Direc­tor of the Cen­tre d’Expertise pour la Bio­mé­canique du Mou­ve­ment (Cen­tre of Exper­tise for the Bio­me­chan­ics of Move­ment in Humans and Ani­mals) in 2022.

Among the objec­tives of UTC’s Cen­tre for Exper­tise in the Bio­me­chan­ics of Move­ment? «The aim is to fed­er­ate and mobilise a range of sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal skills around the theme of improv­ing per­for­mance while pre­vent­ing the risk of phys­i­cal injury. 

Thanks to our sci­en­tif­ic exper­tise and the var­i­ous mea­sure­ment sys­tems on our ‘Sport and Health Tech­nol­o­gy’ plat­form, we can analyse and study the mechan­ics of human and ani­mal move­ment both in the lab­o­ra­to­ry and in eco­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tions. This enables us to address a num­ber of issues, such as opti­mis­ing per­for­mance and equip­ment while pre­vent­ing injuries. It also enables us to define the opti­mum type of reha­bil­i­ta­tion if nec­es­sary, as well as recov­ery for sports­peo­ple, for exam­ple», he explains. 

What sort of research work is car­ried out on humans? “We have con­duct­ed sev­er­al region­al and Euro­pean projects on pre­ven­tion through phys­i­cal activ­i­ty in geron­tol­ogy. The aim is to intro­duce new meth­ods and tools for super­vis­ing and mon­i­tor­ing phys­i­cal activ­i­ties at home. We demon­strat­ed that adher­ence to a train­ing pro­gramme is greater when it is car­ried out at home than when it is done in a sports cen­tre or gym. 

For top-lev­el sports­men and women, we have devel­oped a num­ber of spe­cif­ic mea­sure­ment pro­to­cols in line with their sport­ing prac­tice to assess their lev­el of train­ing by mea­sur­ing and analysing phys­i­o­log­i­cal and bio­me­chan­i­cal para­me­ters such as mus­cle pow­er, coor­di­na­tion, bal­ance, etc. 

As part of an ongo­ing train­ing pro­gramme for young cyclists in the Haut de France selec­tion team, we have also pro­vid­ed ath­letes and their coach­es with objec­tive infor­ma­tion about their per­for­mance lev­els, with a view to draw­ing up an indi­vid­ual, made-to-mea­sure train­ing pro­gramme,» he adds. 

And in regard to ani­mal research projects? «We have been work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the École Nationale Vétéri­naire d’Alfort (ENVA) and the LIM group, a group of man­u­fac­tur­ers spe­cial­is­ing in made-to-mea­sure equip­ment for rid­ers and horse pro­tec­tion, to set up a sys­tem to help detect equine lame­ness. The aim of this project is to help improve the per­for­mance of the “horse ath­lete” while respect­ing its well-being, health and phys­i­cal integri­ty. To this end, we have devel­oped a sys­tem of iner­tial units — a set of sen­sors housed in a box that attach­es to a seg­ment to mon­i­tor its ori­en­ta­tion, speed and posi­tion — to detect lame­ness, and we have set up a sta­tion to analyse hors­es when swim­ming, to mon­i­tor their rehabilitation.