They call it “Soft Robotics”: A journey through Swiss university labs
28.10.2025 11:00
Rita Longobardi
Switzerland is shaping the future of robotics. The next generation of machines won’t be rigid and complex—they’ll be deformable, simple, soft, and sensitive. Swiss universities are at the forefront of this global shift, pioneering soft robotics that draws inspiration from nature and materials science. We spoke with three leading researchers—Mirko Kovac at Empa, Josie Hughes at EPFL, and Georg Rauter at the University of Basel—about how robots that roll, swim, and even change shape could transform industries from environmental monitoring to medicine. Welcome to a world where silicone fingers, elastic actuators, and embodied intelligence redefine what robots can do—and where Switzerland isn’t just participating, it’s leading.
The annex of Laboratory Building A on the Empa Dübendorf site once served as a timber test facility. Today, it houses the air-water arena of the Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics, which Empa and EPFL operate in collaboration with Imperial College London. A water pool sits against one wall, where lab staff are immersing a robot named Medusa. “We have to understand the physical processes involved if we want to build multimodal autonomous systems,” explains the lab’s head, Professor Mirko Kovac. Medusa has already been in action this summer: the air-water vehicle took water samples from Lake Geneva. In future, it will also be able to collect individual specimens of the quagga mussel, which has migrated from the Black Sea. This is the reason why Kovac’s team is working on an elastic gripper.
Up left: Josie Hughes
Down left: Mirko Kovac
Right: Georg Rauter
It consists of three silicone ‘fingers’ reinforced on the inside with a fabric band. Because the two materials have different levels of stiffness – i.e. they offer different levels of resistance when deformed – the gripper can be closed pneumatically.
Projects such as the quagga gripper provide insights into a research area that is gaining increasing momentum: the development of robots made of elastic, soft and biological materials.
Helping fight the quagga mussel: The Medusa air-water vehicle developed by EMPA Dübendorf
“Switzerland is one of the leading hubs for soft robotics research.” — Josie Hughes
The number of publications on the topic is increasing rapidly. About 400 materials scientists and engineers participated in the 7th International Conference on Soft Robotics in April 2024; a year later, 800 researchers from around the world met in Lausanne to exchange ideas. It’s no accident that RoboSoft 2025 took place on the EPFL campus by Lake Geneva. “Switzerland is one of the leading centers for soft robotics research, alongside the US and China,” says British researcher Josie Hughes, one of the co-organizers of the conference for EPFL. Hughes came to EPFL from the University of Cambridge in 2021, attracted by the reputation of a university where the Delta robot for industrial assembly was invented in the 1980s. She took up a six-year professorship with the task of establishing her own soft robotics laboratory, and chose the agricultural and food industry as her field of application.
Not the biggest, but the first
In collaboration with Nestlé, the 20-strong CREATE Lab team is working on, inter alia, a chewing device that one day should eliminate the need for complex sensory panels in the development of new foods, in particular foods for small children and the very elderly. However, Hughes made headlines in the international scientific community with GOAT, a mobile robot that, as its name suggests, is Good Over All Terrains. It may not be the largest robot of all time, but it is the world’s first capable of purposefully and repeatedly changing its external shape. The fascinating thing is that the robot’s morphic qualities are not the result of a powerful computer processing sensor data. The GOAT consists of nothing more than nylon thread, fiberglass rods, some 3D-printed parts, a drive, a few sensors and a simple device controller.
What distinguishes the robot, which can run, swim and roll depending on the terrain, is the interaction of these materials with its environment. It’s a prime example of what researchers call embodied intelligence. Soft robotics researchers such as Hughes often find their ideas in nature.
“Surgery should evolve from an art to a science.” — Georg Rauter
At the BIROMED-Lab at the University of Basel’s Faculty of Medicine, this source of inspiration is even in the name: the Allschwil lab’s full name is the Bio-Inspired RObots for MEDicine-Laboratory. Georg Rauter, founder and head of the lab, is committed to the pièce de résistance of robotics research: the sensitivity of the actuator. “Even gripper robots with a high sensor density,” says Rauter, “are hopelessly inferior to the human hand.” Since there is hardly any field where a steady and precise hand is as important as in surgery, the team in Basel is working with a key element of soft robotics: series elastic actuators (SEA). These are drives in which the motor and load are connected via aspring element.
Left: A grasping roboti in the Bio-Inspired Robots for Medicine Laboratory at the University of Basel reaches for a raspberry
Right: The robotic head of MIRACLE inside a human knee model
When robots become sensitive
Based on this concept, Rauter’s team is developing a flexible endoscope for neurosurgeons. The device’s soft head ‘senses’ when it encounters obstacles such as blood vessels and automatically reorients its camera. “In clinical use,” says Rauter, “our tool will expand the surgeon’s field of vision and cause fewer procedure-related injuries.” The series-flexible drive also plays a central role in the BIROMED-Lab’s flagship project: MIRACLE is a robot whose fingernail-sized head is guided into the patient’s body, where it uses laser light to cut bone or cartilage.
The medical benefits of this minimally invasive method are potentially enormous. Because the robot head docks on to the target tissue, the patient’s own movements – such as breathing – are no longer a source of interference. The cutting precision is in the submillimeter range.
Added to this is the multifunctionality of the laser-generated light: it not only cuts without contact, but also scans surfaces and performs tissue analysis in real time. “Our robotic endoscope continuously generates data during the procedure, which the surgeon can compare with the CT/MRI images of the surgical field using VR glasses,” explains Rauter. His ambitious long-term goal is to to develop surgery from an art to an engineering science that delivers predictable results for the patient.
“Termite mounds are masterpieces—built by autonomous micro-creatures.” — Mirko Kovac
Open-air cage
From Basel back to Dübendorf: Kovac guides visitors through Empa’s DroneHub. From the Operations Room, they enter an open-air cage with a meter-high test façade and a biosphere, where bushes and trees grow on a layer of topsoil. “The DroneHub is unique worldwide,” says Kovac. Inaugurated last November, the arena combines the advantages of indoor and outdoor facilities: researchers do not need to obtain government permits for their drone experiments and can expose the flying robots to natural weather conditions. For example, aerial additive manufacturing can be tested at the DroneHub. In a pilot project, two coaxial tricopters worked together to build a column of foam. Drone 1 applied the foam, while drone 2 scanned each step and reported the construction progress to drone 1, which then applied the next layer based on this information. The tower made the cover of scientific journal Nature and also caused a stir at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Nature once again served as the model for the airborne construction team. A termite mound is multi-story, made of sustainable materials and climate-controlled. “It’s a technical masterpiece,” says Kovac, “conceived by the collective intelligence of autonomous microorganisms.”
Playground for flying robots: The DroneHub on the rooftop of the NEST reasearch and innovation building in Dübendorf
Up left: Josie Hughes
Helping fight the quagga mussel: The Medusa air-water vehicle developed by EMPA Dübendorf
Left: A grasping roboti in the Bio-Inspired Robots for Medicine Laboratory at the University of Basel reaches for a raspberry
Playground for flying robots: The DroneHub on the rooftop of the NEST reasearch and innovation building in Dübendorf
