HEPHAISTOS has been created as a team on January 1st, 2013 and as a project team in 2015.
The goal of the project is to set up a generic methodology for the design and evaluation of an adaptable and interactive assistive ecosystem for the elderly and the vulnerable persons that provides furthermore assistance to the helpers, on-demand medical data and may manage emergency situations. More precisely our goals are to develop devices with the following properties:
they can be adapted to the end-user and to its everyday environment
they should be affordable and minimally intrusive
they may be controlled through a large variety of simple interfaces
they may eventually be used to monitor the health status of the end-user in order to detect emerging pathology
Assistance will be provided through a network of communicating devices that may be either specifically designed for this task or be just adaptation/instrumentation of daily life objects.
The targeted population is limited to frail people
Assistance is a very large field and a single project-team cannot address all the related issues. Hence HEPHAISTOS will focus on the following main societal challenges:
mobility: previous interviews and observations in the HEPHAISTOS team have shown that this was a major concern for all the players in the ecosystem. Mobility is a key factor to improve personal autonomy and reinforce privacy, perceived autonomy and self-esteem.
managing emergency situations: emergency situations (e.g. fall) may have dramatic consequences for elderly. Assistive devices should ideally be able to prevent such situation and at least should detect them with the purposes of sending an alarm and to minimize the effects on the health of the elderly.
medical monitoring: elderly may have a fast changing trajectory of life and the medical community is lacking timely synthetic information on this evolution, while available technologies enable to get raw information in a non intrusive and low cost manner. We intend to provide synthetic health indicators, that take measurement uncertainties into account, obtained through a network of assistive devices. However respect of the privacy of life, protection of the elderly and ethical considerations impose to ensure the confidentiality of the data and a strict control of such a service by the medical community.
rehabilitation and biomechanics: our goals in rehabilitation are 1) to provide more objective and robust indicators, that take measurement uncertainties into account to assess the progress of a rehabilitation process 2) to provide processes and devices (including the use of virtual reality) that facilitate a rehabilitation process and are more flexible and easier to use both for users and doctors. Biomechanics is an essential tool to evaluate the pertinence of these indicators, to gain access to physiological parameters that are difficult to measure directly and to prepare efficiently real-life experiments.
Addressing these societal focus induces the following scientific objectives:
design and control of a network of connected assistive devices: existing assistance devices suffer from a lack of essential functions (communication, monitoring, localization,...) and their acceptance and efficiency may largely be improved. Furthermore essential functions (such as fall detection, knowledge sharing, learning, adaptation to the user and helpers) are missing. We intend to develop new devices, either by adapting existing systems or developing brand-new one to cover these gaps. Their performances, robustness and adaptability will be obtained through an original design process, called appropriate design, that takes uncertainties into account to determine almost all the nominal values of the design parameters that guarantee to obtain the required performances. The development of these devices covers our robotics works (therefore including robot analysis, kinematics, control, ...) but is not limited to them. These devices will be present in the three elements of the ecosystem (user, technological helps and environment) and will be integrated in a common network. The study of this robotic network and of its element is therefore a major focus point of the HEPHAISTOS project. In this field our objectives are:
to develop methods for the analysis of existing robots, taking into account uncertainties in their modeling that are inherent to such mechatronic devices
to propose innovative robotic systems
evaluation, modeling and programming of assistive ecosystem: design of such an ecosystem is an iterative process which relies on different types of evaluation. A large difference with other robotized environments is that effectiveness is not only based on technological performances but also on subjectively perceived dimensions such as acceptance or improvement of self-esteem. We will develop methodologies that cover both evaluation dimensions. Technological performances are still important and modeling (especially with symbolic computation) of the ecosystem will play a major role for the design process, the safety and the efficiency, which will be improved by a programming/communication framework than encompass all the assistance devices. Evaluation will be realized with the help of clinical partners in real-life or by using our experimental platforms.
uncertainty management: uncertainties are especially present in all of our activities (sensor, control, physiological parameters, user behavior, ...). We intend to systematically take them into account especially using interval analysis, statistics, game theory or a mix of these tools.
economy of assistance: interviews by the HEPHAISTOS team and market analysis have shown that cost is a major issue for the elderly and their family. At the opposite of other industrial sectors manufacturing costs play a very minor role when fixing the price of assistance devices: indeed prices result more from the relations between the players and from regulations. We intend to model these relations in order to analyze the influence of regulations on the final cost.
