1. STATUS AND CURRENT ACTIVITY OVERVIEW
1. STATUS AND CURRENT ACTIVITY OVERVIEW
1.1. IARP Directions
The current IARP charter with new features such as the creation of Working Groups and cooperation agreements with international Technical Societies emphasizes our role and capacity "to foster international cooperation toward the development of advanced robotic systems able to dispense with human exposure to difficult activities in harsh, demanding or dangerous conditions or environments".
Indeed, front-line novel application domains and scientific and technical issues challenge both robotics researchers as well as social, economical, and political decision makers.
Two synergic work avenues are of paramount importance and call for action.
First, at the level of basic research, we should foster a number of technologies ranging from the design of very novel mechanical devices to the most advanced techniques in machine communication and intelligence.
Second, a broad host of new real-world applications are to be considered and developed. They will provide a technical integrative frame for the emergence of Human Centered Robotics as well as to open an exceptional perspective with a very positive economical and societal impact.
Humankind frontier domains: encompasses applications of intervention robots for hostile and/or remote sites such as planet exploration; sub-sea operation; Earth difficult environments such as Antarctica, volcanoes,.
Field-based applications: mining, tunneling, forestry, agriculture, ...
Dangerous waste and artifacts handling, surveillance, safeguarding and public assistance.
Drones, cars, professional cleaning, construction and civil work robots, sewer inspection and maintenance, warehousing and inter-modal transportation, professional servicing and catering.
Remote task execution by users and expert monitoring and assistance: plant maintenance, servicing, medical assistance, health care...
Entertainment and educational: toys, artificial pets, games, educational robots, ...
Public oriented services: public places servicing (airports, museums), hospitals delivery,.
Assistive and Personal Robots: Medicine, Rehabilitation, Household (cleaning, surveillance...), Assistance to the impaired or elderly (companion robots, effective servicing, personal care).
1.2. Current activity and report overview
France research activity in the field of Robotics, in the general context of the domain covered, and the directions set, by IARP, is carried on, as in other developed countries, in every University, Engineering School, Public R&D Institution, and in many corporate organizations.
In this framework, the overall activity encompasses major cooperative research programmes and actions which are pursued both at the national level and via international programmes by National Research organizations such as CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Robotique) and University laboratories together with domain-oriented organizations such as CEA (Commissariat à l"Energie Atomique), EDF (Electricité de France), CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales), IFREMER (Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer).
This major characteristic was clearly apparent in the large projects, national and international programs, and general activities, included in extensive reports until 1998. France's activity is being pursed in this pattern, and we have chosen since then to focus the yearly reports on a few selected activities. Past reports providing an overall view can be accessed on:
http://www.laas.fr/iarp-france.
For the year 2001, the partial activity report comprised four sections encompassing a large spectrum of activities:
The present report pursues the description of these activities, first just by pointing to two specific developments in Underwater Robotics and Medical Robotics, and second largely reporting the important effort carried on in relation to Robot Dependability in Human Environments to conclude with a complete description of the current status of the ROBEA programme.