Introduction

My research interests take their roots in the capabilities of human to make snap decisions while making highly dynamical motions.

For instance a soccer player is able to decide to perform a bicycle kick while 21 other players are moving around, and while the ball is moving at high speed. Similarly, a firefighter is able to detect feeble signals that a fireball is about to happen and decide suddenly to evacuate a room. In both cases, important mecanisms are taking place to perform the needed motions. A less dramatic example is our daily experience of trying to find out our lost keys. Did they fall under the bed ? Are inside a drawer ? Without even thiking about it, humans are developing complex search strategies based on their reprepresentation of the world.

What are the fundamental algorithmic concepts of such mechanisms and can we try to reproduce them in an artifical machine ? When a scientist is trying to model mathematically such problems they quickly become intractable. Still human and animals are routinely solving them efficiently.

My work is caracterized by two main points: a systematic formulation of the problems using operational research, and the implementation on real machines such as humanoid robots.