The societal challenges and the scientific objectives will be supported by experimentation and simulation using our development platforms or external resources.
In terms of methodologies the project will focus on the use and mathematical developments of symbolic tools(for modeling, design, interval analysis), on interval analysis ( for design, uncertainties management, evaluation), on game theory (for control, localization, economy of assistance) and on control theory. Implementation of the algorithms will be performed within the framework of general purpose software such as Scilab, Maple, Mathematica and the interval analysis part will be based on the existing library ALIAS, that is still being developed mostly for internal use.
Experimental work and the development of our own prototypes are strategic for the project as they allow us to validate our theoretical work and to discover new problems that will feed in the long term the theoretical analysis developed by the team members.
Dissemination is also an essential goal of our activity as its background both on the assistance side and on the theoretical activities as our approaches are not sufficiently known in the medical, engineering and academic communities.
In summary HEPHAISTOS has as major research axes assistance robotics,
modeling (see section ), game theory, interval analysis and
robotics (see section ). The coherence of these axis is
that interval analysis
is a major tool to manage the uncertainties that are inherent to a
robotized device, while assistance robotics provides realistic problems which
allow us to develop, test and improve our algorithms. Our overall
objectives are presented in
http://
We are interested in real-valued system solving
(
Solutions are searched within a finite domain (called a box) which may be either continuous or mixed (i.e. for which some variables must belong to a continuous range while other variables may only have values within a discrete set). An important point is that we aim at finding all the solutions within the domain whenever the computer arithmetic will allow it: in other words we are looking for certified solutions. For example, for 0-dimensional system solving, we will provide a box that contains one, and only one, solution together with a numerical approximation of this solution. This solution may further be refined at will using multi-precision.
The core of our methods is the use of interval analysis that
allows one to manipulate mathematical expressions whose unknowns have interval
values. A basic component of interval analysis is the interval
evaluation of an expression. Given an analytical expression
In other words the interval evaluation provides a lower bound of the
minimum of
For example if
The interval evaluation of an expression has interesting properties:
it can be implemented in such a way that the results are guaranteed with respect to round-off errors i.e. property is still valid in spite of numerical errors induced by the use of floating point numbers
if
if
A major drawback of the interval evaluation is that
Fortunately there are methods that allow one to reduce the
overestimation and the overestimation amount decreases with the width of
the ranges. The latter remark leads to the use of a branch-and-bound
strategy in which for a given box a variable range will be bisected,
thereby creating two new boxes that are stored in a list and
processed later
on. The algorithm is complete if all boxes in the list
have been processed, or if during the process a box generates an answer
to the problem at hand (e.g. if we want to prove that
A generic interval analysis algorithm involves the following steps on the current box , :
exclusion operators: these operators determine that there is no solution to the problem within a given box. An important issue here is the extensive and smart use of the monotonicity of the functions
filters: these operators may reduce the size of the box i.e. decrease the width of the allowed ranges for the variables
existence operators: they allow one to determine the existence of a unique solution within a given box and are usually associated with a numerical scheme that allows for the computation of this solution in a safe way
bisection: choose one of the variable and bisect its range for creating two new boxes
storage: store the new boxes in the list
The scope of the HEPHAISTOS project is to address all these steps in order to find the most efficient procedures. Our efforts focus on mathematical developments (adapting classical theorems to interval analysis, proving interval analysis theorems), the use of symbolic computation and formal proofs (a symbolic pre-processing allows one to automatically adapt the solver to the structure of the problem), software implementation and experimental tests (for validation purposes).
