Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

Regional Initiatives

CRA ARAUI

A Conseil Régional d'Aquitaine Project (ARAUI, 2011-) began, coordinated by Manuel Lopes entitled Apprentissage Automatique en Robotique pour l'Adaptation aux Utilisateurs a Travers L'Interaction. It will fund $50\%$ of a 3 years PhD student and funding of 5500 euros for equipment.

The objective of ARAUI is the creation of robots that initiate autonomously the execution of frequent tasks after learning about the user's preferences through repeated interactions. Particularly these robots will act as personal companions or helpers and will be able to perform shared tasks with humans.

The long-term view of this project is that of a robot that comes out of the box with general purpose motor and sensory skills and then is adapted to each user's preferences and needs to achieve autonomous behavior. The major challenge is how to equip machines with such adaptability and learning capabilities. Until now machines are programmed by skilled engineers to perform a specific task and learning new tasks is not possible. Even in a restricted industrial setting the need for robots that can be more easily re-programmed to new tasks and environments has lead to research programs on flexible manufacturing that consider frequent changes in tasks and close (physical) interactions with human operators.

CRA DEVROB

The Conseil Régional d'Aquitaine Project (DEVROB, 2008-) continued, involving Pierre Rouanet and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. The funding contributes with $50\%$ funding for a 3 years PhD student. The objective of DEVROB is to study, elaborate and experiment human-robot interfaces that allow a non-engineer human to teach intuitively and robustly new visually grounded words to a robot.

CRA ACROBATE

The Conseil Régional d'Aquitaine Project (ACROBATE, 2009-) continued, involving Thomas Cederborg and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. The funding contributes with $50\%$ funding for a 3 years PhD student. The objective of ACROBATE is to study mechanisms and models that can allow a robot to learn in a unified manner context-dependant motor skills and linguistic skills through interactions with humans.

ADT Acrodev

The ADT project (Acrodev, 2010-) continued, involving Paul Fudal, Haylee Fogg, Olivier Ly and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer. The INRIA ADT funds two engineers for two years. The objective of Acrodev is on the one hand to build up re-usable software architectures for embedded control of Acroban-like robots, and on the other hand to explore novel morphologies in particular for the feet, hands and head of Acroban-like robots.

Collaboration with Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Integratives d'Aquitaine

A collaboration began with Jean-René Cazalets, Christophe Halgand and Etienne Guillaud from Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Integratives d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux. The goal is to compare properties of the postural balance, and its relation to morphology and distributed control, in humans and in the humanoid Acroban, which vertebral column and postural control shares several fundamental features with the human vertebral column, and using the “Plateforme d'analyse de la motricité” available at the Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Integratives d'Aquitaine. This collaboration involves Matthieu Lapeyre, Olivier Ly and Pierre-Yves Oudeyer.