This work is funded by EUR Digisport and will enable to validate strong scientific knowledge on computer vision and robotic on a societal issue. It allies theoritical and practical skills to be evaluated by simulation and experimentations.
The thesis starts in October 2025. It is located at IRISA, Rennes, France
Contexte : Sport plays an important role in the well-being of individuals: it is known to improve the self-esteem and the autonomy of people with disabilities, as well as the social inclusion [1]. Practicing sport has also a positive impact on rehabilitation and motivation. The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games have called for a revolution for parasport. Beyond the event, we must now focus on strengthening and promoting the practice of sport by people with disabilities at all levels. The proposed PhD aims then to offer technological tools to improve performances of users of power wheelchairs: analysis of sessions, training aid, rehabilitation tools through sport. To this aim, we propose to design solutions compatible with the virtual reality power wheelchair simulator developed at INSA Rennes as part of the European Interreg ADAPT project. Simulators have already been proven to be efficient in the context of rehabilitation [2] [3] and we want to extend the study of the possibilities offered by these platforms to sport situations. The targeted use case is the powerchair football. The team in Rennes expressed the need to help the players to better take benefit of this sport.
The PhD work will rely on specification work led by our biomedical engineer. For the validation step, the PhD student will cooperate with clinicians of Pole Saint Hélier
Mission : Based on the specification work, the PhD student should provide an augmented reality tool to provide feedback of sessions and matches. To permit a reliable and acceptable augmentation, the PhD student will propose a coarse-to-fine approach to estimate the 3D pose of a wheelchair. The key idea is to detect and track in the image the wheelchair then refine its pose estimation. It will be challenging since it is a very dynamic vehicle. Robustness to personalized medical equipment must be tackled. This task will be reenforced with the dynamic modelling of the wheelchair behavior. The PhD student will evaluate the modelling of the dynamics in the simulator to test the impact of training in virtual reality to gain confidence and reduce stress for real sessions. The PhD student will collaborate with players with disabilities, team coaches and clinicians to elaborate training scenarios.
Required skills :
- Master 120 ECTS in intelligent systems, cognitive science, robotics or similar
- C/C++ programming, Matlab, Python
- Capacity to efficiently work in a scientific environment, passion for experimental research, capacity to connect psychology and physical phenomena
- Analytical mind, excellent oral and written communication
- Capacity to conduct independent work within a team
- Interdisciplinary skills
- Excellent level in French and/or English (C1 or equivalent)
Contact:
- Marie Babel (IRISA/INSA Rennes)
- Muriel Pressigout (IETR/INSA rennes)
email: prenom.nom@insa-rennes.fr