Important note: We have insisted on interval analysis because this is a major component or our robotics activity. Our theoretical work in robotics is an analysis of the robotic environment in order to exhibit proofs on the behavior of the system that may be qualitative (e.g. the proof that a cable-driven parallel robot with more than 6 non-deformable cables will have at most 6 cables under tension simultaneously) or quantitative. In the quantitative case as we are dealing with realistic and not toy examples (including our own prototypes that are developed whenever no equivalent hardware is available or to very our assumptions) we have to manage problems that are so complex that analytical solutions are probably out of reach (e.g. the direct kinematics of parallel robots) and we have to resort to algorithms and numerical analysis. We are aware of different approaches in numerical analysis (e.g. some team members were previously involved in teams devoted to computational geometry and algebraic geometry) but interval analysis provides us another approach with high flexibility, the possibility of managing non algebraic problems (e.g. the kinematics of cable-driven parallel robots with sagging cables, that involves inverse hyperbolic functions) and to address various types of issues (system solving, optimization, proof of existence ...). However whenever needed we will rely as well on continuation, algebraic geometry, geometry or learning.
HEPHAISTOS, as a follow-up of COPRIN, has a long-standing tradition of robotics studies, especially for closed-loop robots , especially cable-driven parallel robots. We address theoretical issues with the purpose of obtaining analytical and theoretical solutions, but in many cases only numerical solutions can be obtained due to the complexity of the problem. This approach has motivated the use of interval analysis for two reasons:
the versatility of interval analysis allows us to address issues (e.g. singularity analysis) that cannot be tackled by any other method due to the size of the problem
uncertainties (which are inherent to a robotic device) have to be taken into account so that the real robot is guaranteed to have the same properties as the theoretical one, even in the worst case. This is a crucial issue for many applications in robotics (e.g. medical or assistance robot)
Our field of study in robotics focuses on kinematic issues such as workspace and singularity analysis, positioning accuracy, trajectory planning, reliability, calibration, modularity management and, prominently, appropriate design, i.e. determining the dimensioning of a robot mechanical architecture that guarantees that the real robot satisfies a given set of requirements. The methods that we develop can be used for other robotic problems, see for example the management of uncertainties in aircraft design .
Our theoretical work must be validated through experiments that are
essential for the sake of credibility. A contrario, experiments will
feed theoretical work. Hence HEPHAISTOS works with partners on the
development of real robots but also develops its own prototypes. In
the last years we have developed a large number of prototypes and
we have extended our development to
devices that are not strictly robots but are part of an overall
environment for assistance.
We benefit here from the development of new
miniature, low energy computers with an interface for analog and
logical sensors such as the Arduino or the Phidgets.
The web pages
http://
strong advances on the analysis of cable-driven parallel robots (section )
first results the daily activities monitoring in a day hospital (section )
Two months experimentation of a very large cable-driven parallel robot for an artistic exhibition (section )
Completion of the second version of our immersive environment for rehabilitation (section )
Algorithms Library of Interval Analysis for Systems
Functional Description: The ALIAS library whose development started in 1998, is a collection of procedures based on interval analysis for systems solving and optimization.
ALIAS is made of two parts:
ALIAS-C++ : the C++ library (87 000 code lines) which is the core of the algorithms
ALIAS-Maple : the Maple interface for ALIAS-C++ (55 000 code lines). This interface allows one to specify a solving problem within Maple and get the results within the same Maple session. The role of this interface is not only to generate the C++ code automatically, but also to perform an analysis of the problem in order to improve the efficiency of the solver. Furthermore, a distributed implementation of the algorithms is available directly within the interface.
Participants: Jean-Pierre Merlet and Odile Pourtallier
Contact: Jean-Pierre Merlet
Keywords: Health - Home care - Handicap
Contact: David Daney
URL: http://
The ALIAS library whose development started in 1998, is a collection of procedures based on interval analysis for systems solving and optimization.
ALIAS is made of two parts:
ALIAS-C++ : the C++ library (87 000 code lines) which is the core of the algorithms
ALIAS-Maple : the Maple interface for ALIAS-C++ (55 000 code lines). This interface allows one to specify a solving problem within Maple and get the results within the same Maple session. The role of this interface is not only to generate the C++ code automatically, but also to perform an analysis of the problem in order to improve the efficiency of the solver. Furthermore, a distributed implementation of the algorithms is available directly within the interface.
