Location:

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

address: 3, rue Michel Ange, 75794 Paris Cedex 16, France
tel: +33 1 44964000
fax: +33 1 44965390
web: http://www.cnrs.fr

AIST/CNRS Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory JRL (LIA CNRS)

address: Central 2, Umezono 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan
tel: +81 29 861 3443
web: http://www.is.aist.go.jp/jrl

Description of participant

CNRS is the biggest research institution in Europe covering almost all fields of science. The Communication and Information Science and Technology (STIC) department of the CNRS has been created in 2000; the STIC, is organized around four major fields: computer science and information processing; systems, signals and components; micro and nano-technologies, and, lastly, human interactions and cognition. CNRS has entrusted the STIC department with the important mission of responding to major challenges in French research in order to:

• pursue research and development of innovative technologies of the future
• understand and be able to utilize the complexity of the information systems of tomorrow
• develop an information and communication society to serve human needs
• disseminate methods and tools developed by STIC so they contribute to the research priorities of other areas of scientific research, such as the sequencing of genomes and the understanding of human life

The Intelligent Systems Research Institute (ISRI) of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the département des Sciences et Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (STIC) have set up a joint research laboratory named Joint Robotics Laboratory (JRL). The JRL is operated in all aspects on the basis of bipolar management. The research base in Japan (JRL Japan) is located at ISRI, Open Space Laboratory (OSL) within the AIST, and the France side (JRL France) is located in CNRS-LAAS in Toulouse.

The JRL long term research target deals with the development of tools that allow increasing humanoids autonomy, flexibility, interactivity and versatility. For this purpose, we are using a global approach that focuses on communication and more mediated interactivity to increase autonomy. As for artificial intelligence, autonomy, flexibility, interactivity and versatility can be viewed as purely computational, knowledge-based or behavioural. Theoretical concepts and developments are demonstrated through the HRP2 humanoid platform.

Humanoids are envisaged in applications where they communicate and share human-build environments, thus the behavioural autonomy and interactivity are important issues. It is believed that robot's capability to interact with its environment through less intellectually mediated sensing modalities and “soft” actuation is a key concept in robotics to improve autonomy and interactivity. A robot having a structure similar to the human body, allows a wide range of behaviours and multiple sensory channels to perceive the world. The high complexity of the body may in some case help to decrease the complexity of the problem to be solved. Multi-modal interpretation and “reasoning” is the heart of the problem. Some information may require heavy computations. Consequently, in a sense, this may compromise interactivity.

Key researchers

Abderrahmane KHEDDAR (*1967) is currently Directeur de Recherche at CNRS and the Director of the CNRS-AIST JRL (Joint Robotics Laboratory), UMI3218/CRT, he was (1998-2008) professor in computer science and control at the university of Evry and the head of the virtual reality and haptics group of the Laboratoire Systèmes Complexes. He received a DEA (Master of science by research) and the Ph.D. degree in robotics, both from the University Paris 6, France. His research interests include teleoperation and telerobotics, haptics (sensing and display), humanoids (contact planning, dynamic control), and electro-active polymers for haptic displays. He was a member of the Teleoperation Research Group under the French Nuclear Commissariat (CEA) and the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS) auspices. He was the general chair of EuroHaptics 2006 which held in Paris. He is member of the EuroHaptics steering committee and served as a founding member and in the advisory board of the WorldHaptics IEEE TC chapter. He is in the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics and the Internation Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems. He also served in the editorial board in many robotics conferences.

Olivier STASSE (*1973) is assistant professor in Computer Science at University of Paris 13. He received an MSc in Operations Research (1996) and a PhD in Intelligent Systems (2000), both from University of Paris 6. His research interests include humanoids robots as well as distributed and real-time computing applied to vision problems for complex robotic systems. He was involved in the Daneel humanoid project lead by Professor Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Tokyo University) from 1997 to 2000. Between 2000 and 2003, he was at the Laboartoire de Robotique de Versailles and was part of the SONY robot-soccer team. He was involved in two national robotic projects (CLEOPATRE and ROBOCOQ). Since 2003, he joined the Joint French-Japanese Robotics Laboratory (JRL) in a secondment position as a CNRS researcher.

Sylvain MIOSSEC (*1978) is a research associate at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientiqgue (CNRS) working at the AIST/CNRS Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory (JRL). He obtained his Master and Ph.D. from \'Ecole Centrale de Nantes, France respectively in 2001 and 2004. He then obtained a JSPS fellowship for a two-years post-doctorate at the AIST/CNRS Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory (JRL), until 2006. His research interests includes biped robots, humanoid robots, optimal motion, walking control and stability, multi-body simulation.

Nicolas MANSARD (*1980) joined the JRL Lab, AIST Tsukuba (Japan), in 2007 with Abderrahmane Kheddar, for a 1-year post-doc funded by Robot@CWE. The post-doc started by a 6-month stay at the Robotics Lab, Computer Science Department, Stanford University (USA), with of Oussama Khatib to study joint-force-and-velocity control. My main subject is to unify in-contact and in-free-space reactive control loops in order to design global sensory-based behavior on humanoid robots. From September 2003 to december 2006, Nicolas Mansard has been working as a PhD student in the Lagadic team in IRISA, Rennes (France) with François Chaumette; his thesis has been awarded by the GDR-Macs (french award in robotics). He was a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan (2003-2004). In June 2003, he graduated with a Master (DEA) in computer science, specialized in Image-Vision-Robotics, obtained at the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG). I graduated with a Master of Engineering obtained at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Informatique et Mathematiques Appliquees de Grenoble (ENSIMAG) in 2003.

Paul EVRARD (*1983) is a PhD student at the University of Montpellier 2. He received a Master degree in computer science from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Informatique pour l'Industrie et l'Entreprise and joined the Joint Japanese-French Robotics Laboratory (JRL) as a research assistant (2006). His interests include software engineering, robot control and haptics.

Torea FOISSOTTE (*1978) is a PhD student at the University of Montpellier 2 (France) and joined the JRL in AIST Tsukuba (Japan) as a research assistant in 2008. He received a Master degree in computer science from the Ecole Polytechnique de l'université de Tours (France) in 2002 and has then been involved in some computer vision related research projects at Postech university (South Korea) and AIST Tsukuba (Japan). He has also worked few years  on various projects related to computer graphics or vision as a software engineer in 3D Incorporated, a Japanese private company in Yokohama. His interests include computer vision and motion planning for humanoid robots.

Role of partner

CNRS will coordinate and manage ROBOT@CWE. CNRS is involved IST-robot technology, human robot interaction through haptics and prototype integration within a humanoid platform.