Siméon シメオン CAPY カピ

PhD in robotics & Research assistant

Subject: Exploring different means of human-robot interactions by using environmental data to adapt the robot's behaviours.

My PhD mainly focused on the improvement of Human-robot interactions. I achieved it with three projects:

• The first one used the Nextage open robot from Kawada Robotics and was used during IREX 2019. The goal was to evaluate how participants will interact with a robot not made for social interactions and to do a project where the participants could interact with the robot without any prior training. The project involved some AI algorithms to catch participants' emotions, and gaze or to detect some objects. See more detail in the following article.
• The second project was the creation of a robot from scratch called Yokobo. The creation of this robot involved a team of designers and engineers from France and Japan, as a partnership with Orange. The goal was to help young retired people in their daily life, involving a new paradigm: human-robot-human interaction. Yokobo can be used to transmit messages between two people, acting as a middleman. I was involved in the electronic design of the product, and the software part by managing the sensor part. I was also involved in the main algorithm. Most of them are in Python. See more detail in the following article.
• As a side project to Yokobo, I also developed a smartphone application for Android to configure the Raspberry Pis used in the robot. The goal of Yokobo is to be used in people's homes with ease, and during the experiment, it has to be changed several times. The normal way to connect the RPi to the home's WiFi network is to use a keyboard, a mouse and a screen; or to write directly on the µSD card. Then I developed an application to connect to the RPi via Bluetooth with the smartphone to enter the WiFi credentials. It is also used to configure the weather station from Netatmo that Yokobo is using. An article will be presented at the ICCCR conference in Shangai the 24-26 March 2023.
• Finally, to improve the interactions of Yokobo in a long term, I developed a specific algorithm called BeWoDa (BEhaviours from WOrld DAta). The algorithm is built in two parts. First, a Naïve Bayesian Network symbolises the representation of the world by Yokobo and the link between all the input parameters. Then 2 Reinforcement Learning algorithms to control the motors and the light of Yokobo. Over time Yokobo will learn the action it has to do to keep the user in a good mood (as a first naive approach). The current algorithm has been tested in simulation and will be tested with the real robot in an experiment in a couple of months.

During my PhD, I had to achieve a special research project. I decided to do it on autonomous vehicles since transportation is another field I have an interest. We can consider autonomous cars as big wheeled-robot. I achieved a survey on the way to estimate the intention of pedestrians or cyclists; for example, if they want to cross the road or not. See more detail in the following article.

Dual Master's degree IRIV (vision & robotics)

• Focus on research
• Vision and signal processing
• Master thesis (see in work experience): Social robotics, human-robot interaction using EEG (brain) signals and head motion.

Engineer diploma (Master's degree) in mechatronics

During my 3 years of my master I studied the four main components of mechatronics: mechanics, electronics, control and coding. In addition to theory, we had to develop some projects such as sumo robots, or an electric vehicle. I learnt also to use robotics arms from Fanuc, CNCs, or to model pieces and assemblies on PTC Creo.

I was also involved in the robotic club of INSA. Then I participated in the construction of the robot from scratch to participate in the French Robotic cup. I was involved in many aspects: mechanical conception, PCB design, soldering and coding. I also built the new website of the club in PHP using OOP.

I was also selected to participate in the programming contest between the INSAs (it's a group of engineering universities): Cod'INSA. I participated in two editions.

Finally, my master thesis was about (see in work experience): Social robotics, human-robot interaction using EEG (brain) signals and head motion.

Classe Préparatoire aux Grandes Écoles (equivalent to bachelor's degree)

• Special preparation for highly selective French engineering schools.
• Physics and Engineering curriculum (PCSI then PSI).
• Special mention in the 2010-2011 International Physics Olympiad.

Project Researcher (postdoc)

Robot teleoperation for care giving.

Robotic engineer

Development of ROS packages to acquire and manage the data from different kind of sensors for a mobile robot.

Using Python and C++, for development; Bitbucket as hosting service; and Jira for issue tracking.

Hardware development with Arduino.

From January 2024 I worked as a transfered employee (出向) at Cluster Dynamics to work on a swarn robotic project. I used Unity to create a simulation environement for testing/displaying the algorithm results.

Software engineer

Development of new functionalities such as the amendment system of the contracts. This project involved the modification of the treatment of the data in the backend (in COBOL) and the update of the display on the front end on the intranet and internet websites (in C#). I also managed some other projects with developers from a service provider company.

The projects involved the definition of the scope statements with the client (here the insurance). Before the development on the test environment. Once the project was done, it was tested by the client on the Acceptance testing environment (short and long) and once validated, it was sent to the production environment. The version-control software used was IBM Rational Team Concert to work more easily with COBOL programs.

Final year research project (master thesis)

Subject: Social robotics, human-robot interaction using EEG (brain) signals and head motion.

The goal was here to develop a robotic solution with an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset. The robot used was here a Turtlebot and was programmed with ROS. A complete solution was proposed using the robot as an improved telecommunication robot. Here the focus was on getting the blinking of the eyes to reproduce them on the robot's screen. In addition to EEG, the accelerometer of the headset to turn the robot.

The data extraction algorithm involved several steps. First, a low pass filter to remove other brain wave data. Then a fast ICA algorithm was used as a Blind source separation to get the signal of each eye. The next step is a filter to remove the noises (two were compared: Gaussian and exponential). Finally to detect the blink two algorithms were tested: correlation and DCT. The programs were developed in C++, using also OpenVIBE software and the Armadillo library.

Finally to communicate between the user's computer and the robot's PC, communication software has been developed in C++ with Qt with a specific protocol.

Technological research project: Redesign a blowing system for the friction welding process

• Achievement of a programmable controller that follows the given cycle.
• Proposal of a National Instrument solution.