ALIAS is a core element for solving the usually complex equations we have to manage our robotics problems. We may mention as example our work on cable-driven parallel robot (see section ) involves non-algebraic models whose exact solving is required while the unknowns of our system are physical entities that may usually be bounded (meaning that we are not interested in all solutions of the system but only in the one that make physical sense) and therefore interval analysis is appropriate (and quite often the only one that may manage to get exactly all solutions). This year we have also used ALIAS to provide certified solutions of the kinematics of a flexible parallel robots . We have confirmed the solutions that has been provided by a computer intensive iterative methods and have shown that the interval analysis method was able to manage a more complex case for which the iterative method cannot be reasonably used. In a third example we combine interval analysis and Monte-Carlo method for developing a reliable motion planning for parallel manipulators while interval analysis has been used for the design of parallel robot .
We describe here only the new platforms that have been developed or
improved in
2019 while we maintain a very large number of platforms (e.g. the
cable-driven parallel robots of the MARIONET family, the ANG family of
walking aids,r our
experimental flat and the activities detection platform implemented in
the day hospital Institut Claude Pompidou and EHPAD Valrose, Nice
). Among the MARIONET family we have reactivated and
adapted the MARIONET-CRANE prototype for the experiment described in
section . We have also updated our parallel
Inria and Université Côte d'Azur have agreed to fund us for developing the platform REVMED whose purpose is to introduce end-user motion and their analysis in a virtual reality environment in order to make rehabilitation exercises more attractive and more appropriate for the rehabilitation process. The main idea is to have a modular rehabilitation station allowing to manage various exercise devices with a very low set-up time (typically 10 mn), that will be actuated in order to allow ergotherapists to favor the work of various muscles groups and the difficulty of the exercise, while monitoring the rehabilitation process with various external sensors, providing an objectification of the evaluation. Version 2 has been completed this year and we will proceed in 2020 to the first trials. These trials will consist in establishing walking patterns for non-pathological people in various conditions that will be created by a walk in a mountainous environment.
We have continued the analysis of
suspended CDPRs for control and design
purposes. This analysis is heavily dependent on the behavior of the
cable. Three main models can be used: ideal (no deformation of the
cable due to the tension, the cable shape is a straight line between
the attachments points), elastic (cable length changes according
to the tension to which it is submitted, straight line cable shape)
and sagging (cable shape is not a line as the cable is submitted to its
own mass). The different models leads to very different analysis with
a complexity increasing from ideal to sagging. All cables exhibit
sagging but the sagging effect is often neglected if the CDPR is
relatively small while it definitively cannot be neglected for large
CDPRs. The most used sagging model is the Irvine
model . This is a non algebraic planar model with
the upper
attachment point of the cable is supposed to be grounded: it provides the
coordinates of
the lowest attachment point
The direct kinematics relies on an accurate estimation of the cable
lengths that is usually based on the measurement of the winch drum
rotation. We have evaluated the influence of uncertainties in the
cable length measurement on the result of the FK
and have shown that for a poor robot
geometry
(which was for example the case for the
prototype described in section for which the geometry was
imposed)
this
influence may be quite large .
