Research areas

• Embedded systems are increasingly complex sets of communicating electronic systems (hardware) and software which require new design methods

Owing to such new applications as the IoT (connected devices), autonomous systems or, more generally, applications which require significant storage and computing means (e.g. artificial intelligence and big data), the boundary between embedded systems and their environment is disappearing, bringing uncertainty and complexity. 

Embedded systems are part of an overall entity, a much larger and more diffuse distributed information system. This forms a system of systems which interacts with its environment and is growing increasingly complex. 

• They combine heterogeneous systems or applications.
• They operate within an increasingly uncertain environment.
• They nevertheless have to meet functional and non-functional requirements (e.g. energy footprint, security, safety, temporal behavior). 

Ensuring these requirements is a challenge, taken up by the SHARP research hub: study models, methods and design support tools centered on “architecture” for these new embedded systems and their environment

The term architecture is understood in the broad sense here:

• hardware architecture on the lowest layers 
• architecture of the complete system in which the studied system is embedded
• software architecture, with major implications in terms of the consideration of application needs and software/hardware interactions. 

3 research teams who work together  

•    ARCAD: Hardware architectures and CAD tools
•    SHAKER: Software/hardware and unknown environment interactions
•    P4S: Processes for Safe and Secure Software and Systems

APPLICATIONS

All civil and military applications comprising computer and electronic systems that need to be made secure and reliable:

• Application software
• Web applications
• Embedded intelligence
• Connected devices, etc.

The research hub wishes to actively contribute to the development of efficient, autonomous, reconfigurable and intelligent communication systems. 

ENSTA Bretagne researchers primarily contribute to the “Security, Intelligence and Integrity of Information” (SI3) team.  

“Security, intelligence and integrity of information” research areas

The team designs and develops methods, algorithms and solutions for securing the physical layer of future communications and transmission systems. 

Its contributions also involve testing the deployed standards and systems or carrying out the corresponding “reverse engineering” for our institutional defense or national regulatory partners. 

In this area, everything can be considered as a challenge, because most of the reception processing is generally performed blindly and/or with very severe operational constraints in terms of stealth, threshold of noise level, own or external interference, power consumption, spectral efficiency, security, etc.

These research topics are at the intersection of signal processing, mathematics, “classical” and quantum information theory, and require consideration of major criteria and constraints related to operational, confidential, secure and other hardware aspects of the considered applications.
 

APPLICATIONS

• Tactical communications in defense and aerospace, radio spectrum monitoring, Cognitive Radio, securing restricted access areas and critical systems, 
• Drones, the Internet of Things (IoT), Smart factory, autonomous cars and radars embedded in vehicles.
• Applications of advanced signal processing methods, wireless telecommunications techniques and artificial intelligence in the biomedical field.

COLLABORATIONS

• Institutions: DGA, ANFR, Brest Teaching Hospital (CHU), Brest Military Hospital, etc.
• Academia: Naval Academy, GIPSA, UBO, Université de Paul Sabatier Toulouse 3, AUCE (Beirut-Lebanon), SNCS (Tabuk – KSA), ISEN, AAMST (Cairo - Egypt), etc.
   

Expertise

• communications systems,
• information processing and protection, 
• information encoding and decoding, 
• algorithm-architecture matching,
• physical layer security, 
• artificial intelligence.

Research areas of the “propagation and multi-scale interaction” team

The research conducted at ENSTA Bretagne by this Lab-STICC team is primarily aimed at representing and understanding certain phenomena resulting from the interaction of electromagnetic waves with the environment.

The team is seeking to further integrate innovative concepts and artificial intelligence into systems for the acquisition and processing of observations from radar (whether airborne or satellites) or GPS-type geolocation systems.

3 complementary research themes:

• Multi-scale and multi-physics electromagnetic simulation and modeling – in near and far fields: tools, asymptotic methods, exact methods, empirical methods, hybrid methods, etc. (MOSEM).
• Modeling and characterization of the propagation channel – physical and statistical models, etc. (MOCAP).
• Systems and platforms / modeling and simulation – experimental and virtual systems (MOSSYP).

Experimental facilities:

• Anechoic chamber (2-18 GHz)
• Operational radar operating in the X band
• Experimental radar operating in the Ku band
• Several simulation platforms (high-performance servers)
• Specialized software: HFFS, FEKO, ADS, CST-MWS, MicroStripes, Winprop, IE3D, SolidWorks, OrCAD, etc.
   

APPLICATIONS

• Observation of the globe, earth and sea, by satellite (Remote sensing)
• Environmental monitoring
• Automated detection of offshore pollution and irregularities
• Defense: radar, electronic warfare, detection/recognition and tracking of targets
• Surveillance: maritime safety and security
• Autonomous vehicles (aircraft, drones, etc.), geolocation and navigation, etc.

