Section: Application Domains

Services, intervention, and human assistance robotics

Service robotics is an application domain currently rapidly emerging, and more and more industrial companies (e.g., IS-Robotics, Samsung, LG) are now commercializing service and intervention robotics products such as vacuum cleaner robots, drones for civil or military applications, and entertainment robots. One of the main challenges is to propose robots which are sufficiently robust and autonomous, easily usable by non-specialists, and marked at a reasonable cost. We are involved in developing observation and surveillance systems, by using ground robots (Turtlebot2 robots) or aerial ones (ANR VIMAD (Navigation autonome des drones aériens avec la fusion des données visuelles et inertielles, lead by A. Martinelli, Chroma.)).

A more recent challenge for the coming decade is to develop robotized systems for assisting elderly and/or disabled people. In the continuity of our work in the IPL PAL (Personnaly assisted Living), we aim to propose smart technologies to assist electric wheelchair users in their displacements. We address the problem of assisting the user for joining a group of people and navigating in crowded environments, in cooperation with Inria Lagadic team.

Another emerging application to assist people is telepresence robot. We are involved in a project aiming to improve the driving by providing a social and autonomous navigation to the robot, in cooperation with Awabot and Hoomano startups.

We are also investigating service robotics in outdoor environment. In particular, since two years, we work with the ToutiTerre startup to develop navigation models and sensors to allow agricultural pick-up to be autonomously moved in rows of a field.