
BRIDGE Proof of Concept Winners
We won the Grant from BRIDGE Proof of Concept. They enable Tethys Robotics to pursuit the project of creating a interactable 3D map for search and inspection tasks.
The support of BRIDGE is a collaboration of the SNF and Innosuisse, where they grant the winners with up to CHF 130’000.- and startup coaching.
We are very grateful for the opportunity to further push our research and create a groundbreaking product with this support.
Andrej Studer will lead the project over the course of a year in collaboration with Innosuisse and SNSF Swiss National Science Foundation. The end-product will revolutionise the way underwater inspection and search is carried out, so stay tuned!

Wyss Zurich Admission
We have been admitted to Wyss Zurich!
Wyss Zurich is a joint research and development center of the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich, made possible by a generous donation from the Swiss entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr. hc. mult. Hansjörg Wyss. The mission of Wyss Zurich is to drive the clinical translation and technology transfer of outstanding scientific discoveries into new therapies for patients and breakthrough innovations in the emerging fields of Regenerative Medicine, Robotics and Medical Devices/Bionics Technologies.
In the Wyss Zurich program, the projects are being supported financially and technically by the team of engineers and technology experts of the institution. There is also an office included in the support that is located at the heart of Zurich near ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. For more information, please visit the Wyss Zurich website.

InnoBooster GRS Winners
We won the InnoBooster GRS startup grant!
InnoBooster GRS grants startups with CHF150k to further develop the startups to successful businesses.
Gebert Rüf Stiftung (GRS) promotes innovation for the benefit of Switzerland’s economy and society. It makes science effective by initiating impact-oriented innovation, research and education projects.
Check out their post to learn more about what it means to win this grant.

ETH Zurich: „Diving robot for dangerous operations“
Divers are often put at considerable risk when searching for people or objects underwater. The ETH spin-off Tethys has developed an underwater robot that can be used in situations that are too dangerous for human divers.
The Tethys robot is an autonomous underwater vehicle that has been specially developed for use in challenging and dangerous environments like turbid channels and rivers. It is primarily used in situations when it is too difficult or risky to use conventional search and rescue techniques. Equipped with acoustic sensors and cameras, the robot can search large areas underwater completely autonomously and quickly localise objects or people. This means that divers and rescue teams no longer have to risk working in dangerous situations. Check out the full article published by ETH Zurich: Diving robot for dangerous operations | ETH Zurich and video: https://youtu.be/APOamIAcFr8

Goodbye Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich
We are very grateful that we were allowed to be here in this great modern office of Buero Zueri in the Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich. For a whole year we had the opportunity to grow in this fantastic space with further education and many helpful discussions within the local startup community. Now, we have given the spirit of the office to the new start ups which will move in for this year.
Thank you all!

Article from Swiss Nautical Magazine Marina about us
Our robots are designed to fill a gap in the market. Most of our competitors‘ robots are mainly built for offshore applications. We focus in particular on inland waters and rivers. The handy size of our robots is unique. Read more on the website of the magazine: Alles Roboter oder was? | marina.ch

ETH Pioneer Fellowship program
We finally got the amazing news that Jonas and Pragash, two key members of our team, were accepted into the ETH Pioneer Fellowship program. Over the course of a year, they will be supported through training programs to take Tethys Robotics another step closer to commercialization.

TELE Z Post
The regional TV sender featured us in their Series about the Innovation Park Zurich. In our episode, we are introducing our technologies and the office space in Dübendorf. It was a great opportunity to show our Proteus22 in action and make the people aware of the problems we are trying to tackle.

RobotX 2022
Tethys Robotics took part in the RobotX event of the ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. This event takes place at the Swiss Innovation Day to invite researchers, industry partners and students to showcase the current state of the art of robotics research in Zurich.
As part of the Autonomous Systems Lab under Professor Roland Siegwart, we were invited to showcase the Underwater Research state of our project and had our own boot at the exhibition. It was a great opportunity to get feedback from renowned roboticists and discuss ideas and solutions that could be translated from aerial drones to our underwater drones.

