ISI4NAVE is an Associate Team between INRIA project-team Rainbow (Rennes), Aspire CREATe (UCL – London), Rehabilitation Center of Pôle Saint Hélier (Rennes) and LGCGM lab, funded from 2016 to 2021.

Presentation of the collaboration

A pluridisciplinary team

Both Inria-Rainbow and Aspire CREATe teams are involved in robotic assistance research area. In particular, their works deal with robotized wheelchair navigation. The Inria Rainbow team brings to the project its competence on physical Human-Robot Interfaces (pHRI), and assisted navigation of non-holonomic mobile robots. The Aspire CREATe team is affiliated with the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and the Aspire Charity (for people with spinal cord injuries) and has expertise in innovative sensors, adapted interfaces and novel human-machine control algorithms related to wheelchair and exoskeleton navigation.

The consortium is completed on the one hand by INSA/LGCGM laboratory that brings its expertise in mechatronics and dynamical system modelling, and in the other hand  by the Pôle Saint Hélier that receives patients with neurological diseases, either as inpatients or day hospital cases. In this project, Pôle Saint Hélier brings its competence on medical validation, evaluation methodologies and will allow to perform clinical trials.

The already established complementarity of the four partners’ skills is clearly a substantial asset for the consortium.