An usual strategy to decrease this uncertainty for small to
medium-sized CDPR
is to use a drum with a cable spiral guide for the coiling which
impose a coiling path for the cable. However this strategy
is unfeasible for
large and very large CDPR (that we called Ultrabot) for which
the large length of the cables
impose to have several layers on the drum and therefore leads to a more
erratic coiling process that leads to possibly large errors of the
cable lengths estimation. To get a better estimation of the cable
lengths we have proposed an original method, based on the Vernier
principle . The idea is to have several small
colored marks on the cable at known distances from the end-point of
the cable and to have several color sensors in the mast of the
CDPR. We have first shown that if 3 colors (e.g. RGB) were used, then an
appropriate disposition of the marks on the cable allows to have up to
29 marks on the cable so that the sequence of 3 successive colors is
always unique. Hence by coiling the cable and detecting the 3
successive color
detected by a sensor allows to determine exactly the distance between
the sensor and the cable end-point, i.e. to calibrate the cable
length. Calibration is always an issue for CDPR which uses usually
incremental encoders for measuring the drum rotation (which explain
why we have also proposed another approach . Then we have
considered the sequence of color detection when coiling the cable,
starting from its largest length. We have looked at the distribution
of cable length changes
We have also continued to investigate the calculation of planar cross-sections of the workspace for CDPR with sagging cables. We have shown in a previous paper that the border of this workspace was either determined by cable length limits but also by the singularity of the kinematics equations. Hence these singularities play an important role for the design of a CDPR. We have started a preliminary investigation on this topic . We have shown that these singularities may be classified in two categories:
classical singularity which corresponds to the singularity of parallel robots with rigid legs which basically implies that the mechanical equilibrium of the system cannot be obtained, leading to a motion of the platform even if the actuators are locked
full singularity which are singularity of the kinematics equations but are not classical singularity. In this case mechanical equilibrium is obtained but the CDPR is unable to move in a given direction
We have also developed an algorithm that check if a full singularity exists in the neighborhood of a given pose and to locate it with an arbitrary accuracy.
Easy to deploy and to reconfigure, dynamically efficient in large workspaces even with payloads, cable-driven parallel robots are very attractive for solving displacement and positioning problems in architectural building at large scale seems to be a good alternative to crane and industrial manipulators in the area of additive manufacturing. We have co-founded in 2015 years ago the XtreeE (www.xtreee.eu) start-up company that is currently one of the leading international actors in large-scale 3D concrete printing.
We have been contacted in 2018 by the artist
Anne-Valérie Gasc that is interested in mimicking the 3D additive
manufacturing process on large scale for a live art performance.
She was interested in a mean for widespreading glass micro-beads on a
given trajectory over a 21
The director, Linda Blanchet, of a theater company has contacted us for helping organizing a theater event, Killing Robots, centered on the story of Hitchbot, a passive 70cm high mannequin designed by Canadian colleagues, that was put on the side-way of roads in Canada so that people may transport it, the purpose being to study the human interaction with people during a travel from the east to the west cost of Canada. The mannequin was located through a GPS and has taken a picture of its surrounding every 20 minutes while it was active. This mannequin indeed performs this travel in 15 days and a similar experiment was then scheduled in the US, the purpose being to go from Boston to San Francisco. Unfortunately after 5 days of travel the mannequin was discovered completely dismantled in Philadelphia. The idea of Linda Blanchet's performance was to propose a thriller based on the robot data for discovering who has dismantled the robot and in parallel to have the robot interacts with the actors to describe its feeling. For that purpose it was necessary that the robot becomes actuated while keeping its appearance identical to the original model. We have therefore retrieved a clone of the original Hitchbot and we have actuated the arms and head, so that the robot was able to move them, adding a lidar on top of the head so that it was able to locate the actors on stage (figure ).
The Canadian colleague have also provided a conversational agent so that the robot was able to speak with a learning process. The opening of the performance was done on November 6 at the National theater of Nice and it is now performing in various places in France. We have been present at several of them to interact with the public at the end of the performance. From a scientific viewpoint our interest in this exhibition was to better understand why adding motion to a mannequin modify drastically the perception of the robot by the public. These understanding will help to work on the factors that increase the acceptance of a technological object by the public, which is clearly a major factor for the efficiency of our assistance devices.
The general aim of this research activity focuses on long term indoor monitoring of frail persons. In particular we are interested in early detection of daily routine and activity modifications. These modifications may indicate health condition alteration of the person and may require further medical or family care. Note that t our work does not aim at detecting brutal modifications such as faintness or fall.
In our research we envisage both individual and collective housing such as rehabilitation center or retirement home.
