Automation enablers

Florian Dörfler has been awarded this year’s Rössler Prize in recognition of his pioneering contributions to the fields of energy and control engineering. The award, worth CHF 200,000, is the most generous research prize at ETH Zurich and was presented to him at the ETH Foundation’s annual thanksgiving event.

Our latest fact sheet, co-authored with SATW, shows application cases for AI.

To scale up innovation, we need to bring research closer to real-world industrial needs. A new book by NCCR Automation researchers looks into how that can be achieved, and where the most exciting progress is right now.

This publication is a collaboration between the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) and the National Center of Competence in Research Automation (NCCR Automation). It aims to provide small and medium-sized distribution grid operators, energy supply companies and decision-makers in Switzerland an overview of the upcoming changes in the energy system. The publication also aims to highlight the resulting opportunities, innovative technologies, possible solutions and new business areas to ensure a reliable and profitable energy supply by 2050.

A big idea isn’t enough – academics with entrepreneurial goals often feel lost when they try to turn their ideas into products. The bench2biz workshops exist to show you the way to success.

The most everyday problems are sometimes the most resistant to efficient solutions. Dual sourcing inventory control is an example: it’s harder than you might think to balance speedy delivery against cost. But machine learning can help.

Fused deposition modelling is a genuinely transformative technology, but unreliable and imprecise results mean there is still a huge gap between its potential and what it actually delivers. Xavier Guidetti is using feedback and optimisation to close that gap.