BIOGRAPHY
Mirko Kovac is PhD candidate at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems within the School of Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He received his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Fed- eral Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ) in 2005 with his master thesis carried out at University of California in Berkeley, USA. During his studies he was research associate with RIETER Automotive Switzerland, the WARTSILA Diesel Technology Division in Switzerland, and CISERV in Singapore. He has presented his work at several international conferences and in journals and has supervised 20 B.A./M.S. level student projects, one of which received the 2008 Foundation Annaheim prize for the best student project. In 2009 he won the JTCF Novel Technology best paper award at the IEEE/RSJ International Confer- ence on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2009) and the 2009 runner up best poster award at the research day at EPFL. His research interest is the conception and design of novel locomotion and control methods for mobile robots and their analogy in biological systems.
SUPERVISED STUDENT PROJECTS
A minimalist jumping and climbing robot (Manuel Schlegel, MT, WS 2009/2010)
Wing folding implementation for the Self Deploying Microglider (Wassim Hraiz and Oriol Fauria Torrent, MT, WS 2009/2010)
Wing design for the Self Deploying Microglider (Mohammadmehdi Shafizadeh Khoolenjani , ME, WS 2009/2010)
Sensor and control set for the Self Deploying Microglider (Manon Picard, MT, WS 2009/2010)
Attachment mechanism for the Self Deploying Microglider (Jürg Germann, EL, WS 2009/2010)
Spherical jumping rolling robot (Manuel Schlegel, MT, WS 2008/2009)
In flight dynamics of the Self Deploying Microglider (Cécile Grometto, IN, WS 2008/2009)
Optimization and scaling in jumping robots (Michael Schwander, EL, SS 2008)
Modelling and optimization in jumping robots (Wassim Hraiz, MT, SS 2008)
Passive wing folding mechanism for a microglider (Lydia Lostan, MT, SS 2008)
Gecko inspired climbing mechanism (Jerome Favre, MT, WS 2007/2008)
Gecko inspired climbing mechanism (Andreas Elmer, MT, WS 2007/2008)
Avian tail for Self Deploying Microglider (Joël Israël, IN, WS 2007/2008)
Solar cells for Self Deploying Microglider (Jean-Paul Fuchs, MT, WS 2007/2008)
Design of a jumping mechanism for the Self Deploying Microglider (Martin Fuchs, MT, SS 2007)
Wing folding mechanism for flying microrobots (Grégory Savioz, MT, SS 2007)
Jump to glide transition (Vasko Vitanov, MT, SS 2007)
OTHER INTERESTS
Yoga, Music
