Section: Application Domains

Personal and service robotics

The personal and service robotics are considered as an important challenge for industry in the coming years. The potential applications are numerous and particularly include the challenge of finding robotic solutions for active and healthy ageing at home. We plan to develop functional orthosis for which it is better not to have a rigid exoskeleton that are particularly not comfortable. These orthosis will be ideally personalised for each patient and built using rapid prototyping. Again the low manufacturing price and the robustness of deformable robots could be key advantages for this particular market. On this topic, the place of our team will be to provide algorithms for controlling the robots. We need to find some partners to build these wearable robots. Our team will also propose innovative technology for robotic games: we are currently working on a new technique of control for deformable puppets. If the project succeeds, a user will be able to build his/her own puppet with a 3D printer and control it with a Kinect. Finally, an other direction for the transfer of our research towards society is art: soft-robotics seems a source of inspiration for artists. This year, we have been collaborating with the art school Le Fresnoy based at Tourcoing (near our Lab) and the result had a good impact for the visibility of our team. We may also collaborate in the close future with IRCAM in the context of the transversal project Inria-ART led by Arshia Cont and Laurent Grisoni.