Consultant | EPFL Graph Search

Un consultant est un prestataire de services en conseil. Souvent regroupé au sein de sociétés de conseil ou intervenant de façon indépendante, il dispose d'un savoir-faire avéré dans un ou plusieurs domaines. Selon le Grand dictionnaire terminologique, le mot anglais consultant désigne un spécialiste extérieur à une organisation à qui l'on fait appel afin d'obtenir un avis au sujet d'une question ou de l'aide pour résoudre un problème précis. La traduction de cet anglicisme est conseiller. Définition Un consultant est un conseiller spécialisé ou non ayant une approche globale de son domaine. L'appellation consultant, issue de l'anglais dans son sens actuel, a précisément ce sens. L'activité de conseiller peut s'appliquer à de nombreux métiers : consultant en productique, en informatique, en gestion financière, en gestion des ressources humaines, en stratégie, en management, ou en marketing ; jusqu'aux domaines de la communication (consultant en football, en rugby pour de

Assessing dystrophies and other muscle diseases at the nanometer scale by atomic force microscopy

Harald Brune, Giovanni Dietler, Andrzej Kulik, Nicolas Mermod, Stefania Puttini, Guillaume Witz

Aim: Atomic force microscopy nanoindentation of myofibers was used to assess and quantitatively diagnose muscular dystrophies from human patients. Materials & methods: Myofibers were probed from fresh or frozen muscle biopsies from human dystrophic patients and healthy volunteers, as well as mice models, and Young's modulus stiffness values were determined. Results: Fibers displaying abnormally low mechanical stability were detected in biopsies from patients affected by 11 distinct muscle diseases, and Young's modulus values were commensurate to the severity of the disease. Abnormal myofiber resistance was also observed from consulting patients whose muscle condition could not be detected or unambiguously diagnosed otherwise. Discussion & conclusion: This study provides a proof-of-concept that atomic force microscopy yields a quantitative read-out of human muscle function from clinical biopsies, and that it may thereby complement current muscular dystrophy diagnosis.

Future Medicine2014

Application of Tactile Perception Enhancement

Sylvain Cardin

Surrounding environment is mainly perceived through sight and hearing. Our sense of touch is mostly dedicated to explore the surface of objects using hands and fingers. Tactile sensitivity of the body skin is rather limited in common life, however this represents a viable channel to pass information. The goal of this thesis is to study the added value of tactile stimulation to increase perception in specific application contexts. First, we define our motivation and approach regarding existing tactile systems and scientific knowledge available. In order to study tactile influence in different applications, we decided to build our own hardware and software blocks based on vibrotactile actuators driven by embedded electronics communicating with an external computer. Our objective was to explore different research directions by assessing added value in term of perception for tactile stimulation. The first topic we study tends to replace one of our senses, sight, by a metaphorical vibrotactile feedback representing the distance to close range object. We developed an electronic travel aid for visually impaired people, based on vibration motors and sonar. We assessed its ability to evolve and avoid obstacles in our surrounding environment. The next step consists in determining if such a principle can be applied to pass information about the environment within the field of teleoperation. Indeed, controlling a distant unmanned aerial vehicle is a difficult task due to limited visual feedback and absence of proprioceptive cue to feel the motion of the aircraft. Applying vibrotactile feedback that represents the effect of the wind seems to be an interesting approach for mental perception of the behavior of a remote controlled blimp. Wind is a natural phenomenon that we feel through our somatosensory system. At this point we wondered about the need of a metaphorical representation using vibrotactile stimulation. Even if it is rather easy to recreate wind using a fan, there is a lack of proper hardware to recreate directional wind. We built the first "wearable" haptic wind device for virtual reality enhancement and proved its usability to pass relevant directional information. Giving a direction in 3D space requires that the actuators are not located on the same plane as in our previous systems. We developed a wireless vibrotactile jacket containing 32 vibration motors and present its added value for a 3D searching space exercise in virtual environment, in correlation with visual and auditory cues. The second half of this document treats about development and application of a vibrotactile system in the challenging "Solar Impulse" project, aiming at performing a flight around the world relying only on renewable energy. A prototype aircraft has been built pushing forward the limits of the feasible in solar energy, composite materials, power management and human factor. As scientific consultant, our mission was to build an intelligent jacket in order to achieve symbodic relation between man and machine. A Symbodic system (SYMbiotic BODies) is a wearable device that supports symbiotic communication between the bodies of the pilot and of the machine. We proposed then a promising concept on how to improve awareness of the aircraft behavior. Passing from research concept to a concrete flying prototype is not an easy task, especially in terms of end-user acceptance: habits are strong for experienced pilot. But such an extraordinary airplane leads to some extraordinary aerodynamical behavior and the need of new visualization instruments. We developed an alert system for long flight duration based on the principle of the rumble strip installed on side of worldwide motor ways. Extensive tests have been performed by putting a subject in command of a highly realistic flight simulator for 48 hours straight. We showed that such system produces significant improvements of piloting performance under heavy sleep deprivation constraints.

EPFL2010

Overcoming decision paralysis—A digital twin for decision making in energy system design

Julia Granacher, François Maréchal, Tuong-Van Nguyen

The design of efficient energy systems, through the development of new technologies and the improvement of current ones, requires the use of rigorous process synthesis methods for generating and analysing design alternatives. We introduce a digital twin of process and energy system design that interactively translates needs and preferences of decision makers into an optimization-based model and generates meaningful solutions. The Interactive Digital Twin (InDiT) assists decision makers in steering the exploration of the solution space and guiding them towards relevant system design decisions, taking into account multiple aspects such as the impact of uncertainties and multi-criteria analysis. InDiT enhances step-by-step communication with the decision maker, relying on visual aids to keep the communication during solution generation and exploration intuitive and flexible. In this way, decision makers are guided towards relevant solutions and improve their understanding of relations between the problem definition and system design decisions, while InDiT builds on the decision makers’ preferences and can, after training, suggest solutions that are best-suited to their interests. The novelty of this work lies in the holistic approach of addressing both (i) the systematic generation and exploration of solutions with the assistance of a digital consultant, which translates the decision maker’s needs into machine language and vice versa, and (ii) the interactive step-by-step technique on filtering and evaluating solutions intuitively. This guarantees that the decision maker does not only get solutions based on the design specifications made, but that personal preferences are taken into account during the solution synthesis step, and that the solution space can easily be explored under different criteria. The proposed methodology is demonstrated and applied to the design case of an integrated multi-product biorefinery.