Projects
At the Center for Project-Based Learning (PBL), we offer hands-on projects that allow students to apply their knowledge, develop new skills, and collaborate on real-world challenges. Below, you’ll find our current projects open for applications. Whether you’re looking to innovate, prototype, or conduct cutting-edge research, this is your chance to get involved!
Interested in past projects? Click here to explore previous student work and get inspired.
Unified and Quantized Depth & Instance Segmentation for Egocentric SLAM via Model Merging and PTQ
This project aims to develop a unified neural network capable of performing both monocular depth estimation and instance segmentation for egocentric SLAM and scene understanding, optimized for edge deployment in AR applications.
Keywords
Model Merging, Computer Vision, Edge Computing
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-07-13 , Earliest start: 2025-07-14 , Latest end: 2026-01-05
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Bonazzi Pietro
Topics Mathematical Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Unified Object Pose & Gaze Network via Model Merging
This project investigates how to merge independently trained models—one for 6‑DoF object pose estimation and one for 3D gaze prediction—into a single unified spatio-temporal perception model using advanced model-merging techniques (e.g. weight averaging / model soup, TIES, DARE, isotropic merging, activation‑informed merging). Evaluation will use ADT’s synthetic and real data to assess performance trade-offs and synergy.
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-07-13 , Earliest start: 2025-07-14 , Latest end: 2026-06-30
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Bonazzi Pietro
Topics Mathematical Sciences , Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Event-Based Eye Tracking with Transformer Architectures
This project investigates the design and evaluation of transformer‑based architectures for accurate and real‑time eye tracking using event‑camera data. The aim is to exploit the high temporal resolution and sparse output of event sensors to estimate pupil center coordinates with high precision and low latency. The focus will be on novel transformer architectures tailored to spatiotemporal event streams, benchmarking against state‑of‑the‑art models in event‑based eye tracking.
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-07-13 , Earliest start: 2025-07-14 , Latest end: 2026-06-30
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Bonazzi Pietro
Topics Engineering and Technology
SmartMove: A Large-Scale Benchmark Dataset for Smartwatch- Based Gesture Recognition
SmartMove aims to establish a large-scale benchmark dataset and transformer-based framework for gesture recognition using smartwatch sensor data. The project centers around the Huawei Watch GT 3 and builds upon our existing tools, including a data collection frontend and a gesture segmentation algorithm.
Keywords
Times-Series, Gesture Recognition
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Semester Project , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-07-11 , Earliest start: 2025-07-11 , Latest end: 2025-12-15
Applications limited to ETH Zurich , EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Bonazzi Pietro
Topics Engineering and Technology
Resident underwater autonomy
This project focuses on resident autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for shallow water inspection and monitoring missions. They are designed to be deployed for long durations (up to a year) without recovery, operating in challenging, GPS-denied offshore environments.
Keywords
UAV, Robots, Underwater, SLAM
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Semester Project , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2025-07-08 , Earliest start: 2025-09-01
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Polonelli Tommaso
Topics Engineering and Technology
Pushing Ultrasound to the Limit: 100 Gbit Ethernet Interface for Imaging at the Edge of Physics
Next-generation ultrasound (US) imaging demands exceptionally high data throughput, exceeding 90 Gbps for ultrafast applications. This project harnesses datacenter networking techniques—100G Ethernet, RDMA, and HPC-grade storage—to enable real-time streaming of raw US data at minimal latency. By integrating advanced optical interfaces and bypassing conventional CPU-intensive workflows, this project aims to achieve sustained multi-gigabit performance, paving the way for cutting-edge imaging analytics and machine learning within modern datacenter environments
Keywords
Datacenter networking, 100G Ethernet, HPC, RDMA, Infiniband, high-speed streaming, ultrasound, Linux kernel programming
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Semester Project , Master Thesis , FPGA (PBL) , Software (PBL) , Firmware (PBL) , Biomedical (PBL)
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Published since: 2025-07-08 , Earliest start: 2025-07-01
Applications limited to Department of Computer Science , Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Villani Federico
Topics Engineering and Technology
From Events to Graphs: Open-Vocabulary Scene Understanding with Vision-Language Models and Event Cameras
The project involves designing a preprocessing pipeline to adapt event streams for VLM-compatible inputs, adapting scene graph generation to sparse or asynchronous representations, and benchmarking results against conventional RGB-based baselines.
Keywords
Event-Based Vision, Scene Graph Generation, Vision-Language Models, Multimodal Learning
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-06-19 , Earliest start: 2025-06-09 , Latest end: 2027-01-04
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Bonazzi Pietro
Topics Engineering and Technology
Anchor-Free Eye Tracking on Neuromorphic Event Data
This project investigates anchor-free spiking neural networks (SNNs) for efficient and real-time eye tracking using event-based vision data. Building upon the Retina framework and inspired by the anchor-free detection approach of [2], the goal is to remove anchor mechanisms to simplify training and inference, thus reducing computational overhead and improving generalization.