Our work relies on the following leading ideas :
We do not base our monitoring system on wearable devices since it appears that they may not be well accepted and worn regularly,
Privacy advocates adequacy between the monitoring level needed by a person and the detail level of the data collected. We therefore strive to design a system fitted to the need of monitoring of the person.
In addition to privacy concern, intrusive feature of video led us not to use it.
The main aspect that grounds this work is the ability to locate a person or a group in their indoor environment. We focus our attention to the case where several persons are present in the environment. As a matter of fact the single person case is less difficult.
Two experimental systems are installed in two areas (a consultation center (Institut Claude Pompidou, ICP, Nice), and a retirement home (EHPAD Valrose, Nice)) were several types of persons (residents, visitors, staff) evolve. They are made up of virtual barriers (constituted of distance and motion sensors) displayed in the environment and connected to a PC that collects and stores the measurements of the barriers. Each crossing of a barriers hence corresponds to a specific signal of a set of sensors. We develop a set of codes that aim to analyze the data collected to construct information on the moves of the persons in the experiment areas .
This year we have improved the code that yields the barrier events (time and direction of crossing of barriers) from the raw data. This allowed us to use this first step to reconstruct the individual trajectories of the users.
Although the filtering technics do not use external information (such as specific use of a zone bounded by barriers, habit of users according to time....) we can determine most of the individual trajectories of the users, even when several users evolve simultaneously in the area. Although some uncertainties remain (and could probably be improved using external knowledge), we can use the results obtained to perform a statistical analysis.
The aim on the main scientific efforts this year was to develop a detailed statistical treatment chain to extract and to visualize the events information coming from the set of movement activity detectors installed at ICP. All the (statistical and graphical) development were performed in the R software environment. Globally, two sets of information were collected, for the recorded data. The first provides a kinematic view of the presence of individuals on the mass plan of ICP during a chosen time interval. The following graph gives a static example of the kinematic graph obtained. Such a dynamic information points, for example, to specific movement activities in the medical center, at given time intervals. Figure shows the presence of individuals in the corridors and consultation rooms at ICP at different times.
Such a graph is only descriptive. Hence, it does not provide a functional analysis of the displacements of individuals in the medical center. In order to understand this better, the chronological movement patterns were functionally described by building, for every time interval, the transition matrix between all zones present in the analyzed medical center. After proper algebraic manipulation, the obtained transition matrices were analyzed using a factorial correspondence analysis, a multivariate method that - in this case and among other features – built graphs describing the functional movement patterns between zones. The graph presented in figure gives an example of the obtained results.
The next step will be to statistically compare such results, e.g., between morning or afternoon activity, between days with or without medical consultation, etc. Results obtained might lead to a better organization of the medical activities at ICP.
Eric Sejor, a surgeon at Nice hospital, has contacted us about developing a robotized system for realizing sutures in an autonomous way. Suturing is a lengthy process while in many cases this is not a complex operation. Eric Sejor mentions that developing an autonomous system allowing to manage standard wounds may be extremely interesting, especially for emergency service that are under-staffed. Instead of developing a new robot dedicated to this purpose we have proposed to Eric Sejor to build a system based on the existing manual tools that require to put the instrument in place and then simply squeezing a trigger. The placement will be realized by one of our small parallel robot, with the help of vision system to locate the edge of the wound, while the trigger squeezing will be performed by an actuator. We have obtained an Idex funding (one year for an engineer) to develop a proof-of-concept prototype that will perform the operation on silicone mockups that are used for the surgeon training.
We have had also a contact with the ergotherapist Nicolas Ciai from Nice hospital for the evaluation of patient motricity before an operation. For this evaluation the ergotherapist performs muscular testing before the operation, right after the operation and 6 months later. The exercise consists in opposing the ergotherapist palm against the musculo group that has to be tested until a force equilibrium is reached. Then the ergotherapist ranks the tonicity of the muscles on a discrete scale between 0 and 6 according to his muscular feeling. As numerous muscles have to be tested, the process is quite lengthy. Clearly this process is quite subjective and we have proposed an objectification of the process by developing a glove prototype that includes pression sensors for measuring accurately the pressure exerted by the patient. These sensors are used by a micro-computer the size of a large watch located on the wrist of the ergotherapist. This computer determines when the pressure becomes stable, in which case this pressure is displayed and recorded. A companion software will then exploit the recorded data to provide an evaluation report. Beside the objectification of the ranking, the purpose is also to speed-up the tests. Although this project is quite advanced, we are lacking of manpower to complete it so that we have presented a project to Nice hospital for funding an engineer that may complete the second version of the glove.
