SmartArM ROB

At the age of 32, Etienne Moullet has been living with tetraplegia since a swimming accident at the age of 14. Despite his disability, he pursued his studies and joined the École des Mines de Paris, where he earned his engineering degree at the age of 21. Initially specializing in the field of 'Machines and Energies,' he worked as an engineer in the nuclear sector for 5 years. With the goal of contributing to the improvement of the daily lives of people with disabilities, he decided to undergo a career change and pursued a thesis in computational neuroscience at Sorbonne Université, successfully defending it in 2022. Today, he continues his academic journey as a post-doctoral researcher at INRIA, actively participating in the activities of the HumanLab network, an associative structure aiming to provide technical assistance addressing practical needs expressed by people with disabilities. This includes disseminating tools, initially 'crafted' by and with his family, to a wider audience. Remaining active in sports such as swimming, hand-biking, and adaptive skiing, Etienne recently took up wheelchair rugby. It is only natural that he engages in the sports, technical, and scientific challenges of the CYBATHLON!

The SAM-W (Smart ArM for Wheelchair) is based on an existing commercial robotic arm (Gen 3 Ultralightweight Arm from company Kinova), with a dedicated 24V battery and an embedded computer both mounted on a commercial electrically assisted wheelchair along with a set of wearable sensors (Hololens 2 from Microsoft and IMUs) and Human. The wheelchair displacements are controlled manually by the pilot (wheelchair with power assist technology) while the robotic arm can be controlled through a joystick, buttons and an innovative body-movement-based control strategy adapted from our research conducted on prosthetic control (which was used by our pilot for the CYBATHLON ARM races).