IE University CyPhy Life: A periscope into the future

In traditional academia, the lines are clearly drawn: a computer scientist sticks to code, an economist to the markets and a psychologist to the mind. This separation is the norm, but what happens when you break down those invisible walls?

That question is the founding principle of the Cyber Physical Life Research Group (CyPhy Life), an organization at IE University dedicated to innovative multidisciplinary research. Led by Assistant Professor Dr. Eduardo Castelló, the lab is built on what he calls “the interconnection of research fields that, apparently, don’t have much to do with each other, but together, do something very interesting.”

This disruptive philosophy comes from his own frustration with the academic world. “As a computer scientist, I am expected to do software, study networks, code robots, etc.” he explains. “I am not expected to do economics, psychology or connecting emotions and computing. The silos make it very difficult for someone who wants to approach their work with a broader perspective.”

The lab’s name itself reflects this interdisciplinary approach. The amalgamation of Cyber and Physical represents the intersection of the digital and the physical worlds—creating technologies that operate in both realms in new and unexpected ways. The Life component, meanwhile, represents its core mission: developing technology that brings a tangible improvement to industry and people’s lives. “Without a humanistic component,” Dr. Castelló says, “we cannot call it progress. It’s about developing something that will have a tangible impact on society.” Bring it all together, and it sounds like sci-fi—a nod to the lab’s ethos of constantly asking, “what if?”

The lab’s philosophy moves beyond incremental research; they don’t seek to improve an existing model by 1%. Instead, the goal is to find “hidden gems” in other fields of research that can be applied to robotics—an example being their use of blockchain to create a secure, reliable and transparent system for autonomous robot swarms. And it’s a two-way street, as the lab also seeks to find long-standing gaps in other disciplines and apply its own research there.

An ecosystem of ideas

The lab’s work is organized into three research lines: ROBOPRENEUR, Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) and Swarm Robotics. ROBOPRENEUR, for instance, has produced iTrash, which uses a large vision model to reward people for recycling correctly. The TUI line turns physical objects into interactive digital displays, as seen in SPICE, which projects recipes and cooking instructions directly onto a kitchen countertop. However, the lab’s true innovation lies not just in developing these fields in parallel, but in discovering the unexpected ways they can fuse.

The Tangible Swarm project, for instance, brings together Swarm Robotics with TUI. Using a camera and projector, the tool beams a robot’s vital statistics—its ID, battery life and trajectory—directly onto the floor around it as it moves. By taking the data off the screen and projecting it into the physical world, the project creates a live data visualization and turns the intricate digital chatter of the swarm into a tangible and human-centric display.

This philosophy is also taught to the students working in the lab, shaping them into the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists and entrepreneurs. As Dr. Castelló explains, “I teach the students to go to fields that are unexplored. The more connections that their project has to other research lines, the better. I ask them: What if you could think 30 years ahead? What would you like to see?”

The robot as a peer

One project gathering significant industry attention is Alfred, an interactive robotic arm with a built-in projector. Functioning like a portable educational companion, Alfred bridges the gap between digital information and our physical workspaces.

Say you are reading National Geographic, and you want to learn more about an animal in a photograph. With Alfred set up on your desk, you just point to the image, and the robot projects a Wikipedia article and informative video about it onto the desk beside the page. Or say you are stuck on a math equation in your notebook: you point to it, and Alfred projects a step-by-step guide on how to solve it. It can even improve your drawing skills by projecting lines onto your canvas.

Initially developed as a study companion, it is currently being applied to retrain an experienced industrial workforce. “People who work on the conveyor belt on quality assurance are technical people, but they have been using the same systems for 10-15 years, and it is hard to retrain them in new ways,” Dr. Castelló explains.

Alfred offers a way to avoid the resentment and miscommunication that can arise when training is imposed by middle management, who are often not technical specialists. Instead, Alfred guides employees through a physical, interactive tutorial that is projected right onto their workstation.

Central to the design of Alfred is the ambitious concept of transcending our understanding of robots as tools, and instead looking at them as peers. Dr. Castelló explains, “We wanted to give technology a tangible shape. It’s not like asking ChatGPT; this lamp looks at you and makes gestures, and you can talk to it.”

Combining audio and visual in live performance

Another project, DJESTHESIA, tackles a specific limitation in the creative arts—the disconnect between audio and visuals in live performance.

DJESTHESIA combines a DJ deck with a motion capture system and a projector. Dr. Castelló explains that typically, "DJs can only focus on the music meaning they lack the mental bandwidth to control visuals simultaneously.” This often leaves the visual experience automated or disconnected from the artist’s original intent.

DJESTHESIA solves this by allowing the DJ to manipulate the audio and the visuals simultaneously through physical gestures. "Is there a way for the DJ to make music and control the visuals at the same time?" Dr. Castelló asks. "To make music that changes the visuals, but also change the visuals to change the music?"

The result transforms the DJ from an audio technician behind a deck into the visual centerpiece. "This is a result of connecting the digital and the physical," he notes. "Now you touch the music, which is in a digital shape. Instead of just being a performer, you become the performance.”

Following its development in the lab, DJESTHESIA gained significant attention in 2025. In June, the team played live at Sónar Barcelona, and the project was accepted to SIGGRAPH, the premier conference for computer graphics, where Dr. Castelló performed live for 10,000 people.

This project illustrates the lab’s role as a "periscope into the future". Instead of abstract reports, it builds working prototypes that make the future tangible. When media and technology leaders visit the lab, they experience firsthand how disruptive ideas—blending motion capture with live audio mixing—will impact the future of live performance.

The next chapter: the robot entrepreneur

A long term vision of the CyPhy Life Lab is to take their philosophy and build a pioneering system of autonomous robot entrepreneurs. In this ecosystem, an office manager pays a company that operates robots to clean their office. One robot moves around collecting the trash; using the funds it receives from the office manager, it pays another robot to drive the trash to the dump. When these two robots are running low on battery, they pay a third robot to come and charge their batteries; this robot, in turn, purchases electricity from the grid.

Operating as a hive-mind, this concept—currently in the proof of concept stage—is made possible by the “hidden gem” of blockchain, which enables the robots to operate securely, reliably and transparently, overcoming a major hurdle in the widespread adoption of this technology.

The pioneering use of blockchain robotics is not without its challenges, though. As Dr. Castelló notes, the very mention of blockchain can sometimes make it difficult to get funding, as people associate it with “crypto bros.” “We are not interested in cryptocurrency per se,” he explains, “but in the engineering that lies behind a system that has operated for 15 years without interruption.”

Even so, this is the journey the CyPhy Life Lab is on: from a teaching robot and a motion-sensing DJ deck to a future of robot entrepreneurs. Each project is a step on the path from seeing robots as tools to viewing them as collaborative partners and, eventually, autonomous peers.

The success of this unique vision is reflected in increased funding from Spain’s Ministry of Science. The lab has used those funds to hire its first full-time scientist with a background in network knowledge and data analysis, to complement the team of PhD researchers and students currently at the lab. With this expansion, the lab is equipping itself to not only ask “what if,” but to answer this question with even greater depth and rigor.