This activity is the main part of a long-term ongoing collaboration with Airbus whose goal is to directly translate the conceptual work of aeronautics engineers into digital simulators to accelerate aircraft design.
An extensive modeling and simulation platform - MOSELA - has been designed which includes a dedicated modeling language for the description of aircraft dynamics models in term of formulae and algorithms, and a symbolic compiler producing as target an efficient numerical simulation code ready to be plugged into a flight simulator, as well as a formatted documentation compliant with industrial requirements of corporate memory.
Technology demonstrated by our prototype has been transferred : final version of our modeling and simulation environment has been delivered to Airbus in November 2012 and developer level know-how has been transferred in 2013 to a software company in charge of its industrialization and maintenance.
Since 2014, we are working on several enhancements and extension of functionalities, namely to enhance the performances and the numerical quality of the generated C simulation code, ease the integration of our environment into the airbus toolbox, help improving the robustness of the environment and the documentation.
the project Craft on collaborative cable-driven parallel robot has been funded by ANR. It involves LS2N (Nantes) and the Cetim. This project will start in 2019
the team has been involved for the FHU INOVPAIN : Innovative Solutions in Refractory Chronic Pain that has been labeled in December 2016
We have numerous international collaborations but we mention here only the one with activities that go beyond joint theoretical or experimental works:
University of Bologna, Italy: 2 joint PhD student, publications
University Innsbruck, Austria: joint conference organization
Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgar, Germany: joint conference organization
Duisburg-Essen University, Germany: joint conference organization
University of New-Brunswick, Canada: 1 joint PhD student
University Laval, Québeç Canada: joint book
University of Tokyo, Japan: joint conference organization
Tianjin University, China: joint book
W. Godoy, Pr. Univ Sao Paolo, from Dec 2019
M. Tome, PhD student, Univ Sao Paolo, from Dec 2019
I.D. Weber, Master student, Univ Sao Paolo, from Dec 2019
M. Tuda, PhD student, Univ Sao Paolo, from Jun 2019 until July 2019
H. Lins Vieira, PhD student, Univ Sao Paolo, from January until Aug 2019
J-P. Merlet is scientific advisor of the startup Farmboy Labs that is currently being created by our former PhD student L. Blanchet. The purpose of this startup is to propose cable-driven parallel robots for agriculture (monitoring, maintenance, weeding, ...). .
J-P. Merlet is a permanent member of the International Steering Committee of the IROS conference, of the CableCon conference and chairman of the scientific Committee of the Computational Kinematics workshop. He is also an advisor for ICRA 2020,
Y. Papegay is a permanent member of the International Steering Committee of the International Mathematica Symposium conferences series. He is a member of the OpenMath Society, building an extensible standard for representing the semantics of mathematical objects.
The members of the team reviewed numerous papers for numerous international conferences and journals
E. Wajnberg is Editor-in-Chief of the journal BioControl (published by Springer).
E. Wajnberg is a board member of the journals Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata (published by Wiley), Neotropical Entomology (published by Springer), Applied Entomology and Zoology (published by Springer), and Journal of Economical Entomology (Publish by Oxford University Press).
E. Wajnberg has been invited for talks by the University of Beer Shava at Sde Boqer (Israel, March), the University of La Plata (Argentina, April), the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina, April), the University of São Paulo at Piracicaba (Brazil, October)
J-P. Merlet is Inria representative to the PPP Eurobotics aisbl. He is a member of the IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science) Technical Committees on History and on Computational Kinematics and is one of the 10 elected members of IFToMM Executive Council, the board of this federation. He is a member of the scientific committee of the CNRS GDR robotique and a chair of 3IA Côte d'Azur.
