Chris­tine Prelle and Lau­rent Petit, a full pro­fes­sor and an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor respec­tive­ly, are research sci­en­tists at the UTC Rober­val Lab­o­ra­to­ry in the “Mechan­ics, Ener­gy, Elec­tric­i­ty, and Inte­gra­tion” (M2EI) team. Their work pri­mar­i­ly focus­es on study­ing micro-robot­ic sys­tems. Their work has been rec­og­nized, giv­en that the lab­o­ra­to­ry was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the “Robot­ics” PEPR on the MINIRO theme, which groups togeth­er nine lab­o­ra­to­ries, includ­ing Roberval.

The lat­est PEPR aims — par­tic­u­lar­ly with a view to ensur­ing nation­al sov­er­eign­ty — to struc­ture and strength­en the French research and inno­va­tion ecosys­tem in robot­ics in order to over­come the sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers lim­it­ing the per­for­mance of cur­rent robot­ic sys­tems, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of mobil­i­ty and con­trol, per­cep­tion and adap­ta­tion of robots to var­i­ous envi­ron­ments and phys­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of objects, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tak­ing into account aspects of lean tech­nolo­gies and autonomy.

The “Robot­ics” PEPR Accel­er­a­tion pro­gramme, ded­i­cat­ed to low TRL* (1–3) research, is based on four projects, includ­ing MINIRO and PERSEO, which involve Rober­val and Heudi­asyc at UTC, respec­tive­ly. The MINIRO project brings togeth­er 9 lab­o­ra­to­ries at the nation­al level.

“MINIRO’s pri­ma­ry objec­tive is to cre­ate a lead­ing force in the field of minia­ture robot­ics. The aim is to car­ry out struc­tur­ing projects at the nation­al lev­el to iden­ti­fy poten­tial break­throughs that could lead to inno­va­tions capa­ble of sub­se­quent indus­tri­al­iza­tion. Cur­rent­ly, sev­er­al star­tups ded­i­cat­ed to minia­ture robot­ics have been cre­at­ed by cer­tain lab­o­ra­to­ries to accel­er­ate the trans­fer to indus­try. Fur­ther­more, eleven sub­pro­jects have been iden­ti­fied and will result in the­ses aimed at over­com­ing cur­rent bar­ri­ers,” states Chris­tine Prelle, who is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the design of micro-robot­ic sys­tems based notably on elec­tro­mag­net­ic prin­ci­ples and the inte­gra­tion of instru­men­ta­tion to mea­sure their move­ments or per­for­mance, for example.

Minia­ture robot­ics tomor­row will there­fore require the study of new actu­a­tion prin­ci­ples and new archi­tec­tures. “One of the PEPR’s objec­tives is to devel­op build­ing blocks that can be used in both minia­ture robot­ics and more tra­di­tion­al robot­ics. These may be actu­a­tion or mea­sure­ment com­po­nents. The goal is to devel­op new actu­a­tors or instru­men­ta­tion capa­ble of mea­sur­ing posi­tion or tem­per­a­ture, for exam­ple. To achieve this, we are com­pelled to con­duct ground­break­ing research that breaks with exist­ing approach­es. We are seek­ing to devel­op new con­cepts because we can­not minia­tur­ize exist­ing large-scale sys­tems indef­i­nite­ly. How­ev­er, the idea is to inte­grate these con­cepts into larg­er sys­tems to gath­er as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble local­ly while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly stream­lin­ing those same sys­tems. Work on minia­ture robot­ics not sole­ly aimed at man­u­fac­tur­ing minia­ture robots but should, ulti­mate­ly, also be use­ful on a macro scale,” explains Chris­tine Prelle.

So, what are the chal­lenges ahead? “There are three main chal­lenges”, states Lau­rent Petit. “First, we need to increase the agili­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of these sys­tems in terms of posi­tion­ing or dex­ter­i­ty, for exam­ple. Next, we need to resolve the issue of ener­gy and pow­er trans­mis­sion to over­come the cur­rent lim­i­ta­tions of robot­ic sys­tem pow­er sup­plies. In cur­rent sys­tems, wiring can often hin­der the flu­id­i­ty of move­ments. One solu­tion will be to use wire­less pow­er trans­mis­sion, via opti­cal means, for exam­ple. We will also study the robot­ic prin­ci­ples enabling the exe­cu­tion of dis­crete move­ments. Final­ly, mini-robots tomor­row will need to ensure a high lev­el of per­for­mance despite the dis­tur­bances caused by the envi­ron­ment in which they operate,”.

And what do you use as the bench­mark in minia­ture robot­ics? “There are two ways to approach this ques­tion. If we con­sid­er very slen­der and thin 2D robots, they will be a few mil­lime­tres wide and a length of up to ten cen­time­tres in order to reach hard-to-access tar­gets. As far as sub­mil­lime­tre 3D robots are con­cerned, they will be able to move in con­fined, inac­ces­si­ble spaces, such as inside the human body, for exam­ple,” con­cludes Chris­tine Prelle.

*The TRL (Tech­nol­o­gy Readi­ness Lev­el) scale is used to assess the degree of matu­ri­ty of a team, a process… cf. TRL | Horizon-europe.gouv.fr

MSD