Professor in Control - Robotics
My CV HAL is here and my ORCID profile here.
short bio, complete CV is here
Professor at ENSTA, Institut Polytechnique de Paris (France) and Professor at Flinders University (Australia)
My main interests are in Robotics and Automatic Control. The underwater activities naturally lead to marine robotics (surface and underwater)
Keywords : AUV, Robust and Adaptive Control, Robotics, Embedded Systems, Optimization, Reinforcement Learning
Research teams :
LabSTICC UMR 6285 - CNRS (web),
College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University
CROSSING IRL CNRS 2010 between CNRS, Naval Group, Flinders University, University of Adelaide, University of South Australia (web).
Director of the College of Computer & Information Science at ENSTA
People : 75 (professors, associate professors, engineers) and 150 (PhD and post-doc)Â
Research Annual Grants : 4M€
4 research Labs: Lab-STICC in Brest, U2IS in Palaiseau, Biology Lab in Roscoff and Crossing in
Adelaide.
The Research is multidisciplinary and addresses the needs of industry, government, and society to master critical technologies, protect sensitive data and infrastructure, and monitor the environment.
Advanced detection systems and autonomous robotics are essential for surveillance and operations in hostile environments. Embedded AI enables real-time decision-making, while functional safety ensures system reliability.
The information sciences focus area explores new types of sensors and underwater robots for the precise collection of oceanographic and hydrographic data, as well as modeling ocean-atmosphere interactions to enhance environmental monitoring and maritime safety.
On land, increasingly autonomous vehicles using AI, sensors, and embedded communication contribute to reducing the carbon footprint by enabling connected and secure mobility.
Digital transformation and industrial innovation are supported by this research, which advances AI, multi-sensor data fusion, and software architectures for embedded systems.
Current students
R. Bornier: PhD ENSTA and DGA, starting in 2025, funded by DGA and co-supervised with G. Le Chenadec - Investigation of DRL Methods for Control for Autonomous Underwater Robots
M. Hochhausen: PhD ENSTA and ENSM, starting in 2025, funded by AID and co-supervised with Matthieu Sacher and Laetitia Pernod - Study of the influence of auxiliary ship propulsion on the organisation and monitoring of maritime traffic
M. Abgrall: PhD ENSTA, starting in 2024, funded by Bluefin Systems and co-supervised with Matthieu Sacher - Improvements in the propulsive performance of a hydrofoil for auxiliary ship propulsion
A. Vivien: PhD Flinders University, starting in 2024, funded by Naval Group Pacific and co-supervised with Associate Prof. Matthew Stephenson and Prof. Karl Sammut Robust bio-inspired learning-based control of groups of robots
A. Wanctin: joint PhD ENSTA Bretagne/Flinders University, starting in 2023 and co-supervised with Associate Prof. Matthew Stephenson and Prof. Karl Sammut - Machine Learning applied to proactive COLREGs
K. Lagattu: joint PhD ENSTA Bretagne/Flinders University with Naval Group funding, starting in 2022 and co-supervised with Prof. Paulo Santos, Prof. Karl Sammut, Dr. Gilles Le Chenadec and Dr. Eva Artusi - Fault Detection Control of underwater robots with Machine Learning
D.M. Kaleel: joint PhD ENSTA Bretagne/Queen Mary University of London with DSTL/DGA funding, starting 2021 and co-supervised with Prof. Kaspar Althoefer - Using machine learning techniques to optimise the motion performance of soft robots physically interacting with their environment
K. Karam: PhD at ENSTA Bretagne and Balamand University (Lebanon), starting 2021 and co-supervised with Prof. Ali Mansour and Prof. Mohamad Khaldi) UAV Routing Protocol for Crop Health Management
A. Haidar: PhD at ENSTA Bretagne and AUCE (Lebanon), starting 2021 and co-supervised with Dr. Abbass Nasser - Intelligent Traffic Mechanisms for Optimizing Path Planning and Adapting Control of UAV
Former students
A. Olivier (2024) - PhD at ENSTA Bretagne in cooperation with CHRU Brest, co-supervised with Prof. Ali Mansour, Prof. Luc Bressollettes and Dr. Clement Hoffmann; Deep Learning et Méthodes Statistiques pour la caractérisation d’une Thrombose Veineuse Profonde par échographie et élastographie
M. Dubromel (2023) - Master student from ENSTA Bretagne - COLSim : a simulator for COLREGS situations
P. Wu (2023), Master student from University of Adelaide, COLSim : a simulator for COLREGS situations
Q. Ferdinand (2023), PhD at ENSTA Bretagne (co-supervised with Gilles Le Chenadec, Quentin Oliveau and Panagiotis Papadakis), CIFRE with Naval Group, Incremental Learning for Classification of Objects of Interest - webpage
T. Chaffre (2022), PhD at ENSTA Bretagne and Flinders University (co-supervised with Karl Sammut, Paulo Santos, Estelle Chauveau and Gilles Le Chenadec), funding from Region Bretagne, South Australia and Naval Group, Adaptive Control of underwater robots with Machine Learning, webpage
A. Majeb (2022), PhD at ENSTA Bretagne and AUCE (Libanon), co-supervised with Abbass Nasser and Hassan Harb, Sensing-based Self-Reconfigurable Strategies for Autonomous Modular Robotic Systems, webpage
Y. Sola (2021), PdD funding by DGA and Region Bretagne (ARED) - co-supervided with Gilles Le Chenadec and Jordan Ninin, Contributions to the development of Deep Reinforcement Learning-based controllers for AUV, webpage
