On Decem­ber 1, 2021, event known as Trophées des ingénieurs du futur [Future Engi­neers Tro­phies] took place. Two projects devel­oped by stu­dents of the Indus­tri­al Design Engi­neer­ing course of UTC-Com­pieg­ne com­pet­ed in the “dig­i­tal” sec­tion: Orfey and Cosette. Two high­ly dif­fer­ent projects, but with the same ambi­tion: to place the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal advances at the ser­vice of users! Cosette won not only the “dig­i­tal” prize, but also the pub­lic prize dur­ing this evening!

You work on this file for thir­ty min­utes, but can­not get start­ed. You then put on your ear-phones and start the “con­cen­tra­tion” playlist, which the audio sys­tem has cre­at­ed just for you, by study­ing your elec­troen­cephalo­gram and your musi­cal tastes. And indeed, you final­ly man­age to work serene­ly. An e‑mail alert appears on your screen: it’s your grand­moth­er. Since she has this sys­tem mount­ed on a touch-sen­si­tive tablet, send­ing an e‑mail or going on the Inter­net is no longer a prob­lem for her! This sce­nario is still fic­tion, but it could soon become real­i­ty, thanks to three stu­dents from UTC. 

Cosette : the digital world at our fingertips 

As the pan­dem­ic health cri­sis has shown, we need dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy more than ever before, to com­mu­ni­cate, make pur­chas­es, fill in admin­is­tra­tive forms, etc. But this is not always easy for the elder­ly or peo­ple who are unfa­mil­iar with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Agathe Boulet and Louise Thouron, super­vised by Emmanuel Cor­bas­son, have found the solu­tion: Cosette, a device that is attached to a touch-sen­si­tive tablet and facil­i­tates dig­i­tal access for seniors. It is a device that per­fect­ly meets the needs of today’s con­sumers, as evi­denced by the “pub­lic prize” it won at the Trophées des Ingénieurs du Futur cer­e­mo­ny, in addi­tion to win­ning the prize in the “dig­i­tal” category. 

Orfey : the right music for the right spirit 

Orfey is a con­nect­ed head­set that looks like a clas­sic set, but hides a secret: elec­trodes in the head­set mea­sure brain activ­i­ty, which is then analysed by an AI (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence) device. The lat­ter will then sug­gest playlists adapt­ed to each user to pro­mote con­cen­tra­tion or relax­ation, for exam­ple. This intel­li­gent head­set was devel­oped by Athé­naïs Oslati, and the project is accom­pa­nied by Anne Meuleau, a lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tist at UTC