| October 2017. Now it is possible to simulate the e-puck robot with your preferred browser thanks to the wonderful job done by Cyberbotics. Have a look at https://robotbenchmark.net/ for more informations. |  |
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May 2017. The Wheelphone robot, among others applications, can be used as a telepresence robot. By exploiting Skype and by installing a specific application on the phone, you will be able to reach your Wheelphone from all over the world. For more information refer to the wiki. |
| November 2016. The on-board camera of the e-puck robot can be used to make cool things, one of these is following a colored object as showed in the demo "runfollowball" contained in the e-puck library. This demo was updated to be compatible with the newer camera mounted on the robot. |  |
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October 2016. GCtronic will take part at the Swiss Robotics Industry Day at EPFL. November 2nd. On display we have our 3 robots e-puck, Elisa-3 and Wheelphone. Elisa-3 will also move vertically in the Autonomous Robot Painting. Additionally we will present the ETCH Clock, now ready to sell. |
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August 2016. The eTCH clock is now available for pre-order, have a look at www.etchclock.com for more information. |  |
| July 2016. The e-puck charger (single battery) has been upgraded: you can now charge your batteries in about half the time...and at the same price. You can order the high speed charger from the shop. |  |
| June 2016. After a long technical development in cooperation with 42Foundry, we are proud to show you some preview of a 3D MAGIC WATCH: eTCH wall, engraving time! video. Soon on presale!! |  |
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May 2016. A new set of nice features of the elisa-3 robot are now available for the Aseba environment. To start playing easily with elisa-3 and Aseba we created a video tutorial. |
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April 2016. To ease the setup of the elisa-3 tracking set we created a video that shows all the required steps, including the assembly of the arena, the cameras configuration and a demo showing the position control of one robot. |
| March 2016. GCtronic participates to the European Robotics Forum, 21-23 March, Ljubljana. On the booth will be presented the new graphics of the Autonomous Robot Painting together with all the robots designed by GCtronic. |  |
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February 2016. A new version of the calibration application for the Wheelphone robot is available in the wiki. This version includes images to better explain the calibration process. |
| January 2016. Both the e-puck and elisa-3 robots are compatible with Windows 10. Refer to the elisa-3 library section of the wiki for more information. The e-puck monitor was tested in Windows 10 and an updated version of the bootloader is available in the wiki to update the robot firmware in Windows 10. |  |
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December 2015. Christmas is coming and you had no time for the gifts...what to do now? You have two solutions: either go crazy in various shops or buy this great tech gift (shop). You'll for sure amaze your relatives, friends or partner with this gadget mixing art and techonology...moreover you'll have some time to relax yourself. Here is a video. For more information refer to the product page. |
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November 2015. The fans of the e-puck robot and Arduino can now merge their projects in a single awesome project by connecting together the e-puck and Arduino. The big community around Arduino and the vast availability of shields let you extend the e-puck robot basically limitless. You can for example control the e-puck with your voice (video). For more information refer to the wiki. |
| November 2015. If you want to experiment and improve your skills in PID controllers, now you can do it by trying to self balance the e-puck robot; you'll need only a few mechanical modifications. It is not for the faint of heart :-). For more information refer to the wiki. |
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October 2015. The work with ROS continues: the Elisa-3 robot is able to do SLAM on a vertical wall, here is the video; for more information refer to the wiki. Moreover you can simulate the algorithms developed for the e-puck with Webots and ROS, for more information visit the wiki. |  Webots ROS e-puck |
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September 2015. GCtronic participates to IROS, 28 September-02 October, Hamburg. On the booth will be presented some experiments done with our robots and ROS (Robotic Operating System); we are proud to say that all our robots (e-puck, elisa and wheelphone) are compatible with ROS. Moreover you will be surprised by the new "Autonomous Robot Painting"; are you curious? Come and visit us... |
