Section: Application Domains

Domains: a transversal approach

While the methods developed in the project can be used for a very broad set of application domains (for example we have an activity in CO2 emission allowances, it is clear that the size of the project does not allow us to address all of them. Hence we have decided to focus our applicative activities on mechanism theory, where we focus on modeling, optimal design and analysis of mechanisms. Along the same line our focus is robotics and especially service robotics which includes rescue robotics, rehabilitation and assistive robots for elderly and handicapped people. Although these topics were new for us when initiating the project we have spent two years determining priorities and guidelines by conducting about 200 interviews with field experts (end-users, praticians, family and caregivers, institutes), establishing strong collaboration with them (e.g. with the CHU of Nice-Cimiez) and putting together an appropriate experimental setup for testing our solutions. A direct consequence of setting up this research framework is a reduction in our publication and contract activities. But this may be considered as an investment as assistance robotics is a long term goal. It must be reminded that we are able to manage a large variety of problems in totally different domains only because interval analysis, game theory and symbolic tools provides us the methodological tools that allow us to address completely a given problem from the formulation and analysis up to the very final step of providing numerical solutions.