2004-2005

It is a 6 tracks professional stereo mixer, made for an end-of-studies project. The innovation in this project is the use of tactile potentiometers for the adjustment of different parameters such as volume or panning. That way, there's no mechanical piece (but the switches) so all parameters can be controlled by software at any moment. Finally we can save all settings in different memory files, to reload them later.

The making of, with pictures

2005 : International Submarine Races in Washington DC, with Archimède 3

I was in charge of the conception, fabrication and installation of an emergency system for the two-men-powered submarine Archimède 3. This submarine is full of water, so drivers are divers ; an electronic emergency buoy releasing system was necessary for the drivers safety.

2006 : Human-Powered Submarine competition in Escondido, CA, with Archimède 4

I made a navigation circuit for the one-man-powered submarine Archimède 4. This circuit showed the actual level of the sub, and the driver's RPM. It also had an integrated data acquisition system which can be connected with a computer.

We won the competition with 6 prizes :

• 1st Overall engineering
• 2nd best presentation
• 2nd best design
• 2nd best fabrication
• 2nd innovation
• 2nd fastest submarine

2007 : International Submarine Races in Washington DC, with Archimède 4

I designed a more intuitive and robust version of the electronic circuit, which helped us reaching our sub's maximum speed. We won the first place for the fastest one-person submarine, and second fastest submarine overall.

With this project, we won the Avenir Sciences et applications technologiques at the gala Forces Avenir 2007.

Navigation system overview

Summer 2005

This project was with the Groupe de Recherche en Perception et Robotique at Polytechnique, for a training course financed by the NSERC.

I modified a standard electric wheelchair to get it autonomous. I added optical encoders measuring the wheels angular position, an onboard computer, a tactile LCD screen, and I created an electronic circuit which acted as an interface between the encoders, the joystick, the computer and the chair's control module. I also developed a driver for this circuit, to adapt the chair to the robotics software Player.

At the end of the project, the wheelchair was acting like any other robot in the lab. All the algorithms already programmed for other robotic platforms (wall following, distant control and localization, 3D mapping and intelligent automatic control) could be used on the chair.

2003-2004

This personal project was inspired by the lack of free spreadsheets available for the Palm OS platform. It is a very simple and intuitive table editor, offered freely in 10 languages on the internet. It has been downloaded more than 20000 times from different distribution sites, and is quoted on more than 5000 websites. Here's some interesting links about FreeGrid :

• Project's main page
• Google search on FreeGrid

Summer 2004

This was a research project with the Laboratoire de Réseaux de Neurones at Polytechnique, for a training course financed by the NSERC.

I had to study the possibility of using shape-memory alloys as actuators. The result of this research (which can be downloaded from the laboratory site) is a walking robot actuated by four Nitinol wires.