Contracts & Projects

PROTEUS

http://www.anr-proteus.fr/

[November 2009 – October 2013]

PROTEUS (“Robotic Platform to facilitate transfer between Industries and academics”) is an ANR project
involving 6 industrial and 7 academic partners. This projects aims to develop a software platform which helps
to share methods and softwares between academics and industries in the field of mobile robotics.
The project works on three main aspects :

• Specification of different scenarios and its associated formalism.
• Definition of a domain specific language (DSL) to specify and execute the given scenarios.
• Setting up 4 robotic challenges to evaluate the capacity and the usability of the platform.

The contribution of e-Motion to PROTEUS is first to provide its expertise on mobile robotics to develop the
DSL and next to provide a simulation environment with its platform “CycabTK”.7

AEN PAL

pal.inria.fr

[Nov 2009 – Nov 2013]

The objective of this project is to create a research infrastructure that will enable experiments with technologies
for improving the quality of life for persons who have suffered a loss of autonomy through age, illness or
accident. In particular, the project seeks to enable development of technologies that can provide services for
elderly and fragile persons, as well as their immediate family, caregivers and social groups.
The INRIA Project-Teams (IPT) participating in this Large-scale initiative action Personally Assisted Living
(LSIA Pal) propose to work together to develop technologies and services to improve the autonomy and quality
of life for elderly and fragile persons. Most of the associated project groups already address issues related to
enhancing autonomy and quality of life within their work programs. This goal of this program is to unite these
groups around an experimental infrastructure, designed to enable collaborative experimentation.
Working with elderly and fragile to develop new technologies currently poses a number of difficult challenges
for INRIA research groups. Firstly, elderly people cannot be classified as a single homogeneous group with
a single behavior. Their disabilities may be classified as not just physical or cognitive, motor or sensory,
but can also be classified as either chronic or temporary. Moreover, this population is unaccustomed to
new technologies, and can suffer from both cognitive and social inhibitions when confronted with new
technologies. None-the-less, progress in this area has enormous potential for social and financial impact for
both the beneficiaries and their immediate family circle.
The spectrum of possible actions in the field of elderly assistance is large. We propose to focus on challenges
that have been determined through meetings with field experts (medical experts, public health responsible,
sociologists, user associations…). We have grouped these challenges into four themes: monitoring services,
mobility aids, transfer and medical rehabilitation, social interaction services. These themes correspond to
the scientific projects and expectations of associated INRIA projects. The safety of people, restoring their
functions in daily life and promoting social cohesion are all core motivations for this initiative.
e-Motion concentrates his work on mobility aids using the wheelchair.

sFly project

http://www.sfly.org/

Project title : Swarm of Micro Flying Robot
Duration : January 2009 – December 2011

Abstract: sFly is an European research project involving 4 research laboratories and 2 industrial
partners. This project will focus on micro helicopter design, visual 3D mapping and navigation,
low power communication including range estimation and multi-robot control under environmental
constraints. It shall lead to novel micro flying robots that are:

• Inherently safe due to very low weight ( <500g) and appropriate propeller design;
• Capable of vision-based fully autonomous navigation and mapping;
• Able of coordinated flight in small swarms in constrained and dense environments.

Our role in the project sFly is twofold. From one side we aim at developing new strategies for the problem of fusion of visual and IMU measurements, with special emphasis to the localization and mapping tasks. From another side we aim at developing new distributed control strategies for the sFly multi-MAV system.

ict-PAMM

http://emotion.inrialpes.fr/people/spalanzani/HomePAMM.html

This project aims at conducting common research activities in the areas of robotic mobile service and robotic assistance of human in different contexts of human life. Most countries are becoming to be aged societies, and the percentage of people with special needs is already significant and due to grow. In developed countries, 12% of people were older than 60 in 1950, 19% in 1998 and should be 28% in 2025.

The integral assistance systems are robotic modules and technological aids in general for personal assistance, such as robots, mobile bases, electric wheelchairs, soft robot manipulator arm. They can support disable and elderly people with special needs in their living environment.

Intelligent Service Robotics cover a broad spectrum of research axis, from intelligent robots acting as a servant, secretary, or companion to intelligent robotic functions such as autonomous wheelchair navigation, embedded robotics, ambient intelligence, or intelligent space. Some international industrials already think that smart houses or smart buildings (with sensors, actuators and computer capabilities) could be already considered as “static robots”: in these cases, adding a mobile robot inside the house or the building could add “mobility capabilities” to the whole system.

Many applications can be listed such as : Cleaning & Housekeeping, Edutainment, Humanoids, Inspection, Surveillance, Medical Applications, Construction, Guides & Office, Fire Fighters, Food Industry, Search & Rescue, Lawn Mowers …