H. Kolher (2021), Master student from Sorbonne Universite, Reinforcement Learning for UUV Control
A. Lefort - abandon, Commande robuste structurée appliquée au pilotage des navires de données expérimentales incertaines, PhD with Naval Group Research - funding with Naval Group and ANRT - 2019 (co-supervied with Jordan Ninin)
A. Laidani, PhD at AVCIS Research Laboratory, Department of Automatics, USTO-MB, Oran, Algeria
R. Keyetieu (2018), Calibration of multi-beam echo sounder systems by inverse methods, PhD funding by CIDCO France - 2018 (co-supervised with Pierre Bosser)
X. Wang (2018), joint PhD with Ocean University of China (in Qingdao) - 2018 in China and 2021 in France (co-supervised with Benoit Zerr and Helene Thomas)
D. Monnet (2018), PhD with DGA and Brest funding - 2018 (co-supervied with Jordan Ninin), Post Doc in LS2N, Nantes (2020)
J.L. Rosendo (2019), PhD with Universidad de La Plata (Argentina) -2019
B. Huard, Associate Professor at Universite de Poitier (homepage), Post Doc at OSM for 3i Project - PhD
Y. Rui (2015), Associate Professor at Ocean University of China (in Qingdao)PhD 2015
N. Fezans, Research Engineer at DLR (linkedin profile)
C. Sadikou, Automatic Control Freelance Engineer CS CONTROLCOM (linkedin profile), MSc 2005
M. Abbas-Turki (2005), Associate professor - SATIE at ENS Cachan (homepage)
O. Voinot (2002), Engineering Manager at Moog
A. Constantinescu, now with CASI (Canadian Aeronautics & Space Institute)
PostDoc 2002
A. Maloum - PostDoc 2001
PhD and HDR committees
2025 - HDR committee of S. Bertrand as Reviewer, Contributions à l’estimation et à la commande des systèmes autonomes et aérospatiaux : approches à horizon glissant, et approches distribuées pour les systèmes multi-agents, University Paris-Saclay.
2025 - PhD committee of D. Olivares as Examiner, Learning-Based Control of a Fixed-Wing UAV Under Disturbances, University Paris-Saclay.
20025 -PhD committee of Anastasios Tsolakis as Reviewer, Rule-compliant and Fault-Tolerant Motion Planning: With Application to Autonomous Surface Vehicles, TU Delft.
2025 PhD committee of R. Al-Khulaidi as Reviewer, Trajectory Planning and Control System for Hyper-Redundant Manipulator, University of Adelaide.
2024 PhD committee of P. Cocaul as Reviewer and President, Determination of autopilot control laws for launchers with model-free methods: from automatic to safe deep reinforcement learning approaches, Universite Paris-Saclay.
2024 - PhD committee of B. Sun as Reviewer, Online Intelligent Flight Control Using Reinforcement Learning, Delft University of Technology.
2024 - PhD committee of K. Omer as Reviewer, Intelligent Robotic Control for Enhancing the Safety of Mobile Robot Navigation in Human-Centered Indoor Environments, Università Politecnica delle Marche.
2023 HDR committee of G. Le Chenadec, Combinaison de (modèles de) connaissances et de machine learning pour l’exploration de l’environnement sous-marin, University of Brest.
2023 - PhD committee of L. Xu as Reviewer, Deep Marine Vision: Applications in Underwater Ecosystem Analysis, University of South Australia
2022 - PhD committee of A. Milot, Algorithms and architectures for the control of zone exploration by a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles, INSA, University of Toulouse.
2022 - PhD committee of A. Mitriakov as President, Modèles d’interaction physique de robots compagnons, IMT Atlantique.
2021 - PhD committee of A. Shehu as reviewer and President, Commande robuste non linéaire de robots sous marins, Université de Montpellier.
2021 - PhD committee of O. Tortorici as reviewer, Conception et contrôle automatique d’un ombilical instrumenté pour robots sous-marins, Université de Toulon.
2021 - PhD committee of A. Bourdelle as reviewer, Contributions méthodologiques à la modélisation et à la compensation des ballottements d’ergol pour le contrôle en attitude des véhicules spatiaux, Université de Toulouse.
2020 - PhD committee of M. Trehin, Pilotage automatique des bateaux volants: algorithmes dynamiques et multicritères, Université Bretagne Sud.
2020 - PhD committee of N. Michel, Invariant set design for the constrained control of a quadrotor, Université Paris-Saclay.
2019 - HDR committee of L. Burlion as reviewer, Commande et observation non linéaires des systèmes aéronautiques et spaciaux, Université de Toulouse.
2018 - PhD committe of H. El Fawal, Machine-to-Machine Congestion Mechanism, Université Bretagne Loire.
2018 - HDR committee of C. Pittet as reviewer, Le contrôle d'attitude des satellites, support et projet de recherche en automatique, Université de Toulouse.
2016 - PhD committee of H. Zeberi as reviewer, Hinfinity Linear Parameter Varying Controllers Order Reduction. Application to semi-active suspension control, Université Haute-Alsace.
2003 - PhD committee of P. Langouët Sur la stabilité locale des systèmes linéaires soumis à des actionneurs limités en amplitude et en dynamique, Université de Toulouse 3.
Publications are available:Â
Ensta HAL Database,Â
my Google Scholar,Â
my Orcid,
 or a pdf fileÂ
Academics
B. Clement. Commande Robuste et Contraintes d'Optimisation. Habilitation a diriger des recherches, ENSTA Bretagne, Universite Bretagne Occidentale, 2015.(pdf)
B. Clement. Synthese multiobjectifs et sequencement de gains : application au pilotage d'un lanceur spatial. PhD thesis, Supelec, Universite Paris XI Orsay, 2001.(pdf)