Interactive Systems

Man-machine interaction, which is central to the intelligent systems of tomorrow, is becoming omnipresent in both private and professional life (new modes of design and production etc.). This corresponds to "ambient intelligence" and
multi-mode interaction, enabling a closer relationship between the user and the system. This is why interactivity, which is fundamental to the user-data-environment trio, is a key factor in major research programs throughout the world.


The issues are:
- User-friendliness and ease of use of interfaces that are ever more intelligent and transparent, to address future societal needs.
- The extension of human capacity in an increasingly complex environment, by:
     - control that is increasingly effective (supervision) and precise (modeling) of real systems (robots) and virtual ones (simulation);
     - a better understanding of real environments by greater embedded cognitive power and embedded intelligence;
     - natural communication with the user, employing all the user's senses and adapting to any disabilities;
     - standards-based miniaturization and fabrication to increase the uptake of the systems and reduce their cost.


LIST research and development work in this field is focusing on three areas:

- Knowledge engineering
- Robotics
- Virtual reality and sensorial interfaces

Knowledge engineering

Goals and issues: The information disseminated by the media and that held by companies need dedicated processing to be interpretable by those wishing to understand it. The ever increasing amount of data concerning a given subject need content processing by: - filtering out unimportant information, - establishing semantic links between textual, visual and audible data. The issues concerning this area of research relate to two aspects of engineering: - semantic analysis of multilingual texts; - automatic recognition of complex images, whether derived from photographic pictures, and video. The goal of this research is to establish knowledge engineering technologies enabling users to find the answers they seek by straightforward interrogation. Research team: interfaces, cognitics and virtual reality unit Research topics: Automatic ontology building. Question/answer systems based on unstructured data. Automatic generation of multilingual abstracts. Identification of properties of images enabling the rapid selection of a few of them from a set of millions (search by image analogy). Identification of image content, automatic segmentation of images. Intelligent indexing of the semantic web (automatic and cooperation between media: text, sound, image, video). Main projects:   PiRiA:  visual information seek tool (french demonstration) DETECT: monitoring and detection of multilingual topics (french version) Publications: Knowledge engineering Presentation of the activity:   Visual information processing   Textual information processing

Robotics

Goals and issues: Whether in industry, transport, health or games, robotics will be of vital importance and address the needs of society in the next few decades. To meet the requirements that will be placed upon robotic technology, it must be adaptable for: - exploring extreme environments on land, on sea and in space; - assisting the old and the disabled citizen in overcoming their everyday difficulties; - making it possible to perform delicate surgery with high precision; - facilitating access to the world of the microscopic, for the manipulation of tiny machines (pumps, simulators) and natural substances (cells, proteins etc.). The LIST is conducting research in technological areas where there is a need for new and innovative ideas: - the mechanical design of complex systems; - new actuator technologies; - intelligent control algorithms and architectures. Research team: Interactive Robotics Unit Research topics: Construction of adaptive, mesoscopic, poly-articulated structure mechanisms. Real poly-articulated architectures. Perception, location and navigation of robots. Remote control and supervision of robotic systems. Assisted surgery and rehabilitation. New actuator technologies (electroactive polymers, shape-memory alloys and piezoelectric ceramics) and microrobotic applications. Main projects:   Navigation of a drone helicopter (french version)   Remote control with computer-assisted force feedback for a standard hot-cell arm   TAO 2000: a remote control application   Self-contained navigation on a mobile robot (french version) Articulated robot for inspection in harsh environments   Long-reach robot for inspection in the vacuum chamber of the future ITER reactor Telepresence robot: paving the way to the IT-aware house (french version) EndoXiroB: robotic applications for minimally invasive surgery Virtuose 6D: 6-degree of freedom manipulator arm MASTER: a solution for the disabled Surgicobot: robotic assistance in maxillo-facial surgery   New actuator technologies (french version)   Video of a rotary wing UAV (french version)   Video of embedded view of a micro UAV   La Hague hot cell inspection by  hinged carrier (french version)   Robot intervention within a Nuclear Power Plant containment building   Vision-based autonomous navigation (french version)   Assistance in picking-up objects for the disabled (french version) Afmaster robotic station (Afma Robotic data) Surgicobot surgery assistance (french version) Mesogripper Publications: robotics Presentation of activity: Robotics (french version)