Student Projects
Currently, the following student projects are available. Please contact the responsible supervisor and apply with your CV and transcripts.
In case you have project ideas related to any of these projects, take the opportunity and propose your own project!
We also offer Master Thesis and or exchange semesters at reknown universities around the world. Please contact us in case of interest!
Studies on Mechatronics
We offer students also to conduct their Studies on Mechatronics at our lab. In general, we recommend to do the Studies on Mechatronics in combination with the Bachelor Thesis, either as prepartory work the semester beofre or as extended study in parallel. If you want to do it independently, yiou can find prroposed projets also in the list below. Please directly apply with corresponsponding supervisor.
Learning Dynamic Locomotion for a Monopedal Robot with a 3-DoF Parallel Leg
This project develops and validates a reinforcement-learning pipeline for dynamic balancing and hopping of a monopedal robot with a 3-DoF parallel leg, from closed-chain simulation to hardware deployment
Keywords
RL, parallel mechanism, monopedal robot, reinforcement learning, dynamic locomotion, closed-chain simulation, hopping, sim-to-real, machine learning
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2026-07-29
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Klemm Victor , Tanaka Yusuke
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Narrow Space-Adaptive Humanoid Locomotion
Improved humanoid locomotion widens the space that robots can explore, increasing their utility in human and natural spaces. Walking over rough environments is a well explored problem. However, this predominantly focuses on maintaining balance while performing agile leg motions to overcome obstacles. Current work does not significantly consider adaptive body posture control during locomotion to fit through otherwise impossible passages for humanoids. We propose a project in which you will focus on motion generation using reinforcement learning to generate and execute motion plans to fit through tight and narrow passages. This will require using onboard exteroception to autonomously perceive the environment and plan how to navigate through cluttered environments, and training a locomotion policy using reinforcement learning to utilise this exteroceptive data to provide joint level commands to the robot’s hardware to smoothly adapt body posture while maintaining a consistent walking speed.
Keywords
Humanoid robotics, Planning and controls, Reinforcement learning
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Semester Project , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-07-27
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Heyrman Matthias
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences
Tytan Parkour
Legged robots are increasingly capable of navigating complex environments, yet training pipelines for agile locomotion remain tightly coupled to specific hardware. This thesis aims to investigate two questions: how much further can quadrupedal parkour be pushed with stronger actuators, and how can such frameworks be made more broadly applicable? The ANYmal parkour pipeline will be deployed on Tytan, a next-generation platform with substantially higher torque capacity, targeting a more challenging set of obstacles. Concurrently, a more morphology-agnostic training approach will be developed and validated across three robots: ANYmal, Spot, and Tytan.
Keywords
Reinforcement Learning, Parkour, Policy Distillation, DAgger, Morphology Transfer
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Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-07-27 , Earliest start: 2026-08-01 , Latest end: 2026-11-01
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Palma Emilio , Schwarke Clemens
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Multi-Teacher Distillation
Multi-teacher policy distillation has enabled legged robots to achieve unprecedented levels of agility by compressing multiple specialized expert policies into a single, unified student network. However, scaling this process remains a major challenge due to severe inter-expert interference. Standard distillation frameworks often produce conflicting optimization gradients across teachers, leading to corrupted, "blended" student behaviors (e.g., an agile parkour skill inadvertently distorting flat-ground gait stability). The goal of this thesis is to investigate the root causes of this performance degradation in multi-policy distillation and develop robust algorithmic and architectural mitigation strategies, ensuring that the student retains the high-fidelity behavior of each individual teacher.
Keywords
Robotics, Knowledge Distillation, Multi-Task Learning
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Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-07-27 , Earliest start: 2026-09-01
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Elanjimattathil Aravind , Baines Robert , Palma Emilio , Schwarke Clemens
Topics Mathematical Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Task-Aware Robotic Grasping for Robot-Human Handovers
Design and implementation of a task-aware robotic grasping framework that combines geometric stability with semantic understanding and validate it on a real robotic arm.