Innovatica 2022
On the 11. June of 2022, the Innovation Park Zurich (IPZ) organized the first Innovatica event. More than 2’000 people came to visit the +50 exhibitors that opened their doors. We also took part as exhibitors and were able to present our Proteus to a wider audience as well as being able to steer it.

Handover of Proteus to the Swiss Armed Forces
After two years of collaborative development with the Command Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Demining (EOD) team, Tethys Robotics was able to deliver the first prototype to the Swiss Armed Forces. By handing over the robot Proteus, they can further test the robustness, reliability and deployability of the system.
For a more detailed description of the development and the handover, please visit the official report of the Swiss Army on the following webpage.

Tecindustry: Swiss robots keep lakes clean
Check out this new article about how we’re developing multifunctional underwater drones that detect sunken objects and help divers do their work: https://www.wirsindzukunft.ch/articles/52210-2

Presidential Visit
On the innovation day of 2022, a delegation consisting among others of the Government Councillor Carmen Walker Späh, the Government Councillor Christian Vitta and the President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis visited the Innovation Park Zurich as well as our office at Büro Zürich. Here we had the chance to present our project and goals for the future.

Pose Estimation of UUVs with DVL using Factor Graph Optimization
The Master Thesis of Jonas Wüst tackles the underwater localization problem by combining the technology of multiple positioning sensors like DVL, Underwater GPS and AHRS with a state-of-the-art sensor fusion. The goal is to increase the accuracy, precision and stability of underwater localization while keeping the flexibility and maneuverability of the system high. This step brings the robots of Tethys Robotics closer to autonomy and to map the environment. If you are interested in this topic, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Redesign of Proteus
After one year of testing, the main UUV of Tethys Robotics gets a redesign to be ready for the next level. The main improvements concern the manoeuvrability and stability in the water while still being able to add further sensors and tools. Proteus will now be even more agile, robust and faster than before.


ETH Ambassador Blog
The ETH Ambassador blog has published a report on the journey of Tethys Robotics. It tells our story from the first idea till now and gives also some insights into the future.

Kormarine Exhibition
KORMARINE 2021 is the International Marine, Shipbuilding, Offshore, Oil & Gas Exhibition in Bexco, Busan, South Korea. The exhibition will take place from 19. – 21. October in a hybrid format, online and on-site. We will be taking part online and in collaboration with Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE) on-site who will represent us there. We are really excited to be part of this event and will hopefully see you there.

The early bird catches the fish
Tethys Robotics came back to Lake Thun, but this time at sunrise. The team arrived at 4:00 to make the Proteus ready to dive at 4:15 to witness the sunrise at 4:30. This early in the morning, the lake is very calm and silent. Only fishes bring movement to the water surface. Perfect circumstances to explore new places which would otherwise be crowded by boats, fishers or other people.

Proteus Test at Lake Thun
After some further development, Tethys Robotics had the opportunity to test the Proteus with the Swiss Military EOD team. The tests took place in Lake Thun where the EOD team already has some operations. The goal of the tests was to find the further features needed in Proteus to make the support for the EOD team more efficient. Furthermore, the localization system was tested in a real-world environment for the first time. The idea is to develop a sensor-fusion algorithm to combine our sensors and increase the accuracy of the robot’s positioning.

Büro Züri Competition
We did it! Tethys Robotics won one of the five spots in the newly renovated Büro Züri office. The office is located at the Innovation Park in Zurich where a lot of other Startups and innovative projects are encountered. This office will be available for free over the period of one year till the next batch of innovative Startups takes over the place.

Underwater Photogrammetry
In recent years, underwater photogrammetry has been introduced and even implementations of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) have been used to explore the underwater environment. Johannes Lienhart tackles the challenge of implementing underwater photogrammetry for use in Swiss lakes. Possible use cases of such a setup are the inspection of underwater structures and the investigation of the sedimentation process of the lake bottom. The project addresses the challenges associated with an underwater photogrammetry setup, particularly the poor visibility in Swiss lakes compared to other studies in marine environments. The main part of the project is dedicated to building the hardware, testing its basic functionality and interfacing it with the UUV Proteus from Tethys Robotics.