J-P. Merlet was involved in project evaluations for several foreign funding agencies (Israel, Austria, ERC). He was also appointed as Nominator for the Japan's Prize.
E. Wajnberg is involved in project evaluation for several foreign funding agencies (Belgium, Italy).
E. Wajnberg was invited to be a committee number for recruiting an Institute Director by the CNR (Rome, Italy)
J-P. Merlet was an elected member of the Academic Council of UCA COMUE (until July 2019), is a corresponding member of Inria ethical committee (COERLE) and member of the Research, Ethical Committees of UCA. He is an elected member of Inria Scientific Committee and of the “Commission Administrative Paritaire” of Inria
Y. Papegay is a member of the CUMI (the committee managing the interaction between researchers and the computer support staff)
O. Pourtallier is responsible of the NICE committee (long term invited scientists and post-doctoral student selection).
O. Pourtallier is a board member of the Scientific and Pedagogical Council of DS4H graduate school of UCA.
J-P. Merlet has taught 6 hours on parallel robots to Master ISC (M2) at University of Toulon. He has also been invited at ESIEE Paris for a talk about assistance robotics
J-P. Merlet, P. Martinet (CHORALE) and G. Allibert (I3S) have organized the first GDR robotics winter school, Foundation of robotics. During 5 days 35 students, mostly 1st year PhD students, have followed courses taught by international experts. Slides and additional materials have been regrouped in a HAL collection, Robotics principia, that has been organized in such a way that the next occurrences of this school will also be able to deposit additional documents. The idea of this collection is to be able to address all topics in robotics with various viewpoints.
In February, Y. Papegay has been visiting lecturer of University of French Polynesia, where he gave an object oriented programming course.
Y. Papegay has taught 3 hours on parallel robots to Master ISC (M2) at University of Toulon
P. Pourtallier lectured 6 hours on game theory to Master OSE (M2), at École des Mines de Paris, Sophia Antipolis, France
E. Wajnberg lectured One week course (about 30 h) about the use of the R program and statistics for PhD students and senior scientists in Rehovot (Israel, February)
J. Moussaid. Analyse de robots parallèles à câbles (2019-), Supervisor: J-P. Merlet
W. Plouvier. Improving pest control efficiency: a modelling approach (2015-2019). Supervisor: E. Wajnberg.
E. Thomine. Agencement cultural pour promouvoir le transfert des services écosystémiques de biocontrôle au sein des paysages agricoles (2016 à 2019). Supervisors : N. Desneux & E. Wajnberg.
J-P. Merlet was a jury member for the Best PhD Awards of the robotics GDR and has been president of 2 PhD juries.
J-P. Merlet gives 3 talks in the Alpes-Maritimes in the framework of the Science pour Tous association. He has also participated in a seminar on robotics and media involving 6 robotics experts and 6 journalists for a reflexion on the bias of the presentation of robotics to a general audience. He was also a member of the scientific committee for the permanent exhibition Robot at the Cité des Sciences, Paris
Y. Papegay is actively participating to the Math.en.Jeans initiative for Mathematics teaching for undergraduate students.
Y. Papegay is developing several pedagogical resources based on small robotics devices at high-school level.
Y. Papegay organized and animated summer schools in experimental mathematics and computer sciences. Several one week sessions have been held in Oxford in June, July, August and November gathering more than 70 high-school students - most of them were awardees in Mathematics Olympiads.
O. Pourtallier is corresponding researcher for two MATh.en.JEANS workshops, an initiative for Mathematics teaching for undergraduate students.
E. Wajnberg gives 5 talks in the Alpes-Maritimes in the framework of the Science pour Tous association
the HEPHAISTOS project has on average about 100 visitors per year, either young students or teachers, to which we present our robotics and assistance activities
the HEPHAISTOS project has developed a set of cable-driven parallel robots, the MARIONET-SCHOOL series, that is used to illustrate visually scientific concepts in various domains