M2 Internship IMT Atlantique : Parametric Representation of Robotic Actions for Cooking

Abstract

This internship is part of the VeggieBot project, which aims to enable a domestic robotic arm to autonomously prepare meals from start to finish. The work focuses on the parametric representation of robotic actions (gestures) to allow adaptation to objects with varying shapes, dimensions, and physical properties. The internship will explore, implement, and compare state-of-the-art approaches for action representation, including learning from demonstration, reinforcement learning, and Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models.

This work is conducted in collaboration with IMT Atlantique. Regular scientific exchanges with their research teams will be organized throughout the internship.

Laboratory presentation

CESI LINEACT (UR 7527), Laboratory for Digital Innovation for Businesses and Learning to Support the Competitiveness of Territories, anticipates and accompanies the technological mutations of sectors and services related to industry and construction. The historical proximity of CESI to companies is a determining factor in our research activities. It has led us to focus our efforts on applied research close to companies and in partnership with them. A human-centered approach coupled with the use of technologies, as well as territorial networking and links with training, has enabled the construction of cross-cutting research; it puts humans, their needs, and their uses at the center of its issues and addresses the technological angle through these contributions.

Its research is organized according to two interdisciplinary scientific teams and several application areas.

• Team 1 "Learning and Innovating" mainly concerns Cognitive Sciences, Social Sciences, and Management Sciences, Training Techniques, and those of Innovation. The main scientific objectives are the understanding of the effects of the environment, and, more particularly, of situations instrumented by technical objects (platforms, prototyping workshops, immersive systems...) on learning, creativity, and innovation processes.

• Team 2 "Engineering and Digital Tools" mainly concerns Digital Sciences and Engineering. The main scientific objectives focus on modeling, simulation, optimization, and data analysis of cyber-physical systems. Research also focuses on decision-support tools and on the study of human-system interactions, particularly through digital twins coupled with virtual or augmented environments.

These two teams develop and cross their research in application areas such as

• Industry 5.0,

• Construction 4.0 and Sustainable City,

• Digital Services.

Areas supported by research platforms, mainly the one in Rouen dedicated to Factory 5.0 and the one in Nanterre dedicated to Factory 5.0 and Construction 4.0.

Scientific context

Robotic cooking requires the decomposition of complex tasks into reusable and adaptable elementary actions. Within the VeggieBot project, recipes are modeled as sequences of parametric gestures executed by a 7-degree-of-freedom robotic arm (UFactory xArm7) mounted on a rail and equipped with a jaw gripper and a 6-axis force/torque sensor. A key scientific challenge is to define action representations that are both formally structured and flexible enough to generalize across contexts and ingredients.

The internship is part of a collaborative framework with IMT Atlantique, enabling cross-institutional discussions on action representation, learning strategies, and evaluation protocols.

Subject

The internship focuses on the design, learning, and comparison of parametric robotic action representations for cooking tasks. Particular attention will be paid to:

• Formal parametric representations of actions (e.g. Dynamic Movement Primitives),

• Learning actions from demonstration and reinforcement learning approaches,

• Comparison with actions generated by Vision-Language-Action models.

Prior works in the laboratory

The CESI LINEACT laboratory has been working on the uses of robotics in industry for several years, either through R&D contracts or research projects (Corot, Oasis, Antihpert, Scopes, Jenii, etc.). Research engineers are dedicated to this work.