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August 2015. ROS & e-puck. We propose the ROS (Robotic Operating System) framework to work with our e-puck robot. Exploiting the packages available from the community, we demonstrate SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) with e-puck. Go ahead and let's grow the capabilities of e-puck and map also your office ;-). For more information refer to the wiki. |
| July 2015. Python is a widely used programming language supported by a large and comprehensive standard library. A Python library is available for the the e-puck robot, you can start playing with it following the guide in the wiki. You can find others software tools available for the e-puck robot in the following link. |  |
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June 2015. An interesting project concerning the set "e-puck + gumstix extension" was developed at LIRMM / Université de Montpellier. Basically the e-puck tracks a circle and the camera image is transferred to the computer through WiFi. You can see the robot in action in this video. Moreover you can have access to the report and to the code. |
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May 2015. Aseba is a set of tools which allow novices to program robots easily and efficiently; it is developed for Thymio robot and now is available also for the Elisa-3 robot. You can start playing with this IDE following the information in the wiki. |
| April 2015. A nice semester project regarding the Wheelphone robot was developed at the Faculty of Informatics (Università della Svizzera italiana). The aim of the project is to use the Wheelphone to navigate in an indoor environment using an iPhone. For more information refer to the wiki page where you can find the report, code and a video. |  |
| March 2015. GCtronic is continuing the long term support of the e-puck robot. The last produced batch (e-puck revisions) has a new accelerometer with even a 3D gyroscope, battery level measure, an updated camera and microphone. All is compatible with the old software/hardware versions and the library is updated and available on GNA and our wiki. |
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December 2014. ART and ROBOTICS ! This new product combines our small robot Elisa-3 with a picture frame that you can hang on a vertical wall. Dances, light show, music, geometric figures, automatic charging, all in a compact dynamic picture frame. For more information refer to the product page and the wiki page. |
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November 2014. The Elisa-3 robot is now equipped with infrared local communication to let the users develop their swarm algorithms. For more information refer to the Elisa-3 wiki page: Elisa-3 local communication. |
| October 2014. GCtronic is supporting the realization of the hicon social bangle that now has an improved new design and is equipped with an OLED display to visualize the notifications. You can order it with an initial special discount: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hicon-is-all-your-social-networks-made-wearable#home. |  |
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September 2014. Our small climbing robot Elisa-3 participates at IROS in Chicago at the boot of our US distributor Roadnarrows. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Chicago, Illinois, Sept. 14–18, 2014. |
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August 2014. Sindex is the biggest technology exhibition of Switzerland. GCtronic will be part of the show with the partners F&P Personal Robotics and BlueBotics within the Swiss Mobile Robotics Consortium.September, 2-4, 2014. Bern, Switzerland. Special Show "Technologie erleben". Hall 1.1 Booth No. C04 |
| July 2014. A versatile joystick for animation artists. GCtronic participated to this project "puppet" done at ETH Zurich, Institute of Visual Computing, Prof. Dr. Olga Sorkine-Hornung and her group. Several media reports: ETHZ, Wired. |  |
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June 2014. "hicon, the social bangle" is a new product that GCtronic helped to create. You can customize your hicon bangle with your preferred icons. It informs you with a gentle vibration when you get a call, a message or a notification from a social network (Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, ...). hicon looks for nearby people with a matching profile and your same passions. You can already order it with a huge discount: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/hicon-smart-wristband-social-bracelet-with-interchangeable-social-network-icons. |  |
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Mai 2014. GCtronic contributes to the ETHZ project "climbing robot for corrosion monitoring". A robot climbing bridges and other concrete surfaces. http://www.ifb.ethz.ch/corrosion/research/Robot. |
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March 2014. GCtronic participates to innorobo, 18-20 March, Lyon-France. On the booth will be presented the e-puck and related extensions, the Elisa-3 robot and the Wheelphone. All robots will be available for shop directly at the event. |
