In particular, this research work focuses on “smartening up” the systems designed to acquire and use the observations provided by radar systems (airborne or satellite) or geolocation systems such as GPS.

Applications

Radar; electronic warfare; geolocation and navigation; marine pollution; monitoring, maritime safety and security; microwave remote sensing; target recognition (based on radar signals/images).

Topics and expertise

• Multiscale and multiphysics electromagnetic simulation and modeling
• Wave propagation and interaction with the environment (sea, atmosphere, land).
• Microwave frequency system modeling and simulation (link budget, microwave remote sensing, experimentation, etc.).

The team works on methodologies based on the association of heterogeneous models, as well as on scalable model checking: proving the systems’ correctness by construction.

The team also works on the securing of the compilation flow for reconfigurable circuits and on the virtualization of reconfigurable architectures to design durable and secure systems on chip (SoC).

Expertise:

• Modeling and simulation techniques
• Programming languages and their semantics
• Formal verification techniques
• Reconfigurable hardware virtualization and programming techniques
• Computer security and cyberdefense

Applications

• Medicine
• Smart farming
• Internet of Things
• Electronic warfare
• Robotics
• Telecommunications, beamforming

Expertise

• Blind signal processing methods
• Spectrum sensing
• Cognitive radio
• Game theory
• Wireless transmission

Such systems are based on three pillars: perception, action and the interaction between the two. Any autonomous perception system must be able to simultaneously analyze the data collected in relation to its immediate environment, become familiar with this environment and, depending on what this environment is, autonomously organize the steering and navigational aspects of its mission. This recent issue stems from the field of robotics in which the robot-environment interaction occurs via the sensor, which requires a study of the action-perception mechanisms.

Two main areas of focus have thus been defined: perception and action. Interaction between these two areas of focus is then essential for the system to be autonomous.

•  Research focus 1: Autonomous action
•  Research focus 2: Autonomous perception

Perception (research focus 2) is the process by which the system attempts to understand its observations and devise a relevant representation, not only of the environment’s current state, but also of its uncertainty. Using the perception’s results, the system must then reason out the actions (research focus 1) it must implement to achieve its mission goals, according to certain criteria such as efficiency, safety, speed, and energy consumption.

APPLICATIONS

Defense and security, underwater archaeology, harsh environment operations

EXPERTISE

The team comprises researchers with expertise in information processing, robotics and automation. The team provides new mathematical tools, including set theory methods, suitable for managing uncertainties in unstructured environments such as the marine environment.