Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

CNRS PEPII project “IMAVO” (2011-2012)

Participant : Alain Dutech.

IMAVO, for “Interactions entre Modules pour l'Apprentissage dans un environnement VOlatile”, is a PEPII project of the INSB institute of the CNRS. It involves Alain Marchand and Etienne Coutureau from the INCIA Lab of Bordeaux (Behavioral Neurosciences - INSB), Mehdi Khamassi and Benoît Girard from the ISIR Lab of Paris (Robotics and Neurosciences - INS2I), Alain Dutech and Nicolas Rougier from the Loria Lab of Nancy (Computational Neurosciences and Machine Learning - INS2I).

This project investigates model-based and model-free reinforcement learning approaches for rats learning in volatile environments (i.e. context and reward can change during learning). It aims at designing new concept for modularized decision-making systems, allowing a better understanding of the underlying neuro-biological process involved in rats and humans and applications in the field of autonomous robotics.

Inria AEN PAL Personally Assisted Living

Participants : François Charpillet, Olivier Simonin, Mihai Andries.

The PAL project is a national Inria Large Scale Initiative (Action d'Envergure Nationale) involving several teams of the institute (Arobas, Coprin, E-motion, Lagadic, Demar, Maia, Prima, Pulsar and Trio). It is coordinated by David Daney (Inria Sophia-Antipolis EPI Coprin). The project focuses on the study and experiment of models for health and well-being. Maia is particularly involved in the People Surveillance work package, by studying and developping intelligent environments and distributed tracking devices for people walking analysis and robotic assistance (smart tiles, 3D camera network, assistant robots), cf. Sec.  6.2.4.2.1 .

In 2012, we organized a Workshop PAL in Nancy, on November (http://pal.inria.fr ). The PAL project funded the PhD. thesis of Mihai Andries, who started in october 2012.

PEA-DGA SUSIE 2009-12

Participants : François Charpillet, Olivier Simonin, Romain Mauffray.

This project relies on results and questions arising from the SMAART project (2006-08). During this project we adapted the EVAP algorithm, proposed in the PhD thesis of Arnaud Glad (Maia, 2011) to the patrol with UAVs, while providing a generic digital pheromone based patrolling simulator. Concerning sharing authority, we proposed an original interface to manipulate groups of UAVs.

The SUSIE project allowed to progress on two questions (i) studying and improving parameters of the EVAP algorithm through the SUSIE simulator (ii) defining new ways to manipulate pheromones fields in order to improve the sharing authority.

Inria ADT Percee (2011-13)

Participants : Olivier Simonin, François Charpillet, Olivier Rochel, Nicolas Beaufort.

Percee, for “Perception Distribuée pour Environnements Intelligents”, is a project proposed by Maia and Madynes teams and funded by Inria. This ADT (Action de Developpement Technologique) supports our action in the PAL Inria National Scale Initiative (Personally Assisted Living, see 8.2.2 ).

The project deals with the development and the study of intelligent homes. Since two years we develop an experimental platform, the smart appartment. It allows us to study models and technology for life assistance (walk analysis with iTiles and camera networks, robotic assistants, health diagnostic, domotic functions, wireless communication inside home).

In particular we develop a new tactile floor, which is the iTiles network. Two engineers are funded by the ADT: Moutie Chaider (IJD) and Olivier Rochel (Inria research engineer) for two years.

ANR

CART-O-MATIC ANR Carotte

Participants : Olivier Simonin, François Charpillet, Antoine Bautin, Nicolas Beaufort.

This project has been granted by ANR in the Robotics Carotte challenge (CArtographie par ROboT d'un TErritoire) from the Contenus et Interactions program (2009-2012). The project is funded with ca. 50000 EUR to purchase the robotics platform. The Maia team was also funded with a PhD fellowship (Antoine Bautin, defending his PhD in the beginning of year 2013). The Cartomatic consortium was formed by LISA/Angers University (leader) and Maia/LORIA team (and until 2011 by Wany robotics, Montpellier).

This project concerned the mapping of indoor structured but unknown environments, and the localization of objects, with one or several robots. We explored a decentralized multi-robot approach to achieve the challenge. We demonstrated the efficiency and robustness of the approach by winning the final edition of the contest (June 2012, Bourges). See Section 6.2.4.1.3 and the Web page Cartomatic project .

ANR Pherotaxis

Participants : François Charpillet, Olivier Simonin.

Dominique Martinez (Cortex team, Inria NGE) is an external collaborator and the coordinator of the project for Nancy members.

PHEROTAXIS is an “Investissements d’Avenir” ANR 2011-2014 (Coordination: J.-P. Rospars, UMR PISC, INRA Versailles).

The theme of the research is Localisation of odour sources by insects and robots. By associating experimental data with models, the project will allow to define a behavioral model of olfactive processes. This work will also provide several applications, in particular the development of bio-inspired components hightly sensitive and selective.

The project is organized in five work packages and involves the PISC research unit (Versailles), Pasteur Institute (Paris) and LORIA/Inria institute (Nancy).

ANR project BARQ

Participants : Jörg Hoffmann, Olivier Buffet, Bruno Scherrer.

This project has been granted by ANR in the “Chaires d'Excellence” program. The project is funded with ca. 400000 EUR and will hire four non-permanent researchers (Doctorants and/or Postdocs). Jörg Hoffmann is the project leader, Olivier Buffet and Bruno Scherrer collaborate. Other collaborators from LORIA are Stephan Merz, Ammar Oulamara, and Martin Quinson. The project also has several international collaborators, in particular Prof. Blai Bonet (Universidad Simon Bolivar, Caracas, Venezuela), Prof. Carmel Domshlak (Technion Haifa, Israel), Prof. Hector Geffner (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain), Dr. Malte Helmert (University of Freiburg, Germany), and Prof. Stephen Smith (CMU, Pittsburgh, USA).

The project unites research from four different areas, namely classical planning, probabilistic planning, model checking, and scheduling. The underlying common theme is the development of new methods for computing lower bounds via state aggregation. Specifically, the basic technique investigated allows explicit selection of states to aggregate, in exponentially large state spaces, via an incremental process interleaving it with state space re-construction steps. The two main research questions to be addressed are how to choose the states to aggregate, and how to effectively obtain, in practical scenarios, anytime methods providing solutions with increasingly tighter performance guarantees.

So far, we have hired Dr. Michael Katz as a PostDoc (for 2 years) working on classical planning, and Manel Tagorti as a PhD student (for 3 years) working on probabilistic planning. The Conseil Regional de Lorraine has accepted to co-finance, for 2011, 50% of the the position of Michael Katz for a period of 1 year. Chao-Wen Perng was funded from BARQ for an internship of 5 months during which she worked on her MSc report, laying some basis for the research direction to be followed by Manel Tagorti.

The project has stopped when Joerg Hoffmann left Inria.