FiveCo: a "big" micro
After eighteen months of dedicated work within an EPFL laboratory, five young students founded in 2002 an engineering company specialising in research and development, systems integration, and microsystems. The applications of their innovations are wide-ranging: mechanics, electronic design, microcontroller programming, and PC interface development.
The young developers had already had the opportunity to make their mark at Expo.02, where around a hundred astonished visitors had the rare privilege of being guided around the Robotics pavilion in Neuchâtel by a robot that took them eighteen months to design.
The company pursues two types of activity. On one hand, it offers R&D engineering services to companies outside FiveCo; on the other, it creates innovative products intended for industrial manufacturing and commercialisation.
Although all five engineers are versatile, each has their own speciality and contributes their individual expertise to the benefit of the group. In terms of engineering, FiveCo has developed highly specialised know-how in the field of embedded intelligence: computing power is no longer centralised but distributed to where it is needed depending on the system's requirements. The company has also designed an Ethernet motor control board and, with the support of the cantonal police, developed a licence plate recognition software.