Introduction of Proteus
Happily presenting our newest diving robot: Proteus. Named after a greek sea god.
Proteus is a totally redesigned underwater drone and allows us to reach new depths, see the underwater world in great detail even if it is dark and turbid. It is developed to easily mount sensor suites, transmit data at high speeds, and a lot more.

Maiden Run
Last weekend, our newest robot Proteus from Tethys Robotics was allowed to dive into the Lake of Zurich for the very first time and obviously felt the freedom.
It is a big step for us! Because this robot is the first completely self-developed robotics system of Tethys Robotics and everything works perfectly. We are very proud.
You want to learn more? Please follow this link: https://tethys-robotics.ch/index.php/robots/proteus/

Feature-Based Estimation of 3D Clouds with Forward-Looking Imaging Sonar
Bastian Schildknecht tackles the problem of 3D reconstruction of underwater environments by constructing point clouds from sonar images. Having access to accurate maps can often be crucial for many underwater operations. For that reason, a feature-based method for the estimation of landmark positions in 3D coordinates was built. This is done by feature extraction and feature matching on sonar images in order to acquire landmarks. These landmarks then get registered and integrated into the 3D reconstruction by using a novel iterative optimization method for estimating the landmark positions. To verify the performance of the reconstruction method, the self-developed sonar simulator with a synthetic data set is used.

Exciting Collaboration with EOD Kamir
We are proud to support the Swiss EOD dive team in their challenging work, by developing unmanned underwater vehicles that will help in making their job safer. Read more about the exciting collaboration between armasuisse, EOD Kamir and Tethys Robotics on this link:
https://www.ar.admin.ch/de/home.detail.news.html/ar-internet/news-2020/news-w-t/erste-tests-von-tauchroboter-demonstrator-.html

Science City
Last Sunday, we had the opportunity to show again our ROV SUBO 2.0 at the event of Science City in the main building of the ETH Zurich. The theme of the event was „The Ocean“. It was a very interesting day and we could inspire young and old.

First Swim In The Lake Of Zurich
SCUBO 2.0 has been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. Swimming in the nearby Lake Zurich in bright sunshine and late summer temperatures. Also the divers were enthusiastic to accompany a diving robot underwater and were amazed how much power the robot had. Click on the picture and enjoy the video.

Success in the USA!
We are very happy to announce, that Tethys Robotics has reached 9th place at the 2019 MATE international ROV championship. After months of hard work and ups and downs we were able to reach the top ten in a field of 60 international teams! We would like to especially thank our supporters, partners and fans for the ongoing support and trust. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

Competition Day
Today we had our two pool runs. After some troubles with the first run in the morning, we got everything dialed in and had a very successful pool run in the afternoon. SCUBO performed great and the omidirectional steering once more turned out to be extremely helpful for all different tasks and an eye catcher for the spectators.

First Swim In The USA
Today we were able to test SUBO 2.0 the first time after the transport. After some tuning, SCUBO mastered it’s first dive in american waters perfectly. Now we are all very exited for the first day of competition tomorrow.

We Arrived In Kingsport
After a long journey the entire team and SCUBO 2.0 have safely arrived in Kingsport Tennessee for the 2019 MATE international ROV championship. After the check-in at the competition center we have already passed our safety inspection with flying coulours. The professionals scrutinizing our ROV were very impressed with SCUBO 2.0 and it’s special design.

SCUBO 2.0 Becomes Famous
This Week we were visited by the media department of ETH Zürich. They made a great video about our project! Click on the picture to have a look.

Testing In The Pool
Every Thursday we had the chance to test our ROV during the night. Please click on the left on the picture to watch the video.


Visit To Hyrdoexploitation
This Week our Team had the opportunity to visit Hydroexploitation SA in Martigny. During our visit we took a look at on of the few commercially operating ROVs in Switzerland. The Team that takes care of the sytem also shared a lot of their experience with us and allowed us an insight into the subsea industry in Switzerland.

Project Kick Off
This week the team met for the first time to get the Project Tethys Robotics started. Our plan is to develop and build a ROV for the 2019 MATE international ROV competition. This is a championship where universities and colleges from all over the world build ROVs that can solve a series of given tasks as fast and efficient as possible.