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News
Death of Georges Giralt, Robotics pioneer
11 février 2013
Georges Giralt passed away on Sunday, 10th of February at the age of 82. He helped create LAAS alongside Jean Lagasse and the entire team of founders.
George was a true visionary with a remarkable clairvoyance and scientific guide of the laboratory. His broad spectrum of scientific expertise made him the instigator of the genesis scientific areas of LAAS-CNRS:
- PhD in Electronics in 1958, on a particularly innovative aspect on the foundations of electronic controls using semiconductor: high voltages and high currents.
- Initiator of the "Electronic Components" research activity with Henri Martinot and Bernard André in the mid-60s, which led to the LAAS "micro and nanosystems" area today.
His work earned him the CNRS silver medal in 1972. - Founder of the LAAS "Robotics and Artificial Intelligence" area in the mid 70s after his sojourn at the University of Berkeley. This led to the success that we know and earned him major recognition in France and worldwide, such as the prestigious international Joseph Engelberger which prize that was awarded to him in 1997.
Very attached to the CNRS that he had joined in 1956, Georges Giralt was a distinguished and brilliant scientist. Thanks to his charisma and conviction, he was also able to mobilize and energize all those who knew him and worked with him: there are many in this case! LAAS has lost his second co-founder and knows how much it owes to this strong, passionate and great man with a rare humanity.
Videos
We invite you to follow this exemplary career through some video testimonies recorded in 2008 by the Toulouse University scientific heritage safeguarding Dpt (in French).
Online videos (a few minutes each, total 36 min)
- The origins of a vocation: decisive meeting with Jean Lagasse
- The beginnings of electronics: the experience of the CERN - The beginnings of electronics research laboratory, interview with Roland Prajoux
- The Adventure of LAAS - LAAS in 2008, interview of Raja Chatila, head of Laas
- The sabbatical at Berkeley, University of California, USA
- Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
- Towards an autonomous robot: experience Hilare 1977, interview with Roland Prajoux - The "manipulation of cubes", one of the first experiments in robotics laboratory by Roland Prajoux
- The National ARA (Advanced Automation and Robotics)
- ARA presented by Rachid Alami (Head of pole robotics and artificial intelligence at LAAS)
- The robots onsite planetary program (RISP) - After the crawler, the service robot and robot air ... by Raja Chatila, LAAS Head
- Conclusion: the robot and the human cohabitation what tomorrow? Applications of robotics by Rachid Alami
Amit Kumar Pandey finalist of the 2013 Georges Giralt PhD Award
17 février 2013
After two review rounds among 37 submissions, Amit Kumar Pandey, who defended his PhD thesis on June 20, 2012, has been selected, along with two others, as a finalist for the 12th Georges Giralt PhD Award. The award will be presented at the next European Robotics Forum on March 20, 2013 in Lyon. Issued by EURON, European Robotics Research Network, this annual award is named Georges Giralt, co-founder of LAAS and roboticist, in recognition of his decisive influence in the 1970s, in the foundation of a European community of robotics. Georges Giralt died on 10 February 2013.
http://www.euron.org/activities/phdaward
http://homepages.laas.fr/akpandey
A LAAS team wins the security challenge of SSTIC
22 octobre 2012
Two researchers of TSF team, Eric Alata and Fernand Lone Sang, have
solved the SSTIC Challenge, and they are the only team awarded for the challenge. Three other individuals have been awarded for solving the challenge. For their solution, the TSF researchers had to develop their own reverse engineering tools (decompiler, debugger, emulator, etc.).
As part of the conference SSTIC, an annual challenge of security is offered to the scientific community around safety. The challenge this year was organized by CERT-Lexsi, EADS Innovation Works and ANSSI. It was to find an email address contained in an encrypted file itself stored in a corrupted hard disk image.
The all-terrain robot Mana from LAAS to ELROB
18 octobre 2012
Around 10 academic and industrial teams in Europe participate in these meetings designed to test the limits of capabilities of robots with a huge requirement.
LAAS participated to the ELROB event (European Land Robot Trial), held in Thun (Switzerland), Sept. 24-28. In this event all-terrain robots are tested realistic conditions in various scenarios: navigation, replay of previously learned trajectories, exploration of a given area. The laboratory has evaluated and demonstrated the autonomous navigation capabilities of the robot Mana, in particularly difficult conditions: woodlands, rough and slippery terrains...
