Section: Bilateral Contracts and Grants with Industry

Bilateral Contracts with Industry

Bruno Scherrer has done some consulting for EDF. This was a skill transfer activity involving training and consulting on the theory and algorithms for reinforcement learning, for the Research & Development team of EDF conducted by Lorenzo Audibert. This R&D team wants to apply reinforcement learning to several EDF problems: optimizing maintenance of uranium rods in the cores of nuclear power plants, optimizing the control of dam, optimization of load profiles for a network of electric vehicles. Bruno Scherrer's role was to give them the basics of reinforcement learning theory, and help them to use the algorithms of the literature. It was a one-shot action, running in 2018, and contractualized via a "framework agreement" Inria-EDF. This contract brings in approximately 12,000 euros to BIGS team (among which 2,000 for mission expenses).

R. Azaïs, A. Gégout-Petit, F. Greciet collaborated with SAFRAN Aircraft Engines (through a 2016-2019 contract). SAFRAN Aircraft Engines designs and products Aircraft Engines. For the design of pieces, they have to understand mechanism of crack propagation under different conditions. It appeals to BIGS for modeling crack propagation with Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes (PDMP).