In future, it will be easier and cheaper for developers at universities and SMEs to build wearable microelectronic devices and chips for the IoT, thanks to the PULPino open-source processor, which has been developed at ETH Zurich and the University of Bologna. Software source codes and hardware designs tend to be closely guarded trade secrets. Not so with open-source products.

All materials are made up of atoms, which vibrate. These vibrations, or 'phonons', are responsible, for example, for how electric charge and heat is transported in materials. Vibrations of metals, semiconductors, and insulators in are well studied; however, now materials are being nanosized to bring better performance to applications such as displays, sensors, batteries, and catalytic membranes. What happens to vibrations when a material is nanos...

Researchers working under Juerg Leuthold, Professor of Photonics and Communications, have created the world’s smallest integrated optical switch. Applying a small voltage causes an atom to relocate, turning the switch on or off. The quantity of data exchanged via communications networks around the globe is growing at a breathtaking rate.

Disney Research Zurich and Swiss technology institute ETH have developed a four-wheeled robot with integrated propellers that allow it to scale vertical surfaces. VertiGo is driven by a user like a remote-controlled car, but adjusts its propellers automatically in response to changes in the surrounding surfaces.

In 2012, a single pair of prosthetic legs ignited an international debate. Did South African athlete Oscar Pistorius's carbon-fibre running blades confer an unfair advantage over other able-bodied competitors? Did this technology, the International Olympics Committee asked, take him beyond normal human limits? For the Cybathlon, a new international sporting event taking place in Zurich in October 2016, the question of limits is beside the po...

  The Aerial Construction project is a collaboration between the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control and the Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication. The objective is to investigate and develop methods and techniques for robotic aerial construction.

Zurich will host the first Cybathlon in autumn 2016, bringing together physically impaired people from all over the world to compete against each other using the latest assistive technologies. ETH Zurich welcomed 30 of the participating teams from 15 countries to complete a practice session at the Swiss Arena in Kloten.