Hi Guys and welcome, I am Philip English from Robophil.com and on this video we are doing an Interview with Catherine Bidard from CEA Lists. We managed to speak to Catherine at the InnoRobo 2016 Robot Exhibition in Paris, France.

Within the CEA Technological Research Division, the CEA LIST institute carries out research on intelligent digital systems. Its R&D programs, all with potentially major economic and social implications, focus on advanced manufacturing, robotics, virtual & augmented reality, non-destructive testing and vision , embedded systems and ambient intelligence.

Philip: Hi guys! Innorobo 2016. So can you introduce yourself and introduce your company.

Catherine: Okay. Hello! I am Catherine Bidard from CEA Robotics Laboratory. I am managing a project on an exoskeleton. So here is a stand of CEA robotics lab and we have developed a new prototype called exoskeleton, called the Hercule Slim. So this exoskeleton is dedicated to carry some load for an industry. This kind of development, we work mostly with a partner company with, called RB3D company, who has developed also exoskeleton with us, so the novelty of this design is to reduce the volume of the exoskeleton to have a really a slim design. We have two actuators, pellets, so the novelty of the actuators are the legs and there are new actuators, two cable actuators to control the walk, but the motors are in the back, so this allows to have a light design.

Philip: Right! Okay!

Catherine: The prototype is really brand new.

Philip: It is brand new. Because this is it, I think we were in the Innorobo last year and we saw a bigger version of this and it had like a front piece here.

Catherine: HV3! Yes.

Philip: Right! And this is HV4?

Catherine: We called it slim. Simply slim.

Philip: Can you tell me a little bit more about like the actual weight this can carry, like how much does the robot weight?

Catherine: The weight it can carry, you mean?

Philip: Yeah!

Catherine: So I am not the designer, I think we planned for 30 kilograms.

Philip: 30 kilos?

Catherine: Yes.

Philip: I mean, I can see straight away, it’s a lot, lot slimmer, the legs are smaller. Is it faster as well?

Catherine: Yes. Yes. I think so.

Philip: Okay. So we got the Hercule Slim and then behind that we’ve got something that looks quite powerful. Just to explain a little bit the actual company so this is a the research company and you research Exoskeleton Suite

Catherine: No. We are a robotics laboratory inside the CEA which is a really big researching institute in France and we are in the technological division who has different branches for micro electronics, computers, solar, a lot. So we are small entity in robotics and then we come mostly from telerobotics. So we also work in telerobotics also some autonomous robotics but mostly robotics with interaction with human, we are called interactive robotics, so we are not much in industrial fast robotics. That’s why we work on exoskeleton.

Philip: So you work with robots that work more robots that work with humans, sort of thing

Catherine: Yes. Robots with humans. And a lot of devices are talk or force control

Philip: So going back to the one way behind me, can you tell me a little bit more about this robot?

Catherine: Yes. So Balance uses the same type of actuators with full force and talks control. In this exoskeleton the aim was to have a 4 degrees of freedom actuated pellets, that’s why it is more heavy and we didn’t put too much constraint for specific application, we stayed quite general, it is more development, we want to use to develop control libraries, we have partnered for rehabilitation or also to test some control algorithms for load support but knowing we have more actuators, so we can, we are actually waiting the ankle section which is not okay with this kind of robot and also in addition to do to be able, to able to get the loads on the side, to help people step to recovery, we are involved in a European projects on this subject.

Philip: So just to be clear, so both of these robots are from, they are made from different, so they look different but are they made by the same company?

Catherine: It’s the same team we developed, they’re two sides but in this one, we involved RB3D company in some part of the design and also in the back for instance so every company is involved in the design of this one, the back one, the other one is a more lab design.

Philip: Is is just the legs you guys are working on? or you are looking at arms as well now?

Catherine: Yes. We work also on arm exoskeleton for RB3D we have also developed some relatively simple arm to do load carrying with exoskeleton, you may have seen in the older version and we have also quite a good exoskeleton, in fact we start to work on exoskeleton, we start with arms more than 10 years ago, so the able exoskeleton is more of an interface we have a 7 degrees of freedom which is very good in terms of transparency you can move easily.

Philip: Okay. That sounds brilliant. So that’s a brilliant overview, so I thank you very much for your time.

Catherine: Thank you!

Brilliant Thanks Guys, I hope you enjoyed the interview and I want to say a big thank you to Catherine from CEA List’s, for her time and  the interview.  

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CEA Tech Interview: https://youtu.be/IsjFQpbcg4g

Philip English: https://philipenglish.com

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