Keywords
Computer Vision, Spiking Neural Network
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Semester Project , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-06-19 , Earliest start: 2024-11-24 , Latest end: 2025-11-14
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Bonazzi Pietro
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology , Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences
Development and Integration of an Ultrawideband Localization System for Tortoise Monitoring in a Zoological Environment
Ultrawideband (UWB) localization is an emerging technology for centimeter-level localization in various applications. This technology enables the development of a flexible and robust system to acquire position data with minimal power requirements. Such systems can be used in various scenarios, one of which is animal tracking in zoological environments, where the system is installed semi-permanently to gather data over an extended time span. This approach allows the collection of valuable data that may shed light on animal behavior, with the ultimate goal of improving animal welfare. By designing an anchor-based UWB localization system, we aim to develop a solution that can be easily installed, automatically localize itself, and upload the collected data via LoRaWAN to the cloud. This reduces power requirements and keeps the system lightweight, robust, and flexible.
Keywords
Ultrawideband (UWB), Localization, Energy Optimized Electronics, LoRaWAN, Animal Tracking
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Master Thesis
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Published since: 2025-06-16 , Earliest start: 2025-08-04
Applications limited to ETH Zurich , Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Luder Victor
Topics Engineering and Technology
Ultrasound measurement of microbubble stiffness for in situ detection of protease activity in clinical settings
A new kind of gas-filled microbubble enables the detection of protease activity by using ultrasound imaging techniques. The main goal of this work is to develop a setup that can reliably be used to measure the stiffness of microbubbles, first in a microbubble solution, and then in a model built to simulate the vasculature of a mouse.
Keywords
Ultrasound imaging techniques, microbubbles, signal processing, modeling, analog and digital filter design, circuit design
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Semester Project , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2025-05-28
Applications limited to Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Villani Federico
Topics Engineering and Technology
Development Of An FPGA-Based Optoacoustic Image Reconstruction Platform for Clinical Applications
Optoacoustic (OA) imaging is a hybrid imaging method that enables deep tissue imaging with a high spatial resolution by combining optical illumination with ultrasound detection. The goal of this student project is to devise a parallel HW accelerator and explore different HLS code optimizations to achieve the best performance for OA image reconstruction on an FPGA in real-time.
Keywords
Digital design (HDL), biomedical imaging, image reconstruction, hardware acceleration, Linux
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2025-05-28
Applications limited to ETH Zurich , Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Villani Federico
Topics Engineering and Technology
Development Of A Test Bed For Ultrasonic Transducer Characterization (1 S/B)
The main goal of this work is to develop a modular system for the characterization and tuning of ultrasonic transducers both in hard- and software Due to the intended modularity of the system in soft- and hardware, we can guarantee a high flexibility of the setup. This means that the system can be adapted in operation for a wide variety of transducer types and setups.
Keywords
Ultrasound, Flexible transducers, Mixed signal design, Network theory, Simulation
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis
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Published since: 2025-05-28
Applications limited to Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Villani Federico
Topics Engineering and Technology
A FPGA-based data streaming system that enables real-time monitoring of cell culture and neuroactivities
This project aims to create a FPGA-based interface capable of streaming live data from a ETH-developed CMOS biosensor and monitor neuroactivity and cell cultures in real time
Keywords
Sensing, ADC, FPGA, High-performance computing, biosensing
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Semester Project , Master Thesis
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Published since: 2025-05-28
Applications limited to Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Villani Federico
Topics Engineering and Technology
Embedded Firmware development for high performance PTU
Join an exciting opportunity to develop and extend low-level firmware for a high-performance pan-tilt unit (PTU) powered by an STM32 microcontroller. This open-source project focuses on enhancing existing motor control firmware with modern networking and remote-control capabilities to create a modular, low-latency control system. Ideal for students looking to make meaningful contributions to embedded systems in robotics or automation.
Keywords
ptu,embedded,c,firmware,low-level,tcp,udp,protocol
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Semester Project , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-05-20 , Earliest start: 2025-05-20 , Latest end: 2026-03-31
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Mandula Jakub
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Text2Video: Fast Text-Driven Video Generation
This project aims to leverage existing text-to-video generative models [1, 2] to produce video content based on textual prompts. Unlike conventional approaches that prioritize high quality, the main objective of this project is low-latency efficient video generation
Keywords
Video Generation, Efficient Inference, Real-Time Synthesis
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-05-14 , Earliest start: 2025-06-02 , Latest end: 2026-10-05
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Bonazzi Pietro
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Low Power Wireless On-Body Communication for Body-attached Sensor Nodes
Wearable, wirelessly connected sensors have become a common part of daily life, evolving step by step from their roots in sports and fitness to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of personalized healthcare. A key challenge in this evolution is designing devices that are unobtrusive, highly integrated, and energy efficient. These design requirements inherently demand smaller batteries, which must also support the significant power consumption of wireless communication interfaces. Capacitive Human Body Communication (HBC) offers a promising, power-efficient alternative to traditional RF-based communication, enabling point-to-multipoint data and energy exchange. By using the conductive properties of the human body, a privacy-preserving wireless personal body area network (WBAN) can be created. Several low-power sensors such as ECG-tracker and insulin pumps can act as leaf devices, sending personal data to a body-central gateway, such as a smartwatch that further processes the data and establishes a connection to the cloud. .
Keywords
Hardware design, Firmware design, analog circuit design, digital circuit design, signal processing, field evaluation
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Energy Harvesting (PBL) , Semester Project , Master Thesis , Microcontroller (PBL) , PCB Design (PBL) , Software (PBL) , Firmware (PBL) , Machine Learning (PBL) , Biomedical (PBL) , Wearables (PBL)
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Published since: 2025-05-12
Applications limited to Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
Organization Center for Project-Based Learning D-ITET
Hosts Schulthess Lukas
Topics Engineering and Technology