| February 2014. GCtronic designed a full system to track the position of an Elisa-3 fleet with an IR overhead camera. The tracking set (2 camera, mechanical frame, robots, ...) is available in the shop. For more information refer to the wiki. |  |
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January 2014. The number of application is growing, the Wheelphone robot reaches 10 apps on the Play Store. Also the firmware was reviewed and a new update is available, refer to the wiki for detailed information about the update procedure. |
| December 2013. The Wheelphone robot can be used to navigate from one room to the other using some tags as reference. Moreover it can charge itself thanks to the docking station. Have a look at the video; the source code of the demo can be downloaded from the wiki. |  |
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November 2013. GCtronic at "La Maison du Mieux Vivre", Paris 5-7 December. Within the Trade Show for lifestyle and homecare services (www.salon-services-personne.com), the Living better house « La Maison du Mieux Vivre » promotes technological and robotics solutions for assistance, well being and security to people. |
| October 2013. GCtronic participates to the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) in Tokyio next November 6-9. The exhibition is in parallel with the scientific conference IROS. On display we have our compact robots including Wheelphone with new applications. |  |
| September 2013. During summer holidays a bunch of new applications for the Wheelphone robot were developed: transforms for example the Wheelphone in a pet robot, it will have to follow you or maybe do you need an animated alarm, for sure the Wheelphone will compel you to wake up. Visit our wiki for more apps. |  |
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June 2013. Reuters interview and demo of Prof. Roderich Gross using a swarm of robot e-puck provided by GCtronic, link. |
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May 2013. Wheelphone software resources are continuously expanding: the API to interact with the robot is now released, visit the wiki for more information. |  |
| April 2013. GCtronic will be present at the Festival de robotique on 20 April 2013 at EPFL, Lausanne. The Elisa-3 and the Wheelphone will animate the booth. |  |
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March 2013. A virtual model of the Elisa-3 robot has been created for the Webots simulator. You can now test and improve easily your algorithms in this professional simulator before playing with the real robots. For more information refer to the wiki. |
| February 2013. The new Wheelphone robot designed by GCtronic is now available in the shop. Some features: compatible with Android phones, avoid obstacles, avoid falling from tables, runs on carpet, docking station, charges phone and many examples with source code available. Have a look at the officiale site www.wheelphone.com for more information. |  |
| February 2013. The e-puck robot is now equipped with a new battery model that is lighter (33g) and a bit more powerful (1600 mAh). |  |
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December 2012. Best whishes from GCtronic with a small Christmas video; participating robots: e-puck, Elisa-3, Wheelphone and Alice. Guess the role of each robot... |
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December 2012. The "epic" Matlab interface developed for e-puck is now available also for Elisa-3. You can start playing with this interface following the information in the wiki. |
| December 2012. GCtronic performed some tests of the odometry of Elisa-3. Quite good on vertical surfaces. |  |
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November 2012. GCtronic designed a second hardware version of the omnivision module. The upgraded version includes an USB 2.0 camera with a greater resolution (up to 1280x1024), a dedicated microcontroller for the 3 RGB LEDS and an antireflection tube. It's interesting to notice that the e-puck camera can now be used together with omnivision camera. |
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September 2012. GCtronic will be present at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2012) in Vilamoura, Portugal. The new products will be presented: Elisa-3, the omnivision module for e-puck, the automatic charging of e-puck and Elisa-3. |
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June 2012. A paper using Elisa has just been published on IJRR, International Journal of Robotics Research: "Image and animation display with multiple mobile robots", Javier Alonso-Mora, Andreas Breitenmoser, Martin Rufli, Roland Siegwart and Paul Beardsley. IJRR 2011 31: 753–773. Volume 31 Issue 6 - May 2012. Link to the abstract: http://ijr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/6/753. Link to the videos: http://www.ijrr.org/ijrr_2012/442095.htm. |
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May 2012. Elisa-3, the new miniature robot of GCtronic, is present at ICRA 2012, May 14-18, St. Paul, Minnesota on the booth of RobotNarrows. A nice demo with 3 robots running around and docking autonomously to the power charger. See video section of the wiki. |
