EPFL - Evryon Project

Description of partecipating institution
The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is well-known in mobile robotics thanks to success stories such as the Khepera robots, and the multiple laboratories involved in robotics-related research. These laboratories are part of two schools: the School of Engineering and the School of Computer and Communication Sciences. The total number of people working in robotics at EPFL is approximately 100, of which 6 professors. The labs cover a large range of topics such as mechatronic design, navigation, locomotion, learning, and rehabilitation, and share state-of-the art facilities and workshops. The Biorobotics Laboratory (BIOROB, http://biorob.epfl.ch) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, is composed of 1 professor (Auke Ijspeert), 1 postdoc, 5 PhD students, 1 programmer, and 1 technician.

Main tasks
The BIRG team is the leader of WP4 and will be mainly involved in the co-design of the morphology and control of the actuated orthosis, taking into account the interaction with the human body, by applying evolutionary techniques. Moreover, the BRIG team will be involved in the implementation of the evolved controller (WP6) in the physical robot.

Expertise
BIRG at EPFL carries out research on locomotion and movement control in biologically inspired robots, in learning, as well as in computational neuroscience. The types of robots used for research at BIRG include amphibious snake robots, salamander robots, quadruped robots, and humanoid robots. Specific expertise that is directly relevant to this project includes: design of locomotion controllers for biped locomotion based on systems of coupled oscillators, design of dynamical simulations of neuromechanical systems (i.e. simulations of both the neural controllers and the biomechanics), use of evolutionary algorithms to design locomotion controllers, and use of evolutionary algorithms to co-evolve controllers and body properties.

Key personnel

Prof. Auke IJSPEERT is the director of the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL. He is also affiliated to the University of Southern California. His research interests are at the intersection between robotics, computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and machine learning. He uses numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of the functioning of animals, and inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and adaptive controllers. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles (some of them in high impact journals such as Science), and is regularly invited to give presentations on these topics. With his colleagues, he has received the Best Paper Award at ICRA2002, the Industrial Robot Highly Commended Award at CLAWAR2005, and Best paper award at Humanoids 2007. He was the Technical Program Chair of 5 international conferences (BioADIT2004, SAB2004, AMAM2005, BioADIT2006, EPFL-LATSIS2006), and has been a program committee member of over 35 conferences.

Renaud RONSSE got MS and PhD degrees in engineering from the Université de Liège (Belgium), in 2002 and 2007, respectively. His thesis covered the development of a juggling robot that was used in experiments involving robotics and human control. He is currently post-doc in the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group at EPFL (Switzerland), under supervision of Dr. Auke Jan Ijspeert. His current research interests include the development of non-linear control algorithms for assistance and rehabilitation in human cyclical movements, and computational models for the sensorimotor control of complex coordinated actions. He is co-author of 9 peer-reviewed journal articles, and carried out collaborations with people at Northeastern University (US), Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium).

Jesse VAN DEN KIEBOOM graduated from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in 2009 and has a MSc in Artificial Intelligence. His master thesis on "Biped Locomotion and Stability, a Practical Approach" was carried out at the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group at the EPFL. He joined BIRG as a research assistent in April 2009 as part of the Evryon project which concerns a co-evolutionary approach to designing a wearable, lower limbs, exoskeleton.