Laboratory for analysis and architecture of systems

Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems
Formation	1968 (44 years ago)
Type	Governmental organization
Purpose/focus	Scientific Research
Headquarters	Toulouse
Location	7 Av. du Colonel Roche
Region served	France
Official languages	French
President	Jean Arlat
Website	www.laas.fr

The Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systèmes), LAAS, is one of the big research laboratories of the French National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS) located in Toulouse, France, and is usually referred to as LAAS-CNRS. It is associated with the six founding members of the University of Toulouse: The University of Toulouse III (Paul Sabatier University, UPS) the National Institute of Applied Sciences of Toulouse (INSA), the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse (INP), the Superior Institute of Aeronautics and Space (ISAE), which is the fusion between ENSICA (the National Superior School of Aeronautic Construction Engineers) and SUPAERO (National Superior School of Aeronautics and Space), the University of Toulouse II Mirail (UTM) and the University of Toulouse I Capitole (UT1).

History

The LAAS was created in 1968 by Jean Lagasse. By that time, control engineering (automation) was still a young science, and its domain covered from electronic circuits to control theory, including signal processing. In those years, computer science was emerging, robotics was still in its infancy, the transistor was replacing the cathode ray tube and the microprocessor was unknown. However, human kind was going to land on the moon one year later. The space was becoming a competition between the great powers, and a tremendous driving force for scientific research. Then, a laboratory of control engineering and its applications would be a strategic research center for that time's problematic, and it was Jean Lagasse who had this vision and convinced the CNRS for its creation. Thus, the laboratory was founded in Toulouse, a worldwide leading city in the aerospace technology.

Very fast, the notion of a “system” by itself emerged as a concept in the research work of the laboratory, and the space was not anymore the only application that motivated research. Due to these changes, it became first the Laboratory of Automation and Analysis of Systems, and then, the Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems, which is the name that it has nowadays. Having as research objective the complexity in all its scales, the LAAS has strongly contributed during the forty following years, to forge new disciplines and to bring the French science to worldwide quality in all its domains.

Besides scientific innovation, the LAAS has also innovated in what concerns organization, functioning and application. What is nowadays known as "research partnership" was conceived with the original form of "a research-industry common laboratory". The privileged relation between industry and big groups was translated into the so called "affiliated club" (club des affiliés, in french). Mixing research and education (the LAAS had initially two doctoral schools and gathered around 250 Ph.D. students and 200 interns), as well as partnership with industry, the LAAS invented the "competitiveness poles" (compétitivité avant la lettre) as Mr. François Goulard, delegated Ministry of Superior Teaching and Scientific Research, wrote when he visited the laboratory in 2005.

The LAAS is nowadays well established in its region, surrounded by prolific industrial and academic environment, collaborating with big research centers and universities in Europe and the World. It has as main objectives the preparation of the changes and scientific revolutions of tomorrow. Research in Computer Science, Control Engineering, Robotics, Micro and nano technologies is one of the main axis of the laboratory, and the conception of nano-structures and nano-robots are now in the projection fields of research works. There are huge perspectives in many application areas like health, environment or transportation, and the rapprochement with life sciences or biochemistry open the way to fecund interdisciplinary research. It becomes necessary to rethink the principles and the theories in several domains and this will constitute the foundations of the research program of the LAAS for the following years.

Organization and Scientific Policy

The basic scientific organizational unit at LAAS-CNRS is the “Research group” which consists of a set of scientific research subjects and is composed by university professors and researchers from CNRS, as well as postdoctoral researchers and Ph.D. students. A group has its own resources and external projects, a director and a scientific committee that regularly meets.

Currently, there are 17 research groups and 4 research areas or domains. A group’s scientific objectives fall in one of the four areas, even if there are collaborations between different groups across different domains. Actually this is encouraged through “LAAS Projects”, a periodic call for proposals on open subjects, financed internally after evaluation and selection by a project committee. Within each Domain, there are coordination and consultation structures for sharing research orientations, equipments and defining priorities.

Technical support is provided by a number of engineers and technicians. This staff is organized in two common technical services (II or 2I: Informatics and Instrumentation, and TEAM: Techniques And Equipment for Microelectronics). Administrative clerks are organized into 7 common administrative and support services.

Scientific Research

The main research areas include: integrated systems, embedded systems with real time and safety requirements, distributed systems, mobile systems, autonomous and robotics systems, micro and nano systems and biological systems. The applications that are involved are broad such as aeronautics and space, telecommunications, transports, production, services, security and defense, energy management, healthcare, environment and sustainable development. All these scientific research topics are organized in four main research areas:

Micro and Nanosystems (MINAS)

This area includes MEMS/NEMS and MOEMS, RF and microwave systems, systems and devices for energy management, nanophotonics and photonic integration, Bio MEMS and nanobiosystems, modeling and simulation of micro and nanosystems.

Systems Modeling, Optimization and Control (MOCOSY)

The research topics are non-linear systems, robust and adaptive control, filtering and signal processing, network management and quality of service, diagnostic and supervision, optimization, scheduling and production planning.

Critical Computer Systems (SINC)

The main research interests are dependability, computer systems safety and security, critical communication systems validation and verification, systems engineering, and distributed computing.

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RIA)

The research topics of this group are environment perception and modeling, motion and action planning and molecular motion, cognitive robotics, human-robot interaction, humanoid robotics, manipulation, field and aerial robotics, multi-robot systems.

Activities

The activities of the laboratory are mostly concentrated in the following topics:

• Methods and Algorithms in Control
• Telecommunication Networks and Systems
• Qualitative Diagnosis and Supervisory Control
• Software and Tools for Communicating Systems
• Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance
• Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
• Microsystems and Systems Integration
• Micro and Nanostructures Technologies
• Power Integration and Devices
• Photonics
• Microwave and Millimeter Wave Integrated Components for Telecommunication
• Nano-addressing, Nano-biotechnologies
• Modelling, Optimization and Integrated Management of Systems of Activities

See also

• (French) http://www.laas.fr - Official website