Success Factors
"Innovative Engineering"
FiveCo - Innovative Engineering offers research and development services (electronics, microcontroller programming, image processing), from concept definition through to technical and financial evaluation, and from development through to an industrialisable prototype.
Range of motor control boards, operable via Ethernet or I2C up to a power of 70 W
FiveCo has been based at the heart of the EPFL Science Park since October 2002. Drawing on the experience gained from numerous projects, the company has also developed its own products. Its Ethernet motor control board was presented last February as a product that is less expensive than those available on the market, while being better aligned with industry needs.
FiveCo's expertise in image processing also led it to develop a licence plate recognition library, which is currently operational at the Vaud Cantonal Police for managing images from speed cameras.
Brief history
FiveCo's five founders, who graduated from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in April 2001, have been working together for around six years. They are all microtechnology engineers, but each specialises in a different field.
Four of them were hired by Professor Roland Siegwart of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL-EPFL) to develop the interaction system for the RoboX guide robot featured in the "Robotics" presentation at Expo'02, which was visited by more than 700,000 people. The entire robot was developed in just 14 months. The fifth founder was simultaneously working as a project manager in micro-electronics for mobile telephony at Motorola in Geneva.
In 2002, they decided to pool their skills within a specialised R&D services company and founded FiveCo. The company was awarded the Genilem label in December 2003.
Multiple activities
FiveCo - Innovative Engineering offers research and development services in microtechnology: image processing, electronics, microcontroller programming, human-machine interfaces, and communication systems.
These varied competencies allow FiveCo to integrate into the partial development of a project or to carry it out in its entirety. A broad range of skills is indeed necessary to understand the interdisciplinary challenges that arise in many industrial projects.
Together, these competencies allow FiveCo to offer several types of service:
- Feasibility studies
- Project execution
- Prototype production
In order to deliver all of these services, FiveCo commits to meeting the following conditions: providing a critical perspective on projects, ensuring swift execution, maintaining project confidentiality, establishing fixed-price offers, and also ensuring continuous technology monitoring while integrating seamlessly into the client company's culture.
Development and prospects
FiveCo is also committed to promoting its products, principally its licence plate recognition system and its Ethernet motor control board. The latter targets both the home automation market and the industrial sector. Its ease of use and installation, the quality of its controller, its Ethernet connectivity, and its cost make it an innovative, high-performance, and competitive product.
FiveCo intends to continue promoting its expertise both through its engineering office and through its products. The motor control board market currently presents a promising outlook for FiveCo.
