Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL)
Introduction
The Université Catholique de Louvain (http://www.uclouvain.be) is one of the oldest European universities, founded in 1425. UCL is a full university, delivering diplomas in technical, social, and medical sciences. The Center for Research in Mechatronics (http://www.cerem.be) at UCL is committed to high-level research in mechatronics systems. Recently, the Centre gained expertise in biomedical applications with research projects in assistance for surgery (laparoscopy) and rehabilitation and assistive robotics for the upper- and the lower-limb. Renaud Ronsse and Paul Fisette are currently involved in the FP7-ICT-FET CYBERLEGs project, targeting the development of a fully assistive device for the replacement and assistance of the lower-body in elder amputees. The group from UCL is responsible of the high-level control in this project. Furthermore, Renaud Ronsse was involved in the FP7-ICT-FET EVRYON project during his post-doc at EPFL (Switzerland), in the lab of Auke Ijspeert. This project addressed the development of a lower-limb rehabilitation device. In this project, Renaud Ronsse particularly gained expertise in developing protocols for human-robot interactions, based on motor primitives. Paul Fisette developed the ROBOTRAN symbolic program (www.robotran.be), a physics-based model generator dedicated to multi-body dynamics, in particular for biomechanical applications.
Key Personnel: Renaud Ronsse, Paul Fisette, Julien M. Hendricks, Nicolas Docquier
Role of the Partner
UCL will be responsible for the simulation-related tasks, by providing their unique expertise in the development of symbolic models and real-time simulators (through the ROBOTRAN software). These tasks are disseminated within several WPs. On top of that, Renaud Ronsse will closely collaborate with the group from EPFL in the development of activities related to WP3, capitalizing on their fruitful existing collaboration.
Key Personnel
Renaud Ronsse obtained his PhD in engineering from the Université de Liège in 2007. Thereafter, he took two post-doctoral fellowships, first at KULeuven (2007-2009), then at EPFL (2009-2010), working on the morphology and controller of a new rehabilitation robot for the lower-limb (FP7-ICT-FET EVRYON). During these research activities, he developed strong expertise in the modelling of human movements, both discrete and rhythmic, with transfer to original rehabilitation concepts for robotics applications. Dr Ronsse (co-)authored 17 publications in prestigious journals such as Journal of Neuroscience, Cebral Cortex, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, and IEEE Transactions on Bio-medical Engineering. In 2010, Dr Ronsse joined the Centre for Research in Mechatronics at UCL, as an Assistant Professor.
Paul Fisette is full professor at the Institute of Mechanics, Materials and Civil engineering at UCL. He is developing research in multibody dynamics, symbolic programming and multiphysics modelling of mechatronic systems. He is author and co-author of more than 140 international journal and conference papers. Prof. Fisette will lead the activities related to the simulation developments.
Julien M. Hendricks received a PhD in mathematical engineering from UCL in 2008. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems of the MIT in 2009 and 2010. Since September 2010, he has been assistant professor (chargé de cours) at UCL, where he teaches automatic control and system identification. Dr. Hendrickx is the recipient of the 2008 EECI award for the best PhD thesis in Europe in the field of Embedded and Networked Control, and of the Alcatel-Lucent-Bell 2009 award for a PhD thesis on original new concepts or application in the domain of information or communication technologies. His research interests include various aspects of dynamical systems, including multi-agent and multi-robot systems, and system identification. He has co-authored more than 15 articles in prestigious journals such as IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, and has actively taken part to the STREP project Euler. He will support the project by providing expertise in systems identification.
Nicolas Docquier obtained his PhD in engineering from UCL in 2010, working on the modeling of railway pneumatic suspension. During his thesis and the following years, he developed research in multi-body dynamics and especially in coupling multi-body models with other disciplines such as pneumatics and hydraulics. He was therefore strongly involved in the development of the ROBOTRAN multi-body software. He is now working as a postdoctoral researcher of the Belgian fund for scientific research (F.R.S.-FNRS) targeting the coupling of multi-body dynamics with structural and soil dynamics so as to model the whole railway system (vehicle and infrastructure). He will support the project by providing expertise in multibody dynamics and simulation, especially for multi-physics issues.