FiveCo reinvents custom R&D
Five EPFL researchers joined forces to work on third-party projects.
Made up of five EPFL engineers specializing in electronics, microcontroller programming, precision mechanics and human-machine interfaces, the young company FiveCo is active in Research & Development (R&D) outsourcing — a rather uncommon field.
Companies often express doubts and concerns regarding outsourcing culture, especially when it involves externalizing work related to the highly sensitive core of product research and development. Some fear losing know-how, providing information to competitors, or incurring significant costs.
“Many companies are also questioning whether it is worthwhile to rely on external expertise given the increasingly important role technology now plays in products brought to market,” explains Antoine Lorotte of FiveCo. The CEO further explains why a start-up can be an interesting solution. It is often too costly for a company to develop a product internally when it is still only at the prototype stage. It may also happen that the company simply does not possess the technical expertise required to build its prototype.
Developing a prototype is therefore a major challenge and a decisive step in the process of bringing a future product to market. This is where companies such as FiveCo or Helbling (based in Bern) come in, offering the development of new concepts or the integration of new technologies into company products. Outsourcing R&D allows businesses to offload highly resource-intensive work, increase their development capabilities, and test the reliability of a project.
“People from all kinds of industries come to us. Our client base is highly diversified. Our services are aimed at companies operating in fields ranging from the toy industry and biotechnology to space research,” emphasizes Antoine Lorotte.
But how can the start-up team be effective in such different fields? The answer lies in the fact that they are all graduates in microengineering, giving them a global vision of products involving mechanics, electronics and software alike.
During the Swiss National Exhibition, hundreds of visitors were surprised to be guided through the Robotics pavilion in Neuchâtel by RoboX. The eleven interactive guide robots represented a true concentration of technology. The entire project was carried out by the Autonomous Systems Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). In total, the robot — which amazed visitors with its ability to interact with them — required nearly 18 months of design and development, during which the future members of FiveCo, now established in the EPFL Science Park, provided Expo.02 with their expertise in microengineering.
