Engineering Portfolio
Ecda Erol
Founder & Lead System Engineer, M.Sc.
I turn ambitious hardware ideas into shipped products — force-torque sensors, biosensor platforms, and autonomous systems. From first sketch to series production, across four ETH spin-offs and my own startup.
About
Engineering that ships
Eight years of delivering electro-mechanical systems under real production constraints — award-winning force-torque sensors adopted by global robotics teams, the world's first commercial focal molography instrument, cable-driven robots, and autonomous earthmoving machinery. I operate at the intersection of precision engineering, aggressive timelines, and supply-chain reality, with a bias toward measurable outcomes over theoretical elegance.
System Integration
Multi-domain instruments combining optics, mechanics, fluidics, electronics, and firmware — including the world's first focal molography platform.
Product Realization
10+ sensor SKUs launched, two biotech instruments concept-to-market in 12 months, one startup founded — end-to-end from sketch to series.
Sim-to-Real
4× sensor accuracy improvement through FEA-to-test calibration methodologies — adopted as standard practice across an entire product line.
Rapid Execution
6 months: cable-driven robot, concept to field test. 12 months: two biosensor instruments, concept to market. Speed without compromising quality.
Experience
Career Path
Founder & Lead Engineer
- Founded a sensor company and architected AXIOM — a 6-axis force-torque sensor line spanning four force ranges (±500 N to ±5,000 N) in standard and hollow-shaft form factors.
- Engineered the AXIOM-1000 reference model: 250 g, IP67-sealed, 50 mN resolution, sub-100 µs latency — single-cable RS-485 with no external interface box.
- Coordinating mechanical, electronics, embedded firmware, and software workstreams from first prototype through DFM and industrialisation.
- Securing pilot deployments in precision assembly, material processing, and humanoid robotics with pre-production units.
Lead System Engineer
- Shipped the world's first commercial focal molography instrument — the MACS Matchmaker — integrating precision optics, mechanics, micro-fluidics, electronics, and firmware into one benchtop platform.
- Delivered two complex instruments from concept to market launch within 12 months, solving critical challenges in sub-millimetre motion control, thermal management, and microfluidic integration.
- Owned the full mechanical release workflow end-to-end: material selection, prototyping, verification testing, and QA-compliant documentation for series production.
- Managing a seven-figure annual R&D budget across five engineering disciplines, balancing performance, reliability, cost, and supply-chain risk.
Mechanical Design Engineer
- Primary mechanical engineer for the MiniONE and MiniONE Pro — ultra-compact 6-axis force-torque sensors — owning design through manufacturing release across 10+ shipped SKUs.
- Invented a sim2real calibration methodology linking FEA to test data that improved sensor accuracy by ~400% and became a standard practice across the product line.
- Built the company's PLM infrastructure from scratch (SolidWorks PDM → ERP), enabling controlled change management and clean design transfer to manufacturing partners.
- MiniONE named EPDT Product of the Year; MiniONE Pro won EPDT Design Award 2023 — both adopted by global robotics teams, universities, and semiconductor fabs.
Research Assistant
- Designed and built the Eagle cable-driven floating robot from concept to field-tested prototype in 6 months — thesis grade 6.0/6.0, presented at Swiss Robotics Day 2021.
- Invented a novel Coupled Drive mechanism that shares torque across actuators via a coupling matrix — a first in cable-driven parallel robotics.
- Achieved 40% mass reduction across all structural subsystems through topology optimisation while maintaining full structural safety under flight loads.
- Designed a sequential gripper-cutter with mutilated-gear linkage for autonomous harvesting, combining soft gripping and high-force cutting in a single actuator.
Mechanical Engineering Intern
- Scaled up Antefil's bi-component fibre-spinning plant from lab to pilot production using parametric skeletal modelling for rapid design iteration.
- Improved thermal uniformity in the fibre-drying channel through CFD/FEA optimisation, directly contributing to consistent coating quality across hybrid fibres.
Researcher
- Boosted actuation performance of the Digital VerroTouch haptic system by ~250%, restoring naturalistic vibrotactile feedback for surgeons operating da Vinci robots.
- Designed custom voice-coil actuator brackets and built high-speed experimental rigs — work that contributed to the AiroTouch publication (Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2024).
Mechanical Engineer
- Analysed cycle times and identified throughput bottlenecks on the X-Frost refrigerator line at BSH's Çerkezköy plant — the group's largest factory, producing ~7 million units per year.
- Proposed workstation layout and process flow improvements grounded in real shop-floor constraints of a high-volume production environment.
Research Intern
- Modelled EndoWrist kinematics for the da Vinci Surgical System using MSC Adams multibody simulation, contributing to mechanism analysis for tele-operated robotic surgery.
- Designed and developed a force sensor for colonoscopy operations as B.Sc. thesis — grade: 4.0/4.0.
Skills
Technical Toolkit
Design & PLM
Robotics & Mechatronics
Simulation (FEA/CAE)
Product Realisation
Tools & Visualisation
Languages
Education
Academic Background
M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering
ETH Zurich
- Focus: Robotics, Design & Optimisation — coursework in mechanism design, FEA, topology optimisation, and control
- Thesis at Floating Robotics (ETH Spin-off): "Design and Engineering of a Cable-driven Floating Robot with Actuator Coupling" — Grade: 6.0/6.0
B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering
Bogazici University
- Focus: Mechanical Structures & Systems — foundation in solid mechanics, dynamics, and sensor design
- Thesis: "Design and Development of a Force Sensor for Colonoscopy Operations" — Grade: 4.0/4.0
Abitur & High School Diploma
Istanbul Lisesi (Deutsche Auslandsschule)
- MINT-EC certified German-language STEM curriculum — trilingual education (Turkish, German, English)
- Ranked top 0.06% nationally in university entrance examinations
Publications
Research Output
Journal Articles
Y. Gong, H. M. Husin, E. Erol, V. Ortenzi, and K. J. Kuchenbecker, “Airotouch: Enhancing telerobotic assembly through naturalistic haptic feedback of tool vibrations,” Frontiers in Robotics and AI, section Haptics, 2024.
F. Dinc et al., “Analytical derivation of the impulse response for the bounded 2-d diffusion channel,” Physics Letters A, vol. 383, no. 14, pp. 1589–1600, 2019.
Master Thesis
E. Erol, Design and engineering of a cable-driven floating robot with actuator coupling method, Master Thesis, ETH Zurich, 2021. DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000670547.
Contact
Get in Touch
Looking for a system engineer who ships complex hardware on aggressive timelines? Let's talk.