SMS News

This year IEEE RAS ICRA started great with one of our papers selected as best paper in the Assistive Systems Workshop icra2024 ROS to Healthcare is our effort to standardize biosignals, biometrics and human model communication in robotics and healthcare from our teams at SCAI Lab , SMS Lab, and SRD Lab from Tohoku University. Congratulation to all the team! Diego Paez, Jose Salazar, Ankit Ravankar, Oriella Gnarra, Jorge Peña Queralta and Alexander Breuss.

Honorable mention for the 2023 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award for paper “ANYexo 2.0: A Fully-Actuated Upper-Limb Exoskeleton for Manipulation and Joint-Oriented Training in all Stages of Rehabilitation” by Yves Dominic Zimmermann, Michael Sommerhalder, Peter Wolf, Robert Riener, and Marco Hutter in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.  

Marie Georgarakis and Yves Zimmermann were honoured with the 2022 Best Paper Award by IEEE Transaction on Medical Robotics and Bionics for their publication entitled “Supporting and Stabilizing the Scapulohumeral Rhythm with a Body- or Robot-Powered Orthosis”. The orthosis described in the paper and also patented assists the scapula on its physiological movement path by coupling the scapulothoracic rotation with the elevation of the arm.

A new ETH study compares 27 humanoid robots with humans and comes to the conclusion that while robots have better components, they are still not capable of achieving as much. However, according to the authors of the study, the machines are catching up.

We are pleased to announce that Oriella Gnarra has received the New Investigator Award at the World Sleep Congress 2023 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This award was granted to her, besides to 17 other young researchers, out of thousands of applicants.

Clothes have long since ceased to be just fabric over our skin! Muscles to put on can be found at the Sensory Motor Systems Lab. Experience how robotics, smart textiles and fashion complement each other

The young researcher award at the "Robotics and Technologies for Neurorehabilitation" Congress was organized by the Instituto Clinica Quarenghi in San Pellegrino Terme, Italy. The title of the presentation was: "Somnomat Casa – The Smart Bed for Neurorehabilitation". A special thank goes to Doctor Pietro Salvi, Professor Stefano Mazzoleni, Professor Robert Riener, and colleagues Alexander Breuss and Manuel Fujis.

Watch Marcel Hug's race for paralympic gold in this thrilling film produced by Schweizer Paraplegiker-Stiftung. Sensory-Motor Systems Lab was involved in the development of Marcel Hug's wheelchair.

The presentation was titled “Improving sleep through closed-loop autotuning of a robotic bed using Gaussian processes” and was based on a submission together with Zelio Suter, Manuel Fujs, and Robert Riener.

The second CYBATHLON Challenges will take place on 29 March 2023! The CYBATHLON Challenges offer development teams the opportunity to involve people with disabilities in their development process from the very beginning and to test their assistance systems in a competitive situation. The Challenges is of course the build-up on the Road to 2024, the CYBATHLON global edition, which is to take place in October 2024.

In his master's thesis, Luca Hasler developed a new bicycle handlebar for Flurina Rigling at our lab: Customised gear and brake levers and optimal contact surfaces for her hands will facilitate her qualification for the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. The latest issue of the ETH Globe magazine reports on the project.

In autumn 2022, a film team from P.M. Wissen accompanied Marie Georgarakis and Adrian Esser to Michael Hagmann's home. Michael has tested the Myoshirt extensively, for the first time in activities of daily living. His impressions and feedback have now been broadcast on Austrian television.

Manuel Fujs (SMS robotic engineer) participated in the Startup Campus Business Concept Course and won 1st place in the final pitch competition, beating 20 other Startups ideas. During the course he worked on the business aspects of commercializing the Somnomat bed, which has been a research project in the SMS lab for the last 10 years. Together with Alexander Breuss (SMS doctoral student) they plan to found a spin-off company that helps people to improve their sleep using the Somnomat.

During the Swiss Robotic Days 2022, two former members of the SMS-Lab were awarded with the NCCR Robotics – Equal Opportunities Excellence Award. Laura Marchal-Crespo and Marie Georgarakis were recognised for their commitment to implementing values of equal opportunities, diversity and inclusion in our lab, the consortium and the community.