Publications by Philippe Rétornaz

Bringing robotics into formal education using the Thymio open source hardware robot

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Léa Marie Pereyre, Fanny Riedo, Stéphane Magnenat, Philippe Rétornaz, Manon Aline Briod

Mobile robots are valuable tools for education because of both the enthusiasm they raise and the multidisciplinary nature of robotics technology. Mobile robots give access to a wide range of fields, such as complex mechanics, sensors, wireless transmission ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2017

Construction par procédé additif réalisée avec des robots mobiles autonomes hétérogènes

Philippe Rétornaz

This thesis lies at the crossroad of three research fields: heterogenous mobile collective robotics, autonomous construction with mobile robots and 3D printing. The main goal of this work is to implement and study an innovative way to interact and modify t ...

EPFL2015

Lessons Learned from Robotic Vacuum Cleaners Entering in the Home Ecosystem

Pierre Dillenbourg, Francesco Mondada, Philippe Rétornaz, Julia Fink, Florian Christopher Vaussard

This article considers the suitability of current robots designed to assist humans in accomplishing their daily domestic tasks. With several million units sold worldwide, robotic vacuum cleaners are currently the figurehead in this field. As such, we will ...

Elsevier2014

Which Robot Behavior Can Motivate Children to Tidy up Their Toys? Design and Evaluation of "Ranger"

Pierre Dillenbourg, Francesco Mondada, Philippe Rétornaz, Séverin Lemaignan, Julia Fink, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Alain Berthoud

We present the design approach and evaluation of our proto- type called “Ranger”. Ranger is a robotic toy box that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their room. We evalu- ated Ranger in 14 families with 31 children (2-10 years) using the Wizard-of ...

2014

Cooperative navigation in robotic swarms

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Stéphane Magnenat, Philippe Rétornaz

We study cooperative navigation for robotic swarms in the context of a general event-servicing scenario. In the scenario, one or more events need to be serviced at specific locations by robots with the required skills. We focus on the question of how the s ...

Springer Verlag2013

The Autonomous Photovoltaic MarXbot

Francesco Mondada, Philippe Rétornaz, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Martin Olivier Liniger

Domestic service robots are currently powered by the mains electricity. The growing multiplication of such devices negatively impacts our environment. In this study, we show the feasibility of harvesting energy from natural light in an indoor environment. ...

Springer Berlin Heidelberg2013

Seamless Multi-Robot Programming for the People: ASEBA and the Wireless Thymio II Robot

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Stéphane Magnenat, Philippe Rétornaz, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Fanny Riedo

IEEE2013

Swarmanoid: a novel concept for the study of heterogeneous robotic swarms

Dario Floreano, Francesco Mondada, Daniel Burnier, Michael Bonani, Stéphane Magnenat, Philippe Rétornaz, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Timothy Stirling, James Roberts, Valentin Longchamp

2013

Towards Long-Term Collective Experiments

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Philippe Rétornaz, Florian Christopher Vaussard, Steven Adriaan Roelofsen, François Rey

It is often challenging to manage the battery supply when dealing with a fleet of mobile robots during long experiments. If one uses classical recharge stations, then agents are immobilized during the whole recharge process. In this study, we present a nov ...

Springer Berlin Heidelberg2013

A two years informal learning experience using the Thymio robot

Francesco Mondada, Philippe Rétornaz, Fanny Riedo

Technology is playing an increasing role in our society. Therefore it becomes important to educate the general public, and young generations in particular, about the most common technologies. In this context, robots are excellent education tools, for many ...

Springer2012