The FEMTO-ST is a public research laboratory affiliated with the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), the University of Franche-Comté (UFC), the National School of Mechanical Engineering and Microtechnology (ENSMM), and the Belfort-Montbéliard University of Technology (UTBM) which currently consists of 500 staff members. It is made up of six departments covering numerous domains of engineering sciences: mechanics, automatic control, mechatronics, optics, micro and nanosciences and systems, time-frequency, energy, multiphysic systems. FEMTO-ST institute is one of the highest competitive poles in France and is among the leaders in the world on Engineering for micro and nanoscale. FEMTO-ST institute has a microfabrication technology central (the large clean room MIMENTO) that is part of the national net of large centrals (RTB).

Organizations:

• AS2M Department
• Department of Optics P. M. Duffieux

Main tasks:

• Leader of WP5 – Micro-Robot Design
• Leader of WP6 – Cancer Tissue Imaging System Design

Role of the Partner:

FEMTO will be in charge of the laser micromanipulator design and also for the development of a cancer imaging device. In addition, FEMTO will contribute to all the transverse research, as well as to most of the core scientific WPs: Endoscope design, Automation, Augmented Reality.

FEMTO brings to the project its research and expertise in: 1) micro-mechatronic systems design, fabrication, and control; 2) micro-optomechatronic systems; 3) fast and robust visual servoing; 4) parallel mechanisms design and control; 5) imaging systems; and 6) optical characterization of tissues. All of this knowhow will greatly benefit FEMTO in successfully playing its roles in the µRALP project.

Key researchers:

Nicolas ANDREFF (M.Sc. 1994, Ph.D 1999, Res.Hab. 2006) received his Ph.D. degree in computer graphics, computer vision and robotics from INPG (Grenoble, France) and the Research Habilitation degree in vision and robotics from Université Blaise Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand, France). His research has involved robust real-time control, computer vision, visual servoing, robot calibration, bipedal robotics, and high-speed vision-based control of parallel kinematic manipulators. He is a Professor at Université de Franche-Comté (Besançon, France) since September 2009. He was the co-chair of the Technical Committee on "Methodologies in Robotics" of the French Robotics Society (GdR Robotique), 2006-2010. He has supervised or co-supervised 9 PhD theses, and is the author or co-author of 15 international peer-reviewed journal articles and over 40 international conference papers. He participated to the FP6 IP NEXT project, and to the national projects MAX, MP2, and CoGiRo. He is the Principal Investigator of the 2007-2011 VIRAGO project within French ANR Young Scientist program on "High-speed vision in robotics". Perish citations: total:579, average:34, h-index:13. Core expertise: Parallel Kinematic Manipulators and High-Speed Computer Vision for Robotics.

Christian PIERALLI defended his PhD.in 1989 in the domain of image processing devoted to optical metrology and he joined the CNRS the same year. His main research interests are related to optical biosensors applied to medicine (IVF, Blood compatibility automated detector, Automated infection screener). One of his activities deals with optical characterization of cancerous tissues. Core expertise: Biosensors, including fluorescence-based for cancer diagnosis.

Micky RAKOTONDRABE (Engineer .Sc. 2003, Ph.D. 2006) is Associate Professor at the Université de Franche-Comté at Besançon and a researcher at the AS2M department of FEMTO-ST, both since 2007. His research interests include the design and development of microatuators and microrobots and the control theory applied (modeling, identification, signal estimation, and control of systems) at the micro-scale. His works particularly account nonlinearities (such as hysteresis and creep) as well as the influence of the environment while modeling and control, and the particularities of robots at this scale (stick-slip, inch-worm, etc). Micky has co-organized two workshops on the control and on the signal measurement/estimation at the micro-scale during the International Conferences on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2009 and 2010. Core expertise: Design, modeling and control of microrobots as well as piezoelectric materials.

Sounkalo DEMBÉLÉ received his PhD degree in systems control from the university of Franche-Comté, Besançon, France, in 1993. From 1994 to 1995 he worked as an electronics engineer at the National School of Mechanical Engineering and Microtechnology. He is an associate professor at the university of Franche-Comté since 1995. From 2008 to 2010 he worked as independent consultant at Pointe-à-pitre, France. His research deals with vision and robotics at the micro and nano scales. The topics investigated include the synthesis of 2D as well as 3D images, calibration of optical and electronic microscopes, 2D and 3D tracking of mobile object, 2D and 3D visual servoing with a microscope. These works have been successfully applied to the assembly of mechanical MEMS components into 3D MEMS. Core expertise: Vision and robotics at the micro and nano scale.