Keywords
Robotic grasping, handover, representation learning, task-conditioned grasping
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Semester Project
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Published since: 2026-07-24 , Earliest start: 2026-09-21 , Latest end: 2027-06-30
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Scheidemann Carmen
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Robotic Characterization of Lunar Regolith for Contact Modelling
Locomotion on the lunar surface poses a difficult problem due to the complex contact interaction between the robotic foot and the soft, granular regolith. For learning the locomotion, an accurate contact is desired. Resistive force theory[1] and it’s extension to 3D [2] give a low-cost method of simulating the complex contact without the overhead of DEM/MPM methods. However, for best fidelity they need to be empirically fit to the medium we want to walk on. In this project you will work with (or optionally develop) a test bed with a robotic arm to perform granular intrusions and gather data for fitting a RFT model. [1] A terradynamics of legged locomotion on granular media, Li et al. 2013 [2] Mechanistic framework for reduced-order models in soft materials: Application to three-dimensional granular intrusion, Agarwal et al. 2023
Keywords
space robotics, contact modeling, simulation
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-07-23 , Earliest start: 2026-07-27
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Fischer Oliver
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Beyond Convexity: Planning Mobile Manipulation of Diverse Objects
This thesis will focus on developing a planning and control pipeline to enable quadrupedal mobile manipulators to precisely push and relocate objects of arbitrary and non-convex geometries in planar environments.
Keywords
Non-prehensile manipulation, quadrupedal manipulation, robotics, motion planning, diffusion, trajectory optimization, reinforcement learning
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Semester Project , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-07-22 , Earliest start: 2026-09-01 , Latest end: 2027-04-01
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Dadiotis Ioannis , Mittal Mayank , An Tianxu
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Disposable Scoop-Pouch for Leg-Assisted Regolith Sampling
This project develops and experimentally validates a disposable thin-sheet scoop-pouch gripper for robust, contamination-free, leg-assisted regolith collection and storage.
Keywords
legged robot, mechanism, hardware, gripper, end-effector, space, planetary exploration, robotics, AI, Learning
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-07-21
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Tanaka Yusuke
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Hardware Support HiWi
Gain hands-on experience at a robotics lab!
Keywords
Hardware, Design, Mechanics, CAD
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Student Assistant / HiWi
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Published since: 2026-07-15 , Earliest start: 2026-08-01
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Krasnova Elena
Topics Engineering and Technology
Lunar Dust Test Chamber – Hardware Development HiWi
Design and build the internal setup of a lunar dust testing chamber!
Keywords
hardware, space, robotics, moon, lunar, lunarleaper, design
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Student Assistant / HiWi
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Published since: 2026-07-15 , Earliest start: 2026-07-19
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Krasnova Elena
Topics Engineering and Technology
Emergent Acoustic Communication in Robot Groups
Can robots develop their own communication system through sound? We are looking for motivated students to join an interdisciplinary research project at the intersection of robotics, AI, acoustic signaling, and collective behavior.
Keywords
Emergent acoustic communication, Robot Learning, multi-agent communication.
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Semester Project , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-07-01 , Earliest start: 2026-05-15
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts An Tianxu , Wang Shengzhi
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Fine-Tuning Multimodal Reasoning Models for Affordance and Manipulativity Prediction in Robotic Manipulation
This project investigates whether reasoning-oriented multimodal models such as Gemma 4 can be fine-tuned to predict task-relevant affordances and manipulability for robotic manipulation. Given visual observations and high-level instructions, the model will identify actionable object parts, infer their functional suitability, and estimate how effectively a robot can interact with them using its own embodiment. Predictions may include affordance classes, contact regions, or manipulability scores learned from demonstrations, simulation, or robot execution data. These outputs will support interaction selection directly or guide downstream planners and control policies. The approach will be evaluated in simulation and on real robotic platforms to improve task-aware manipulation success in unstructured environments.
Keywords
affordance prediction; robotic manipulation; manipulability; multimodal reasoning; vision-language models; task-aware interaction; object part affordances; embodied AI; contact region prediction; motion planning; robot learning; high-level instruction understanding
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Master Thesis
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Published since: 2026-05-10 , Earliest start: 2026-05-06 , Latest end: 2027-04-08
Applications limited to ETH Zurich , University of Zurich
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Zurbrügg René , Werner Lennart
Topics Engineering and Technology
Automated calibration of body-scale contact sensors
Goal: Create a repeatable, precise, and high-throughput robotic experimental setup for characterizing a custom contact sensor. This project is part of a broader effort to enable robots to better perceive whole-body contact and execute dynamic, contact-rich tasks.
Keywords
Robotics, Tactile Sensing, Machine Learning, Automated Calibration, RL, AI, Mechanical Engineering, Manipulation
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Semester Project
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Published since: 2026-05-07 , Earliest start: 2026-05-11 , Latest end: 2026-12-31
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Robotic Systems Lab
Hosts Baines Robert , Cramariuc Andrei
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Student Theses at RAI
The Robotic Systems Lab offers a number of student projects at RAI or in collaboration with RAI. Please check the individual projects and directly apply to the supervisors.
Note on plagiarism
We would like to suggest every student, irrespective of the type of project (Bachelor, Semester, Master, ...), to make himself/herself familiar with ETH rules regarding plagiarism