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April 2012. e-puck with artists: the e-puck robot was used in the Think Art Act Science at the San Francisco Art Institute exhibition. The next exhibition will be held in Salt Lake City, for more information visit www.theleonardo.org. See picture1 and picture2. |  |
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March 2012. The support to the Arduino community is increased: there is now an Arduino IDE 1.0 project to start playing with the Elisa-3 robot. You can now program and upload new applications easily within the Arduino IDE. Visit the Elisa-3 Arduino sofware section of the wiki for more information. More information about Arduino can be found in the official website. |
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February 2012. The last stable firmware for the Elisa-3 robot is now released; from other things, it comprises two basic onboard behaviors: obstacle avoidance and cliff avoidance, both of them can be turned on and off through radio. Visit the Elisa-3 sofware section of the wiki for more information. Hurry up, the special launching price is still valid only a couple of weeks. |
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February 2012. The Elisa-3 robot upgraded its hardware: 8 small green leds and a micro USB connector are integrated on the board. The micro USB can be used for both programming and charging the robot. The robot is provided with all necessary software to start playing with it, visit the wiki for more information. |
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January 2012. The Elisa robot is now arrived to its third version, Elisa-3. It now includes a series of new sensors: 8 IR proximity and 4 ground sensors. The Atmel microcontroller is Arduino compatible. More information can be found on the wiki; for orders visit the shop. |
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November 2011. GCtronic designed a cliff module that extends the current ground sensor extension; this new module let the robot detect a possible cliff and thus avoid to fall down. Moreover the cliff module is coupled with a charging station that automatically charges the battery without the need of removing it from the robot. More information can be found on the wiki; for orders visit the shop. |
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September 2011. The IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011) will be held on September 25-30 2011 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. A demonstration by Disney Research Zurich and based on the Elisa robot designed at GCtronic will show a swarm of small, illuminated microrobots for pattern formation and emerging behavior research; the demonstration has been regarded particularly interesting and has been selected for presentation. |
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August 2011 The small sized robot Elisa (5 cm of diameter and 3 cm height) is now available in the shop with a special starting price of 280 CHF. More information can be found on the wiki. |
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July 2011. The omnivision module was re-designed to include 3 RGB leds placed 120° from each other and an additional battery pack that doubles the available energy. |
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May 2011. Here is a cool project http://www.youtube.com/user/aslteam#p/u/0/pJVS-9sMiVY developed in the Autonomous Systems Laboratory, ETH Zurich together with Disney Research Zurich using the 3x3 RGB display designed at GCtronic. The project was presented at ICRA 2011 "Multi-robot system for artistic pattern formation". |
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April 2011. GCtronic designed an omnivision module that provides you an entire scene of the surroudning environment. The module is thought to be coupled with the e-puck extension for Gumstix Overo COM. The module is already available in the shop with a special starting price. More information can be found on the wiki. |  |
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February 2011. GCtronic is designing a new robot, this will be called Elisa. It's a small size robot with 5 cm of diamater, capable of moving also vertically thanks to its magnetic wheels. At the moment it includes an RGB led, some IRs emitters, an accelerometer and an RF radio for communication, but some others sensors will be added in the final design. |  |
| October 2010. GCtronic will participate together with Skybotix to the IEEE/RSJ 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2010), that will be held on October 18-22 2010 at the Taipei International Conference Center, Taiwan. For more information on the event visit http://www.iros2010.org.tw/. |
| October 2010. GCtronic will participate to the 10th Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS), November 1-3, 2010. EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. For more information visit http://dars2010.epfl.ch. |
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September 2010. A new extension is now available in the shop: the range and bearing board lets miniaturized robots communicate and at the same time obtain the range and bearing of the source of emission. For more information visit http://www.rbzrobotdesign.com/epuck. |
