Francesco Mondada

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Francesco Mondada
Born
Locarno, Switzerland
CitizenshipSwitzerland
Alma materEcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Known forKhepera mobile robot, E-puck mobile robot, Thymio
AwardsLatsis Foundation University Prize, Credit Suisse Best Teaching Award
Scientific career
FieldsRobotics, computer science
InstitutionsEcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Francesco Mondada (born 17 March 1967) is a Swiss roboticist, engineer, and academic known for his work and research in mobile robotics, swarm robotics,[1] and educational robotics.[2] He is affiliated with École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he leads the MOBOTS research group.[3] Mondada is known for developing robotic platforms, including the Khepera robot,[4] e-puck robot,[5] s-bot, marXbot,[6] and Thymio, which have been widely adopted in robotics research and education.[7]

Biography

Mondada was born in Locarno. He studied microengineering at EPFL, receiving a Master of Science degree in 1991 and a doctorate in 1997.[8] During his doctoral research, he contributed to the development of miniature autonomous mobile robots, establishing the technical foundations for later work in collective and bio-inspired robotics.[9][10]

Career

While completing his doctoral studies in the early 1990s, Mondada co-developed the Khepera mobile robot and co-founded K-Team SA in 1995.[10] He served as chief executive officer and president of the company until 2000, overseeing the commercialization of mobile robotic systems for academic and industrial use. Following this period, he returned to EPFL as a senior scientist and briefly held a research position at the California Institute of Technology.[11]

Between 2001 and 2007, Mondada held postdoctoral and senior scientific appointments at EPFL, working with laboratories led by prominent roboticists including Dario Floreano, Roland Siegwart, and Hannes Bleuler.[12] During this period he contributed to major European collaborative robotics projects, including Swarm-bots and Swarmanoid.[13] In 2010, he assumed leadership of EPFL’s educational robotics research within the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research Robotics.[7]

In 2013, EPFL appointed Mondada Adjunct Professor of Robotics. He subsequently became head of the MOBOTS laboratory and later directed the Center for Learning Sciences at EPFL.[12] His academic work has combined robotics engineering with educational innovation, promoting open-source robotics for formal education and interdisciplinary experimentation.[9]

Research and robotic works

Mondada’s research has focused on the design of compact autonomous robots for collective intelligence, adaptive systems, and educational applications.[14] His earliest major contribution, the Khepera robot, became one of the widely used platforms in bio-inspired robotics and experimental control systems, appearing in thousands of scientific publications.[15] Its modular architecture established a standard platform for evolutionary robotics research.[16]

As principal designer of the s-bot platform for the European Swarm-bots project, Mondada developed one of the first physically self-organizing robotic systems capable of autonomous collective behavior.[17] The project became a landmark in swarm robotics and was recognized by the European Commission as a major technological success.[18] The robot was later listed by Wired among the “50 Best Robots Ever”.[19]

Mondada subsequently led development of the e-puck robot, an open-hardware educational platform widely used in university robotics curricula, and later the marXbot system for modular swarm experimentation.[20] In 2010, he co-created Thymio, an open-source educational robot designed for primary and secondary education.[21]

His later research expanded into biohybrid systems and robot-animal interaction, including robotic platforms used to study collective fish behavior and social interaction mechanisms.[22] Across these projects, Mondada’s work has emphasized mechatronic precision, open-source accessibility, and the integration of robotics into both scientific research and formal education systems.[23][24]

Selected publications

References

  1. designboom, lynn chaya I. (2017-11-11). "EPFL's imposter robotic fish infiltrates a school of zebrafish". designboom | architecture & design magazine. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  2. "The world's top artificial intelligence companies are pleading for a ban on killer robots". Business Insider. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  3. "Educational robotics". Robohub. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  4. "The Development of Khepera". Info science.
  5. "e-puck: the ultimate tool to teach embedded robotics". EPFL Learn. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  6. Bonani, Michael; Longchamp, Valentin; Magnenat, Stéphane; Rétornaz, Philippe; Burnier, Daniel; Roulet, Gilles; Vaussard, Florian; Bleuler, Hannes; Mondada, Francesco (2010). "The marXbot, a miniature mobile robot opening new perspectives for the collective-robotic research". 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems: 4187–4193. doi:10.1109/IROS.2010.5649153.
  7. "Francesco Mondada receives prestigious Polytechnik-Preis 2022". epfl.
  8. "Francesco Mondada". EPFL People. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  9. "Roboticist Detail". www.ieee-ras.org.
  10. "Getting into Robotics: Francesco Mondada".
  11. "Oral-History:Francesco Mondada". ETHW. December 14, 2020.
  12. "Seven professors nominated". EPFL.
  13. "These Robots Can Merge and Split Their Brains to Form New Modular Bots - IEEE Spectrum". spectrum.ieee.org. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  14. "Self-Healing 'Modular Robot' Makes Its Debut". DongA Science. 2017-10-02. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  15. Wang, L.F.; Tan, K.C.; Prahlad, V. (2000). "Developing Khepera robot applications in a Webots environment". MHS2000. Proceedings of 2000 International Symposium on Micromechatronics and Human Science (Cat. No.00TH8530): 71–76. doi:10.1109/MHS.2000.903293.
  16. Mondada, F.; Franzi, E.; Guilgnard, A.; Nicoud, J. (1995). "Khepera: The Optimal Tool for Development in Mobile Robotics". Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. 3: V14–. doi:10.1109/ROBOT.1995.525757.
  17. Mondada, F.; Guignard, A.; Bonani, M.; Bar, D.; Lauria, M.; Floreano, D. (2003). "SWARM-BOT: from concept to implementation" (PDF). Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453). Vol. 2. IEEE. pp. 1626–1631. doi:10.1109/IROS.2003.1248877. ISBN 978-0-7803-7860-5. Retrieved July 27, 2025.
  18. Pisani, Carlo Pisani, Carlo (2015-09-16). "Student makes mark with mind over matter". SWI swissinfo.ch. Retrieved 2026-05-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. Capps, Robert. "The 50 Best Robots Ever". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  20. Mondada, Francesco; Bonani, Michael; Raemy, Xavier; Pugh, James; Cianci, Christopher; Klaptocz, Adam; Magnenat, Stephane; Zufferey, Jean-Christophe; Floreano, Dario; Martinoli, Alcherio (2009). "The e-puck, a Robot Designed for Education in Engineering". Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions. 1. IPCB: Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco: 59–65.
  21. Perrin, Sarah. "The robot Thymio is finding its niche in French schools". EPFL.
  22. Barmak, Rafael; Hofstadler, Daniel N.; Stefanec, Martin; Piotet, Louis; Cherfan, Raphaël; Schmickl, Thomas; Mondada, Francesco; Mills, Rob (2024). "Biohybrid Superorganisms—On the Design of a Robotic System for Thermal Interactions With Honeybee Colonies". IEEE Access. 12: 50849–50871. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3385658. ISSN 2169-3536.
  23. "Getting into Robotics: Francesco Mondada". NCCR Robotics. Retrieved 2026-05-11.
  24. "Francesco Mondada, éleveur de robots - Le Temps" (in French). 2018-04-29. ISSN 1423-3967. Retrieved 2026-05-11.