Co-manipulation gesture assistance and its therapeutic applications

Guillaume Morel is a professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. Engineer in 1990, doctorate in 1994, he worked successively at MIT (Boston, MA) as a postdoctoral researcher (1995-1996), then at EDF R&D as a research engineer (1996-97 and 2000-2001), and the Université Louis Pasteur - Strasbourg I as Maître de Conférences (1997-2000). In 2001, he joined UPMC as Maître de Conférences, then Professor (2007). Guillaume Morel is Deputy Director of Polytech'Paris-UPMC, UPMC's engineering school, where in 2007 he created France's first three-year course for robotics engineers. At the Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (ISIR, UPMC & CNRS - UMR 7222), he heads the AGATHE team, which brings together some thirty permanent and non-permanent researchers in the field of gesture-assisting robotics, with a particular focus on therapeutic applications (surgical and medical assistance, rehabilitation). Gesture assistance through comanipulation and its therapeutic applications: Comanipulation is a word we use to designate the performance of tasks through the combination of mechanical actions produced simultaneously and co-located by a user and a robotic device. Comanipulators are therefore machines or instruments designed either to improve a subject's manipulative abilities, by increasing the dexterity, stability, strength or precision of a gesture, or to guide a gesture to make it safer or easier, or to increase the quality of perception of interactions with the environment. At the heart of the problem of designing these new systems lies the question of interaction with the operator. To study this, we need to go beyond the traditional framework of robotics (mechanical design, control, information processing, etc.). We need to draw on knowledge from movement neuroscience to improve the functional synergies of comanipulators. In addition, the human sciences and the study of human factors take on particular importance, especially in the context of our target applications, which are assistance with medical and surgical interventions and assistance with motor deficiencies in neuro-motor rehabilitation.