[robotics-worldwide] PhD Position at LIRMM-INRIA, Montpellier, France

[Mitsuhiro.Hayashibe at sophia.inria.fr]

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We are looking for PhD candidate as below

subject:
Whole body control framework for lower limb stability in computational 
rehabilitation 

project:
INRIA is the French national institute for research in computer science 
and control. The Institute's strategy closely combines scientific 
excellence and technology transfer.
DEMAR project's research interests are centered on the human sensory 
motor modeling, including muscles, sensory feedbacks, and neural motor 
networks. Final goal of this team is oriented towards the development of 
advanced neuroprotheses to restore deficient functions.
http://www.lirmm.fr/demar/

research direction:
Identification of biomechanical dynamics and muscle dynamics for 
neurologically damaged patient is already challenging as the system 
response can drastically vary depending on the degree of the patient 
deficiencies. In FES (Functional Electrical Stimulation), movement 
synthesis and control are still a challenging task due to the complexity 
of whole body dynamics computation and the nonlinearity of stimulated 
muscle dynamics. One of the challenge concerns the feedback (torque, 
EMG, joint angle) that can be used to control joint angle, torque or 
stiffness. Moreover, control strategies have to be designed in order to 
be performed on portable architecture and tuned through advanced 
modeling and simulation.
In order to obtain stimulation patterns for a given movement 
corresponding to current patient posture condition, both off-line 
optimization for movement synthesis and online closed control are needed.
 In this context, the goal of this PhD work is to study the 
optimization-based motion synthesis and real-time control framework 
which can generate stimulation patterns from the pre-computed motion 
synthesis database. Motion capture system together with the estimation 
of the Center of Mass would be used to assess the strategies. This work 
aims at the development of automatic method to establish deficient limb 
stability in computer-aided rehabilitation.
This PhD work is performed under the collaborative project named @walk 
(artificial walking) between INRIA DEMAR project and AI lab of Stanford 
University. http://www.lirmm.fr/~fraisse/@WALK/
Experimental protocols will be carried out with our clinical partners.

research background:
Master in control engineering, computer science, biomechanics, robotics 
or related disciplines.
- good knowledge of C/C++ programming and matlab.

Complementary Info:
- Duration: 3 years
- Starting date: between Sept. 1st 2011 and Jan. 1st 2012
working place:
LIRMM (Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microe'lectronique 
de Montpellier)
http://www.lirmm.fr/xml/en/0001-01.html
Montpellier, France

Contact:
Mitsuhiro Hayashibe, Philippe Fraisse
Mitsuhiro.Hayashibe at inria.fr


You can see the detail and apply on-line from here.
http://en.inria.fr/institute/recruitment/offers/phd-positions-offered/phd-positions-offered/%28view%29/details.html?id=PNGFK026203F3VBQB6G68LOE1&LOV5=4509&LG=EN&Resultsperpage=20&nPostingID=5192&nPostingTargetID=10222&option=52&sort=DESC&nDepartmentID=28