Digital science for a sustainable future

Digital science plays an important role in the challenge of realizing a sustainable society. It creates new opportunities - including for the intelligent control and secure monitoring of numerous processes. And it opens up new perspectives, for example through digital twins. 
As an innovation driver, Empa aims to accelerate this digital transformation with smart materials and new technologies - always with people at the center. At the upcoming "Swiss Digital Days", Empa will offer, among other things, interactions with the public and bring digital science to life.

What will intelligent, nature-inspired robots of the future look like? And above all: how do we develop such robots? Empa's "Materials and Technology Center of Robotics" does just that: novel, nature-inspired soft robotics systems for infrastructure maintenance and environmental monitoring. 
These include flying robots that shoot and place sensor arrows in the forest. They gather the data needed to protect forest ecosystems from overexploitation. Empa is also developing drones that facilitate inspection of complex construction sites, mines and other hostile environments. Empa drones will also be part of the robotics exhibition at the opening event of the "Swiss Digital Days" in Bern, where they can be observed and experienced live and in action. 

Register here

The future looks brighter: Empa spin-off viboo presents a technology that can reduce the energy consumption of buildings by 20 to 40 percent - with a combination of machine learning methods and in-depth knowledge of building physics. Encouragingly, viboo was selected by digitalswitzerland as a semi-finalist for this year's "GreenTech Startup Battle". At the event, you can learn first-hand how viboo's innovative technology is helping to drastically reduce our energy consumption. 

Get to know Empa researchers: Join our livestreams with interviews, demonstrations and first-hand insights into how digital science is shaping our future. We'll be announcing more details soon!
Find last year's live-streams here:

A sustainable future with "living" machines
Collaborative drones: How physical artificial intelligence will shape our interaction with robots

Watch the video now  >>>>

Vision test for autonomous cars
Autonomous driving: Does your car see well enough?

Watch the video now >>>>

A digital twin in the kitchen: Keeping fruit and veggies fresh with your cell phone

Watch the video now >>>>