Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR

ANR JCJC "Plasma" (2019-2023)

The ANR JCJC Plasma, led by Jilles S. Dibangoye, aims at developing a general theory and algorithms with provable guarantees to treat planning and (deep) RL problems arising from the study of multi-agent sequential decision-making, which may be described as Partially Observable Stochastic Games (POSG), see Figure 1. We shall contribute to the development of theoretical foundations of the fields of intelligent agents and MASs by characterizing the underlying structure of the multi-agent decision-making problems and designing scalable and error-bounded algorithms. The research group is made of four senior researchers, O. Simonin, C. Wolf (INSA Lyon), F. Charpillet (Inria Nancy) and O. Buffet (Inria Nancy), and two junior researchers Jilles S. Dibangoye and A. Saffidine (Univeristy of New South Whales). We plan to hire one PhD and one post-doc for two years as well as internships. We received a support for 42-months starting in March 2020 with a financial support of about 254 269,80 euros.

ANR "Delicio" (2019-2023)

The ANR Delicio, led by C. Wolf (INSA Lyon, LIRIS), proposes fundamental and applied research in the areas of Machine Learning and Control with applications to drone (UAV) fleet control. The consortium is made of 3 academic partners: INSA-Lyon/LIRIS (C. Wolf and L. Matignon), INSA-Lyon/CICI (J. Dibangoye, O. Simonin, and I. Redko), University Lyon 1/LAGEPP (M. Nadri, V. Andrieu, D. Astolfi, L. bako, and G. Casadei), and ONERA (S. Bertrand, J. Marzat, H. Piet-Lahanier). We plan to hire two Ph.D and two post-doc for one year as well as interships. We received a support for 48-months starting in October 2019 with a financial support of about 540 000 euros.

ANR "Valet" (2016-19)

The ANR VALET, led by A. Spalanzani, proposes a novel approach for solving the car-sharing vehicles redistribution problem using vehicle platoons guided by professional drivers. An optimal routing algorithm is in charge of defining platoons drivers' routes to the parking areas where the followers are parked in a complete automated mode. The consortium is made of 2 academic partners: Inria (RITS, Chroma, Prima) and Irccyn Ecole Centrale de Nantes and the AKKA company. The PhD student (Pavan Vashista) recruited in this project focuses on integrating models of human behaviors to evaluate and communicate a risk to pedestrians that may encounter the trajectory of the VALET vehicle. His PhD thesis, codirected by D. Vaufreydaz (Inria/PervasiveInteraction), has been defended in June 2019.

ANR "HIANIC" (2017-21)

The HIANIC project, led by A. Spalanzani, proposes to endow autonomous vehicles with smart behaviors (cooperation, negotiation, socially acceptable movements) that better suit complex SharedSpace situations. It will integrate models of human behaviors (pedestrian, crowds and passengers), social rules, as well as smart navigation strategies that will manage interdependent behaviors of road users and of cybercars. The consortium is made of 3 academic partners: Inria (RITS, Chroma, Pervasive Interaction teams), LIG Laboratory (Hawai team) and LS2N laboratory (ARMEN and PACCE teams).

PIA Ademe "CAMPUS" (2017-20)

The CAMPUS project aims to identify, develop and deploy new functions for the autonomous cars in urban environments. In this project, Chroma will focus on finding solutions to navigate in complex situations such as crowded environments or dense traffic. The consortium is made of 1 academic partner: Inria (Rits and Chroma teams) and 3 companies: Safran electronics, Gemalto and Valeo.

FUI Projects

FUI Tornado (2017 – 2020)

Participants : Rabbia Asghar, Anne Spalanzani, Christian Laugier, Olivier Simonin.

The project Tornado is coordinated by Renault. The academic partners of the project are Inria Grenoble-Rhône Alpes, UTC, Institut Pascal, University of Pau, IFSTTAR. The industrial and application partners are Renault, Easymile, Neavia, Exoskills, 4D-Virtualiz, MBPC and Rambouillet Territoires. The objective of the project is to demonstrate the feasibility of a mobility service systems operating in the commercial zone of Rambouillet and on some public roads located in its vicinity, with several autonomous cars (Autonomous Renault Zoe). The IRT Nanoelec is also involved in the project as a subcontractor, for testing the perception, decision-making, navigation and controls components developed in the project.

FUI STAR (2018 – 2021)

Participants : Andres Gomez Hernandez, Olivier Simonin, Christian Laugier.

The Project STAR is coordinated by IVECO. The academic partners of the project are Inria Grenoble-Rhône-Alpes, IFSTTAR, ISAE-Supaéro. The industrial and application partners are IVECO, Easymile, Transpolis, Transdev and Sector Groupe. The goal of the project is to build an autonomous bus that will operate on a safe lane Inria is involved in helping design situation awareness perception, especialy in special case like docking at the bus stop and handling dynamicity of any obstacle. The IRT Nanoelec is also involved in the project as a subcontractor, for testing the perception, decision-making, navigation and controls components developed in the project.

DGA/Inria AI projects

"DYNAFLOCK" (2019-2023)

The DYNAFLOCK project, led by O. Simonin, aims to extend flocking-based decentralized control of swarm of UAVs by considering the link quality between communicating entities. The consortium is made of 2 Inria teams from Lyon : Chroma and Dante (involving Prof. I. Guerin-Lassous). The PhD student (Alexandre Bonnefond) recruited in this project aims at defining dynamic flocking models based on the link quality. In 2020, an engineer will be recruited to conduct experiments with a quadrotors platform.

Funding of Dynaflock : $\sim$ 250 K€.