The four previous teams that make up the Research Unit LIST3N have a common history, based in particular on projects. The non-exhaustive list below illustrates this history with examples of themes treated in common, and corresponding for the most part to thesis work with scientific publications or the setting up of research support structures :
 
  • Optimisation of maintenance
  • Optimisation of sensor placement
  • Optimisation of networked mobile sensor rounds
  • Data analysis in hospitals
  • Organisation of home care
  • Detection of attacks on ICN networks
  • Demand management in the smart grid
  • Orchestration of heterogeneous microservices in programmable networks
  • Optimisation of SON networks
  • Modelling interactions in crisis situations
  • Setting up the ActiveAgeing LivingLab
  • Setting up and managing the SilverTech Chair
  • Creation of the FFCA platform (Usine du Futur Champagne Ardenne), €1.2M, operational in 2020.

The 4 application domains

The possible contributions of research projects to the resolution of problems posed by non-academic actors are currently focused on four major fields of application or societal issues, namely the industry of the future and digitalisation, health and the organisation of patients, energy through its three components (production, distribution and consumption), and finally (emerging) agronomy for questions of resource management and sustainability.
 

Industry of the future: Online scheduling, predictive maintenance, IOT, smart data, computer-human interaction.

The LIST3N teams have conducted several research projects on the industry of the future. Applied to several industries, academic theses and industrial collaborations have led to scientific publications, patents, and communications at both national and international levels. The projects carried out cover several themes of the industrial chain. These themes can be grouped into the following four families:

1. Material flows
  • Optimisation of transport and logistics
  • Inventory management
  • Reverse logistics
2. Data and security
  • Data management and security
  • Industrial IoT
3. Production management
  • Production optimisation
  • Forecasting & analytics (demand, sales)
  • Real time decision support
  • Predictive maintenance
  • Risk management
4. Organisation and user-centred design
  • Impact of new organisational models on working practices / evolution of professions.
  • Human-centred / knowledge-centred design of new work environments.
  • Design of new interaction techniques.
A more detailed analysis by theme allows us to identify an important synergy between the teams. Indeed, at least two teams are conducting research activities in each of the identified themes. Moreover, the identified themes are promising and in high demand by companies, opening the way to numerous collaborations with industry.
 

Healthcare: Patient flow optimization, data analysis, autonomy and support for the elderly, assistance with medical diagnosis and prognosis, hospital organization.

One of the main application areas of the research unit is digital health, or e-health. Indeed, LIST3N has a real potential in the field of e-health and personal well-being, particularly in the following areas : data acquisition, artificial intelligence, analysis, processing and fusion of data, optimisation, decision support, co-design, co-evaluation and cooperation, among others.

Activity in the health field thus mobilises multidisciplinary skills, covering both technological and social dimensions. Various cross-cutting issues using health data have aroused the interest of researchers in the health field. These include the development of socio-technological tools for the support and autonomy of the elderly, assistance with diagnosis and medical prognosis, as well as the development of new technologies to improve the quality of care prognosis, hospital organisation, coordination between players and the study of patient care paths. This project requires the acquisition of patient data.

This project involves acquiring patient data, analysing this data, modelling the care pathway using artificial intelligence tools, identifying problems, optimising the care pathway and making decisions on the care pathway and making decisions to propose solutions. This example, like many others, shows the complementarity of the UR researchers, which is essential for the success of projects involving health data.
 

Energy: Smart grid optimization, renewable energies sharing, energy efficiency

The scientific activities of LIST3N contribute to research in the field of energy through all the axes of the Research Unit project. These research activities can be detailed as follows:
 
  • Modelling of degradation or health indicators by stochastic processes for prognosis and maintenance planning. Energy domain concerned : oil installations, gas extraction platforms, wind, hydraulic, solar, nuclear.
  • Uses. Several projects have been carried out, for example: the setting up of participatory simulation workshops for collective projection in situations of sharing locally produced renewable energy, the construction of an observatory of the mechanisms of appropriation of experimental energy management systems among residential users, a project to create an application to lead to an action plan to reduce direct and indirect CO2 emissions, optimise ecological taxation (carbon tax, etc.) and (carbon tax, etc.) and certain compensation mechanisms.
  • Energy efficiency. Works that consider this problem include scheduling of multiple tasks in a production plant, in a solar panel house with a solar panel, optimisation with energy constraints and energy demand management in the context of smart-grids and microgrids.

Agronomy: Crop (harvest) and biomass production optimization, sensor network for connected agriculture, soil quality and disease prediction

Agronomy is at the interface of several major societal challenges:
  1. Optimizing resources and protecting the environment,
  2. The sustainability of agricultural practices and food security
  3. Demographic pressure and the acceptability of certain agricultural practices.
For several decades, current production models have been strongly challenged by these issues. The skills of the members of the LIST3N research unit enable them to respond to the problems arising from the convergence of agronomic practices and know-how with computer science and digital technologies. This agronomy-data convergence allows different angles of attack on the subject to emerge, which from digital agriculture (in terms of the use of digital technologies) to precision agriculture (through the use of artificial intelligence), and connected agriculture (with regard to connected objects). Thus, the skills in data processing, modelling for detection and prediction within LIST3N allow to provide innovative solutions in this field of application It is also a good demonstration of the complementarity of our scientific project beyond the field targeted here. To cite some concrete examples of inter-team collaborations and industrial projects already carried out, we will mention the projects and theses:
 
  • In crop optimization and biomass production, for which LOSI has been the leader,
  • In sensor networks for connected agriculture and the prediction of soil quality and yields, in the modelling of indicators for monitoring pollutants and the spread of diseases, for which there are several projects at M2S and ERA,
  • And in modelling and knowledge management, for which Tech-CICO is the leader. Several partnerships have been signed with leading players (regional and national): Soufflet, Vivescia, Terres et vignes, Terrasolis, etc.
Date of update 05 juillet 2021