering, an artist, and an entrepreneur. His contributions range from the highly theoretical to the very applied, and incorporate mathematics, physics, computer science, technological innovations, and art. He received a United States Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering in 2002 for his "Theoretical and Experimental Advances in the Robust Control of Feedback Systems". He is the recipient of two best paper awards from the American Automatic Control Council and the IEEE, has won a National Science Foundation Career Award, and has received several teaching awards in the area of experiential learning. He was the faculty advisor and system architect of the Cornell Robot Soccer Team, four time world champions at the international RoboCup competition in Sweden, Australia, Italy, and Japan. He is also the system architect at Kiva Systems, a Boston area high-tech company where he helped launch a revolutionary material handling system that utilizes hundreds of fully autonomous mobile robots, and was co-recipient of the 2008 IEEE/IFR Invention and Entrepreneurship Award. His work has been featured on Scientific American Frontiers and the Discovery Channel, at the Smithsonian, the Tech Museum of Innovation, and the Spoleto Festival. Exhibitions include the Venice Biennale, the Luminato Festival, Ars Electronica, Idea City, and the National Gallery of Canada.

rdandrea@ethz.ch

Frédéric Bourgault joined IDSC following a postdoctoral research assignment at Cornell University’s Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering where he worked on data fusion and probabilistic decision making for networks of mobile robots and humans engaged in gathering information from dynamic environments. During that time he was also responsible for the successful development of a world-class, state-of-the-art multi-robot research facility. His research interests lie in networked sensors and robots, human-robot interactions, autonomous flying platforms, decentralized estimation, information and control theory, and “smart” structures with embedded sensors and actuators. His tasks at IDSC include performing design, analysis and developing control algorithms for the Distributed Flight Array, the quadrocopters of the Flying Machine Arena, as well as creating new ultra agile and ultra fast omni-directional ball-juggling robots. He also received an ETH Fellowship to develop a decentralized human-machine collaborative system for outdoor search and rescue.

fbourgault@ethz.ch

Matt Donovan is an artist, industrial designer, and conservator of kinetic artworks. He graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design and has since worked as an industrial designer for artists. Formally trained in Fine Arts, but with an instinctive understanding of engineering, he has built a career in which design and art are inseparable. Both in his personal and professional work he skirts the line between art and design. Highlights include a series of works with Hallie Siegel called 'History Machines'; the mechanical design of Max Dean's and Raffaello D'Andrea's The Table; and collaboration with Max Dean and Raffaello D’Andrea on The Robotic Chair. Projects he has contributed to have exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, and the Venice Biennale. He has exhibited at ARS Electronica, ARCO art fair, Luminato Festival, and the Olga Korper Gallery.

mdonovan@ethz.ch