Like their creations, Switzerland's robotics companies are on the move
Industry — Six Swiss companies, four of them from the canton of Vaud, are joining forces. Their goal: not to miss the mobile robotics wave — one of the most promising markets around.
"The problem for robotics companies is that they have to compete with the cinema," jokes Antoine Lorotte, director of FiveCo. "Getting to Terminator is still a long way off!"
That said, the robotics market is among the most promising around. The risk is being left on the platform while others — particularly in the United States — forge ahead. "We noticed that in Switzerland, many small companies were working in robotics, but each in their own corner. Our idea was to bring them together under a common banner, to give them more weight," explains Antoine Lorotte.
Robots on the move
That is how four companies from the canton of Vaud came to found the Swiss Mobile Robotics Consortium at the end of 2004: BlueBotics, Cyberbotics, and FiveCo in Lausanne, and K-Team in Yverdon. Last November, two more joined the group: GCtronic from Ticino and Neuronics from Zurich.
One question of definition remains: what exactly is "mobile robotics"? The answer: the development of autonomous robots, packed with sensors and therefore capable of moving around without bumping into the furniture — as opposed, for example, to articulated arms fixed to car assembly lines.
The classic example of such "mobile robots" is the robotic vacuum cleaner. But the field of application is vast: cleaning, surveillance, assistance for people with disabilities, leisure, logistics — such as delivering mail within an office. And let us not forget the guide robots that proved their worth at Expo.02. Overall, the service robotics market is expected to reach USD 11 billion by 2010, according to a United Nations study.
Why expand to six? The six consortium members will work hand in hand to promote robotics to industry: "We need to prove that our solutions are profitable and effective, while also championing the Swiss Made label, which still carries considerable weight abroad." As a first step, the fledgling lobby will have its own stand at the Go Automation industrial trade fair in Basel: "A space of 80 to 100 square metres — we could never have afforded that on our own!" says FiveCo's director.
FiveCo, two specialities
The six members of the Swiss Mobile Robotics Consortium are highly complementary: one specialises in simulation, another in navigation systems, a third in mechanics, and so on. As for FiveCo, the young company from the Ecublens Science Park, it has two strings to its bow: embedded electronics and image processing. It was FiveCo, notably, that developed the licence plate recognition software now used by the police forces of the cantons of Vaud, Fribourg, and Schwyz. Supported by Genilem, the company has "more than tripled its turnover this year compared to 2005," its director Antoine Lorotte notes, without disclosing the figure.
Nicolas Berlie
