Robotics and Industrial Automation

The Robotics and Industrial Automation Division includes sixteen researchers and research support staff. The DPR is involved in several domains, including Mobile Robotics, Service Robotics, Industrial Robotics, Manufacturing, Cyber-physical Systems, The industrial internet of things, Automated Production Systems, Virtual and Augmented Reality and Precision Engineering.

The DPR researchers are divided into several structured and specialized teams. They participate in various research projects, and DPR allocates a set of robotic platforms and equipment to each of the tasks undertaken by each team. The research activities undertaken aim to develop modern and effective solutions that meet the requierements of the socio-economic sector.

Missions & Objectives:

The Robotics and Industrial Automation Division deals with a wide range of research fields, generally related to production and robotics. Thus, several lines of research are tackled and each axis is conceived around a particular theme. In order to promote an experimental R & D approach, each team uses a set of robotic experimentation and validation platforms to validate their studies, as well as a flexible and robotic assembly platform, allowing them to carry out experiments and develop demonstrations of Industry 4.0 technologies.

The research work focuses on:

• Theoretical and experimental investigations of approaches, methods and technologies of cyber-physical manufacturing and robotic systems type Industry 4.0.

• The study and implementation of software models and techniques for assistance with multimodal interaction and collaboration in virtual and augmented reality environments.

• Production of free-form surfaces on five-axis digital milling machines, as some very complex shapes require five-axis machining.

• Control of complex dynamic systems difficult to command because they are non-linear, under-actuated, multi-variable and strongly coupled. Developed commands must be robust and must ensure the system stability.

• The study of the dynamics of different types of flying engines (birotor, quadrotor and plane), and the proposal of robust commands in order to remedy the problems resulting from the insufficiency of the obtained dynamic description.

• The implementation of advanced features on a prototype electric vehicle, called Robucar, dedicated to the automated urban transport with autonomous and intelligent navigation capabilities.

• The implementation of a robotic platform with the function of a robot guide with all logic reasoning system to best meet the interaction modalities envisaged for this robot ” guide ”.

• Piloting / Scheduling / Conducting flexible and complex manufacturing systems: development of exact, heuristic, optimization-simulation and meta-heuristic approaches for the centralized and distributed resolution of different industrial scheduling models.

• Advanced interactions and simulations for cyber-physical manufacturing and robotics systems.

Head of division

Dr. Gaham Mehdi, Research associate A