30 Years of Innovation with the LIRMM
Founded in 1992, the Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics—better known as LIRMM—celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. This was an opportunity to sit down with Philippe Poignet, its director, and look back on the countless innovations that, thanks to the dedication of its researchers, have gone beyond the lab walls to be applied in fields as diverse as they are surprising.
“When I arrived in the early 2000s, the LIRMM already enjoyed a national and international reputation. In our field, there were few laboratories as large as this one that brought together so many disciplines,” recalls the man who would become its director 15 years later. But at the time, Philippe Poignet was a young robotics researcher who had just arrived on the St. Priest campus, built in 1992 to house, among other things, this new laboratory resulting from the merger of the CRIM (Montpellier Research Center) and the LAMM (Montpellier Laboratory of Automation and Microelectronics).
Initiated by Christian Durante and his team, including Michel Chein, this new organization—named LIRMM—has been headed by Gaston Cambon since 1992. Initially, four departments were established, which quickly became three: the Department of Computer Science, comprising 15 research teams, including one shared with the Department of Robotics; the Robotics Department, which currently has four teams; and the Microelectronics Department with its three teams. In total, more than 400 people—including 160 researchers, Professors faculty members—from 40 different countries all contribute to making this laboratory one of the leading centers of innovation at the University of Montpellier.
Serving Humanity
Iconic and fascinating, robotics is, of course, the subject of the general public’s dreams and fantasies. Several areas of specialization coexist within the LIRMM, starting with humanoid robotics and, more specifically, cobotics—that is, human-robot interaction. A segment on the podcast *AUM science* provided Robin Passama and Benjamin Navarro with the opportunity to present their work on collaborative robots capable of assisting humans with simple tasks. Another specialty of the department is underwater robotics, notably the famous archaeological robots (Deep-Sea Robots) by Vincent Creuze, winner of the University of Montpellier’s 2022 Innovation Award.
Surgical robotics is also at the heart of the Robotics Department’s work. Here, progress is being made in eye surgery with Acucurgical, the startup co-founded by Philippe Poignet and Yassine Haddab; reconstructive surgery for severe burn victims with Dermarob and, more recently, a new robot developed with the Lyon-based startup LabSkinCreations; urology with Ily (Sterlab), an assistive robot for the treatment of kidney stones; and hip and knee surgery with MedTech (now Zimmer-Biomet).
Over the past 30 years, many of LIRMM’s projects have thus moved beyond the laboratory’s walls, and for Philippe Poignet, one of them has had a particularly significant impact on his career:“In terms of commercialization, it’s the Quattro (ADEPT) robot, a parallel robot designed by François Pierrot in collaboration with the Spanish foundation Fatronik (which has since become Technalia).”
Reliability and energy above all else
“In the field of electronics, we focus on the testing and reliability of integrated circuits, as well as the design of adaptive embedded systems. “These systems are designed to be energy-efficient,” explains the director of LIRMM. Laurent Latorre, head of the microelectronics department, gave us an introduction to this field—which is less well-known to the general public—in a report aired on *AUM science* on September 22.
And here again, there is no shortage of examples of successful innovations: Algodone, a startup specializing in securing connected devices (A Secure Bridge to Your Connected Devices) developed by Lionel Torres, a researcher at LIRMM and director of Polytech; NinjaLab, founded by Victor Lomné and Thomas Roche , the experts behind “La cryptanalyse étoilée”; Néocéan and its technological wave that combines a love of the sea with microelectronics; or the wizards at Neurinnov, David Andreux and David Guiraud, whom we featured in the video series “Décollage” to discuss their implantable medical devices capable of restoring sensation in amputees…
Interdisciplinarity as the Laboratory’s DNA
With fifteen teams at work, the Computer Science Department is undoubtedly the largest department at LIRMM, bringing together a wide range of specialties that Alexandre Pinlou, a computer science researcher and deputy head of the department, introduced to us in a report aired on October 6.“There are major areas such as data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and software engineering…”explains Philippe Poignet. These broad fields encompass countless specializations: bioinformatics, natural language processing, statistical and symbolic learning, knowledge representation, ontologies, reasoning, image analysis and processing…
These are all fields in which LIRMM researchers have been continuously innovating for the past 30 years.“This innovation has very often taken place in collaboration with other disciplines; it’s an approach that’s truly at the heart of our motivation. We’re convinced we have a real role to play in advancing biology, health, and ecology, and the Montpellier area is rich in this diversity. ” And here again, there is no shortage of examples, whether it’s the recent work by bioinformatician Eric Rivals on brain cancers or the tracking of bluefin tuna with Popstar (In step with bluefin tuna) or the tracking of epidemics with PhyML (In the coronavirus family, I’d like to ask).
open days
And it was to showcase the diversity of this research and its applications to the general public that the LIRMM, for the first time in 30 years, opened its doors to the public during the most recent Science Festival. With exhibits, booths, and demonstrations, several hundred people came to meet the researchers throughout the day.“It’s true that our fields give rise to many dreams and fantasies, and this day gave us the opportunity to showcase the reality of our expertise and innovations. We all really enjoyed the day, and to be honest, we didn’t expect it to be such a success, ” concludes Philippe Poignet. See you next year!