The HÉPHAÏSTOS project-team was created on January 1st 2014.

This project is composed of INRIA researchers and external collaborators who decided to combine their approaches to develop robotic assistive devices (in the broad sense of the word), for fragile people (elderly and disabled people) and their carers. Those devices can also provide information on their state of health to
the medical community.

This team creation was submitted after a two-years consultation that has involved subjects, their associations, families and professional caregivers, nurses and doctors, insurance companies and local authorities. This period led to the identification of priorities (eg mobility aid) and development guidelines (low cost and intrusiveness, work in fleet of connected objects… ). These innovations ranging from concept to prototype, addressing all aspects of mechanical, electronic, software and automatic sciences are based on specific methods of modeling, design and evaluation, that especially take into account uncertainties (in the sensor measurement, on the model parameters, on the control, etc..). A major focus of the team is also the study of parallel robots, which are an interesting answer to the mobility problem with a low intrusivity and large
lifting abilities.

From a mathematical point of view, the team based his research on game theory and interval analysis (see the texte fondateur).

IMPORTANT NOTE : The HÉPHAÏSTOS project team has absolutely no relation
to the HEPHAESTUS european project “Highly automatEd PHysical
Achievements and PerformancES using cable roboTs Unique Systems” and we
regret the choice of this name by this european project.

In the Greek mythology, Héphaïstos is the God of fire, forges and volcanoes, the only God suffering from a handicap : He’s lame.
This God can copycat life and liven up his masterpieces, which is even more relevant with his robots since he created 2 golden artificial handmaids to help him at work.
He is considered as the first roboticist.

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