Collaborations

• Companies: Thales, SAFRAN Electronics & defense, Diades Marine, Naval Group, CESTIM, Syrlinks
• Institutions: DGA, IFREMER
• Academia: CNAM Paris, ENSM, IMT Atlantique, UBO, Naval Academy, RMA

Research areas

The researchers develop approaches guided by mathematical and statistical models to study and represent natural phenomena, dynamic systems or sociotechnical systems, all of which generate data.

• Information is extracted using data mining or machine learning algorithms.
• This information can, in itself, represent an answer to the question raised, or act as a starting point for a decision-maker to reach informed or optimal decisions.
• To guide decision-makers, operational research or decision support techniques will be used.
• These decisions can then influence the underlying phenomena again, thereby closing this loop.

Applications

• Knowledge of the marine environment
• Environmental monitoring
• Management and security of offshore human activities
• Functioning of robots and large industrial systems
• Human behavior, etc.

Organzed into 2 research teams

• Models and AlgoriThms for pRocessIng and eXtracting information (MATRIX)

• DECision aid and Information DiscovEry (DECIDE)

ENSTA Bretagne contributes primarily to the Matrix team and, to a lesser extent, to Decide.

Objectives and applications: design intelligent, autonomous robots for exploring the environment – particularly the marine environment

Mobile robotics has grown significantly, usually in structured and already mapped environments. In other situations – unknown and unstructured environments – such as distant planets, volcanoes, deep caves, irradiated areas, underground water veins, burning buildings or the sea depths – the nature of robotics changes.

Because it is difficult for humans to intervene safely in these circumstances, where remote operation is usually no longer possible, robotics becomes essential. Robots must therefore be equipped with maximum autonomy and intelligence to accomplish a mission. This is called "exploratory robotics", as the robot has to map its environment, make decisions, locate itself and be able to return home.
 

Research areas: design methodological tools of autonomous robotics for exploration

The ROBEX team seeks to develop methodological tools for designing intelligent algorithms which enable robots to accomplish an exploratory mission autonomously. Bearing certain hypotheses about the environment and dynamics of the robot in mind, the team endeavors to guarantee such properties as:

• avoidance of a forbidden zone, 
• compliance with constraints on the state of the system,
• integrity of the location 
• and the ability to return to the starting point.

The team strives to take any type of uncertainty into rigorous account, obtain theoretically elegant solutions and make convincing experimental validations.

Methodological Tools

The emphasis is on:

• set theory,
• abstract interpretation, 
• nonlinear robot control and Bayesian filtering. 

Collaborations

• Companies: Kopadia, Thales, Forssea, RT-sys, iXblue, ECA-robotics, Subsea-Tech, Orange-Labs, Pilgrim, Texys Marine, Oxxius.
• Institutions: DGA, DRASSM, Ifremer, EDF, Brittany Region, Shom.
• Laboratories: LIRMM, IRISA, Polytechnique, LS2N.
• Research networks: GDR Macs and GDR robotique.

Prof. Luc Jaulin, research professor at ENSTA Bretagne / Lab-STICC in robotics for exploration:

We seek to represent and propagate uncertainties as rigorously as possible without making uncontrolled approximations, such as those induced by linearization or discretization. Uncertain variables may be the environment map, sensor data, robot trajectory, past or future decision making, robot dynamics and human interventions. The modeling of these different types of uncertainty requires reflection and the development of tools capable of meeting our objectives.

Research areas

The scientific objective of the AI & Ocean Department takes the ocean into account as a complex system, with physical, biological and ecological interactions, as well as human activities (maritime traffic, coastal planning, marine resources, environmental monitoring, etc.). 

The AI & Ocean Department is organized around three specific research areas, to which the Department’s three research teams contribute: 

• AI & perception of marine environments (ROBEX, OSE and M3 teams), 
• AI & robotics for exploration (ROBEX team) 
• AI & ocean and marine data (M3 and OSE teams).

Applications

• Knowledge of the marine environment
• Environmental monitoring
• Management and safety of offshore human activities
• Maritime & coastal planning

Organized into 3 research teams 

ENSTA Bretagne contributes to the 3 teams:

• Marine Mapping & Metrology (M3)
• Robotics for exploration (ROBEX)
• Observations, Signal & Environnement (OSE)

Research areas for understanding the marine environment

With the increase in insightful, precise and heterogeneous information about the marine environment come efforts to improve the processing of these countless datasets from varied observation systems (underwater, marine and spatial). Only judicious, joint use of this metadata can enable a faithful description of the environment.

To that end, the team explores different aspects of marine data analysis:

• design of the observation system through the assembly of sensor bricks, 
• consideration of the physical reality of this system and its measurements,
• qualification, analysis, interpretation and representation of the data acquired.

Expertise harnessed for analyzing marine data

• marine acoustics 
• passive acoustics
• marine data processing
• marine imaging
• machine learning
• data science
• big data
• sensor systems

Collaborations

Here are some examples of partners with whom this research is conducted.

• Companies: Hytech Imaging, Naval Group, Thales, ECA-robotics, CIDCO, iXblue
• Institutions: DGA, Shom, IGN, Ifremer
• Academia: Université Laval, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Centre de Géomatique du Québec