PhD defense : Numerical tools for the design of mechanisms

PhD defense : Gauthier HENTZ

Team : AVR

Title : Numerical tools for the design of mechanisms

Abstract : In the medical and surgical background, robotics can be of great interest for safer and more accurate procedures. Size constraints are however strong and complex movements may be necessary. To date, the design of dedicated non-conventional mechanisms is then a difficult task because of a lack of generic tools allowing a fast evaluation of their performances. This thesis combines higher-order continuation and automatic differentiation to adress this issue through the introduction of a generic modelling method and a generic formalism for mechanism design. Our contributions especially concern the development of numerical tools for the evaluation of the workspace, of the singularity localization and nature, and for a higher-order sensitivity analysis. These tools are evaluated on reference mechanisms.

This thesis was supervised by Pierre Renaud, professor at the University of Strasbourg.

The PhD defense (in french) will be held on Monday 18th september 2017 at 10.30am in the "de Dietrich" amphitheater of the INSA of Strasbourg.