The participation in this event helped to identify some issues (detecting water holes, locomotion control on slippery terrains). Developments carried out in the laboratory have also been validated, such as precise 100 Hz localization by fusing vision and inertial sensors, or a distributed architecture for the supervision of all the on board processes.
Best paper at ECEC'2012 conference
01 octobre 2012
Article "A Semantic Adaptive Framework for Collaborative System" by Aymen Kamoun, Saïd Tazi et Khalil Drira
Best paper, ECEC'2012, 18-20 April, 2012
Abstract
The collaboration environments are context sensitive; they may be subject of modification whenever parameters of use change. Dynamic adaptation is a key issue to enable continuity of collaboration and communication.
In this context, the collaborative development of products provides new challenges in distributed systems. It requires continuous communication and exchanges between teams of collaborators having different roles and using different tools. A global model of collaboration is necessary to guarantee the quality of communication and to ensure adaptability and interoperability between tools whatever may happen. In this paper, we present a framework for collaborative model-based services development that supports a semantic adaptation model. This framework enables a dynamic deployment of component that is triggered by the change of collaboration context such as the arrival/absence or change of roles and tasks of actors. In this article, the implementation of the framework and its conceptual model are presented. A test case for collaborative software development has been developed to validate the framework.
Furthermore, ECEC'2012 will feature a special workshop on Factory Planning and Control for Small and Medium sized Enterprises organized by the Polytechnic Institute of Castillo Branco in Portugal. The ECEC helps the dissemination of information and exploitation of results from the research and technical development and provides a forum for the exchange of experiences in developing and implementing CE based solutions across the wide spectrum of manufacturing and engineering industries. The conference is targeted at industrial enterprises, industrial associations, universities and research institutes.
European project Flagship Guardian Angels for a Smarter Life
31 mai 2012
The LAAS is a partner of the European Flagship Guardian Angels for a Smarter Life. Projects Flagships are large-scale initiatives to accomplish an objective scientific visionary to 10 years. The system developed in the Guardian Angels project will have applications for health, improving the city environment, monitoring of industrial environments and accident prevention. The LAAS provides expert on wifi communications in this project.
FET Flagship links:
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/home_en.html
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilots_en.html
Contact: Daniela Dragomirescu, LAAS-CNRS
Wisea, to support the Power Semiconductor Industry
20 avril 2012
For a sustained support of research in wide energy bandgap semiconductor materials and technologies, Fraunhofer IISB in Erlangen, Germany, and Institut Carnot LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France, initiated the foundation of the Wide Bandgap Semi-conductor Alliance WISEA.
Mark Hopkinson, Chaire Pierre de Fermat in 2011 Award
01 mars 2012
This professor of Sheffield (UK), has obtained a Chaire Pierre-de-Fermat, financed by the Midi-Pyrénées Region, for the PHONEME works on photonics integration running the nano-epitaxial. He will be welcomed by the LAAS-CNRS.
The UseNet Projet obtains ITEA Achievement Award 2011 - Silver (Eureka)
29 février 2012
The ITEA 2 Board recognises the value of the UseNet challenge to free the machine-to-machine (M2M) market from the fragmentes vertical business syndrome through an open architecture. The great innovation of this project is the M2M Internet; separating M2M services forme M2M infrastructures drastically increases the size of the potential market for M2M deployments. UseNet has delivered an open architecture and has been very active in the new ETSI M2M TC standard. Highlights among the many exploitation cases include fast exploitation of the Ouman centralised remote control service system localisation of vehicles and ALU 5580 Home Network Manager evolution.
Each year, the ITEA Achievement Award highlights three concrete examples of best practice by aknowledging outstanding achievments - high-level technical contributions based on true European collaboration that lead to significant results and thus further promote the ITEA programme and its goals.
ITEA a pour objectif de rendre l'industrie européenne plus compétitive, l'exploitation industrielle des résultats du projet étant cruciale.
More information on UseNet : presentation, leaflet, web site, page on ITEA web site
More information on sur les ITEA Achievement Award
