Institut des Systèmes Intelligents
et de Robotique

Assistance to Gesture with Applications to THErapy

One goal: assist human movements by the mean of a robotic device

Our research concerns the design and control of robotic devices aimed at assisting human movements. They are finalized towards two kinds of applications:

• assistance to medical and surgical interventions;
• assistance to patient suffering from a motor impairment.

One scientific project: comanipulation

AGATHE team's main scientific objective is to develop the concept called comanipulation, which consists of realizing a task through simultaneous and co-localized actions from a human oparator and a robotic system.

Comanipulation devices take many different shapes and allow to provide a broad range of functions: guidance, stabilization, filtering, force magnification, virtual forces superposition, haptic percepts, etc.

From left to right: parallel comanipulation for assistance to bone milling in orthopedic surgery; serial comanipulation for endoscopic surgery; orthotic comanipulation for neuro-motor rehabilitation;  bimanual assistance to walking and sit-to-stand transfer;  single-hand assistance to postural stabilization.

A model for translational research

Because our research is strongly multidisciplinary, because its is directed towards medical applications, because we mean to transfer our results up to clinical practice, we have been developing a model of translational research:

This model is based on internal competences in:

• Robotics : optimal design of mechanisms, mechatronics and intergation, planning, force feedback control, visual servoing;

• Human movement sciences: biomechanics, neurosciences, motion reconstruction and analysis, interjoint coordination during movements;

• Medical and surgical sciences:  neuro-motor réhabilitation, digestive surgery, urology, obstétrics ;

as well as a numer of external collaborations.

Four research axes

Developing comanipulation systems dedicated to the medical world supposes that both fundamental and applied researches are conducted along four research axes :

• AXIS 1 – Modeling and analysis of human gesture
• AXIS 2 – Design and optimization of physically interactive robots
• AXIS 3 – Control for assistance to gesture
• AXIS 4 – Evaluation of interactive devices and clinical applications  

Most projects require research within all of these four axes.

Two experimental platforms

• Surgical robotics platform
• Human motion analysis and stimulation platform