Section: Bilateral Contracts and Grants with Industry

Bilateral Contracts with Industry

• Valeo Group: a very strong partnership is under reinforcement between Valeo and Inria. Several bilateral contracts were signed to conduct joint works on Driving Assistance. Valeo financed the PhD thesis of G. Trehard under the framework of Valeo internal project “V50” and is currently a major financing partner of the “GAT” international Chaire / JointLab. Technology transfer is also a major collaboration topic between RITS and Valeo.

• GAT JointLab: Inria is a main partner of this Joint Lab which is composed of Valeo, SAFRAN, Peugeot-Citroën, Inria, Armines and IFSTTAR. GAT will focus on the development of Automated driving architectures for implementation on real prototypes equipped with near-to-market sensors provided by the industrial partners.

• AKKA Technologies: a strong partnership was born as a result of Link & Go project funded by the Yvelines Department CG78. The Link & Go has become a common platform for development between Inria and AKKA. These two institutions are now partners in several research projects and established a roadmap for joint developments around the automatic full-by-wire driving.

• ROBOSOFT – EasyMile: Robosoft is a spin-off of Inria created in 1985. Partners in several national and European research programs, RITS and Robosoft share the same vision on the automated urban transportation needs and modalities. They coped on the design and development of the Cycab and are currently collaborating – together with EZ Mile – on the development of on-demand automated transportation based on automated shuttles; this includes technology transfer especially in laser-based navigation systems.

• YAMAHA Motor Company (YMC): a MoU was signed in 2012 between YMC and RITS giving the two parties the framework to work on the New generation of AGV. The previous similar cooperation (2000-2010) led to a 750 000 Euros financing program that allowed the development of several AGV platforms. The new agreement settles the basis of more advanced collaboration more focused on machine intelligence and on the design of innovative electric AGV dedicated to mass transportation in urban areas. The EU-CityMobil-2 project is an ideal opportunity to maintain technical exchanges within the cooperation.

• AXTER Automation: RITS has signed a MoU with AXTER Technologies for the cooperation on the autonomous navigation in indoor environments for automated industrial vehicles.

• YoGoKo: This is the newly created spin-off of RITS team. It has been created by Thierry Ernst, previous researcher of RITS and the initiator of the telecommunications activities in the team. YoGoKo is specialized in the design and development of V2X telecommunication architectures and software based on recent IETF internet protocols (e.g., IPv6) and cooperative ITS norms of ISO/CEN/ETSI. RITS is equipping its mobile prototypes with YoGoKo's products and they are solid partners in French research programs.