| August 2010. A new offer is now available in the shop: you can now order an e-puck robot with the Gumstix Overo COM extension profiting of a small discount. |
| July 2010. We profit from the occasion to have many robots in stock to make a video with 100 e-puck; you can enjoy it from the wiki. |
| June 2010. The e-puck has now a new extension: a 3x3 RGB display. Let your imagination run away with yourself, realizing colorful animations. More information can be found on the wiki. |
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| May 2010. At the end of this month, on 29 and 30 May, at the EPFL (Lausanne) there will be a big robotics Festival http://festivalrobotique.epfl.ch/. GCtronic is pleased to sponsor this event. |
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April 2010. GCtronic just started a new collaboration with Gumstix, Inc. Gumstix Overo COM: product information and programming information. |
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March 2010. GCtronic organized an e-puck workshop at EPFL. Participants were from GCtronic, Cyberbotics, MOBOTS, LIS, DISAL and LA. Here some presentations Extensions-PC interfaces, Battery management, Molole-aseba. |
| February 2010. Transform e-puck in a full computer with wheels!! New product in pre-order on the shop (samples currently available). Extend the processing capability of e-puck adding a famous gumstix computer board. More information can be found on the wiki. |
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| January 2010. GCtronic wish you a successful 2010. Seasonal GIFT: transform your e-puck to a parrot! It's able to reproduce every sound or word it's hearing, so you can teach it whatever you want, but it has a limited memory though: it can learn for at most two seconds. Download the complete SW project or just the .hex. |
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November 2009. GCtronic moved about 20 km to a new and bigger location. The new address is: Via Cassarinetta 2 6900 Lugano Switzerland. |
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October 2009. GCtronic participated to the definition and realization of the exposition "Corpo, Automi, Robot" in Lugano. The big exhibition will be open till end of February and it mixes art, science and technology from the antiquity to nowadays. Have a look at the museum site for more information: Museo d'Arte Lugano. |  |
| GCtronic wiki. It's now available the wiki page of the GCtronic projects; help us growing it adding what you think might be useful for other users, such as tools, demo applications, links, etc. Wiki page. |
| July 2009. SUMMER SCHOOL in BARCELLONA. Next September there will be a summer school using the robot e-puck. This will be hosted by the Robotics Lab in Barcellona. Link http://iua.upf.edu/bcbt09/. |
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May 2009. The developer of the e-puck robot just published a reference design paper:
The e-puck, a Robot Designed for Education in Engineering Mondada, Francesco ; Bonani, Michael ; Raemy, Xavier ; Pugh, James ; Cianci, Christopher ; Klaptocz, Adam ; Magnenat, Stephane ; Zufferey, Jean-Christophe ; Floreano, Dario ; Martinoli, Alcherio Presented at: 9th Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions, Castelo Branco, Portugal, May 7, 2009. Link to the pdf |
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April 2009. The partner company Skybotix launched CoaX: a compact, lightweight indoor coaxial helicopter. |
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December 2008. Seasonal GIFT: transform your e-puck into a Christmas demo with sound and light! See the demo on YouTube. Download the complete SW project or just the .hex. Also a Matlab script to easily transform sound wav files to be compiled in an e-puck project |
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| September 2008. e-puck is used in several universities and techincal school but not only. In this picture an artistic exhibition! |  |
To use the new camera (from serial number 1500), update your software at gna.org/projects/e-puck or at e-puck_links.php
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March 2008. New ON-LINE SHOP page is active and running. You can directly order with paypal or ask for an official offer. |
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January 2008. Reflective strip for e-puck available: On-line shop. This is very useful for mutual detection in case of experiments with multiple robots. |
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October 2007. Ground sensor module available. EPFL doc |
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June 2007. Charger for 4 e-puck batteries available : On-line shop. |
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November 2006. GCtronic joined the Swiss Mobile Robotics Consortium. The consortium promote the use of new robot technologies at an industrial level and aims to create and improve the awareness of today's and tomorrow's Mobile Robotics market. |
