Section: Application Domains

Services robotics

Service robotics is an application domain quickly 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, 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 and aerial ones, see Fig. 4. Since 2016, we develop solutions for 3D observation/exploration of complex scenes or environments with a fleet of UAVs (Inria ADT CORDES (Coordination d’une Flotte de Drones Connectés pour la Cartographie 3D d’édifices, led by O. Simonin.)) or mobile robots (COMODYS FIL project [32]).

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 and also to conttrol autonomous cars in human crowds. This concerns our recent "Hianic" ANR project. Another emerging application is humanoid robots helping humans at their home or work. In this context, we address the problem of NAMO (Navigation Among Movable Obstacles) in human populated environments (eg. PhD of B. Renault started on 2018). More generally we address navigation and reconnaissance tasks with Pepper humanoids in the context of the RoboCup-Social League.