Bertrand Tondu

Email: Bertrand.Tondu@laas.fr
Address: LAAS-CNRS
7, avenue du Colonel Roche
31077 Toulouse Cedex 4
Tel: 05.61.55.98.40
Fax: 05.61.33.69.69
Assistant: 05 61 33 64 69 (M-A. Bellières)

Research Areas and Interests

  • Artificial muscle robotics
  • Variable-impedance actuators
  • Non-linear control
  • Robotics and risks management

For a long time, the physical systems modelled by nonlinear equations were studied by considering that non-linearities were negligible compared to the linear terms. However, since a few decades, scientists have realized that non-linearities generated the specific phenomena and that these phenomena were to be taken into account to study the system in a satisfactory way. Indeed, either these phenomena are undesirable, and then the knowledge of their mechanisms is essential to know to avoid them, or they are inevitable and intrinsic to the system itself, and it is necessary to understand them and model them; sometimes they are to be activated for well defined applications.

The research topics of the group SYD are related with the study of discrete or continuous nonlinear dynamical systems and of their evolution under the effect of variations of parameters. The behaviour of these systems in presence of strong non-linearities is more particularly highlighted. Among these nonlinear dynamical systems, specific studies concern actuators made of artificial muscles, which are in great functional analogy with the muscles of the skeleton, with an aim of developing robots ready to share their workspace with the man. Other important applications of complex dynamics relate to signal processing and to telecommunications. The studies carried out may be divided in the following way:

Theoretical Studies:

  • systems modelled in the forms of specific transformations, invertible or not, and of ordinary differential equations, autonomous or not autonomous
  • complex or chaotic dynamics analysis in the state space and bifurcation analysis in parametric spaces
  • modeling and control of strongly nonlinear systems constituted by the artificial muscles actuators for robotics

Applications in Engineering

robotics and control, nonlinear electronics, electrotechnics, signal processing and telecommunications.

Background and Position

Bertrand Tondu is professor at the INSA (Institut National des Sciences Appliquées), Toulouse. He was formerly with the LATTIS team and joined the Gepetto team in 2011.

Selected Publications

All the publications are avaiblable here (with pdf files if available).

Teaching and Tutorials

A short summary of Bertrand Tondu's main courses will be added soon. The exhaustive list is available on the INSA website.