Section: New Software and Platforms

Platforms

Inria Research Center in Nancy has supported since 2010 the design and the construction of an innovative platform for favoring research in assistance for elderly people at home. This platform has been mainly funded by the CPER MISN (region of Lorraine , project Info-Situ (2010-2013). It consists of a standard apartment type F2, with a certain number of "smart and connected devices" such as sensor networks. This platform has been designed to make easy technical experimentation in an environment which is as close as possible to reality. Many technical developments have been done during the IPL PAL. In particular concerning MAIA Team, we have been working both (1) on the development of new algorithms to exploit the equipments, and (2) on the effective deployment of different kind of connected devices :

1. a network of depth cameras. These depth cameras are either fixed on the wall or are placed onboard wheeled mobile robots. One important achievement has been to connect these cameras to the ethernet network, each camera being considered as a Ros node with computation capabilities(using a NUC for each node). An other achievement has concerned the calibration of theses cameras. Today 7 cameras covers to whose HIS Platform.

2. Pressure sensing tiles which has been designed by Maia team (in cooperation which Hikob (http://www.hikob.com/applications/recherche/ and the Inria SED of Grenoble (Roger Pissard-Gibollet)) during the Pal evaluation period. Ninety tiles cover the floor of our experimental platform (HIS), which permit to sense activity through the natural interaction of people or robots with the floor when they are acting;

3. Mobile robots whose mobility allows a better coverage in term of perception of the environment.

4. recently we got a Qualisys motion capture system 5funded by Satelor Project).

These devices are all interconnected within the Robotic Operating System (ROS).