Organization

Highlights and achievements

The lab has achieved a number of firsts in research, which is evidenced by the publication of several highly cited papers on a range of topics and more than a dozen journal-covers featuring the lab's work. Their early MEMS work on multi-axis force sensing led to the formation of a startup company in 2007 that now commercially distributes MEMS-based force sensors and grippers around the world. Their early work on the magnetic manipulation of microrobots was patented by ETH and is licensed for biomedical applications. This was followed by the experimental realization of bacteria-sized microrobots whose swimming strategy was inspired by E. coli, and the group built the first micron-sized swimming microrobots using two-photon photopolymerization. Fluidic trapping was also pioneered by the lab.