Aude Bolopion

CNRS researcher (section 7) since 2011 at the FEMTO-ST Institute in Besancon (France), I graduated from a mechanical and electrical engineering school in Nancy (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Electricité et de Mécanique: ENSEM), with a major on control theory. I then received a Ph.D. degree in robotics in 2010 from the University of Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France under the supervision of Prof. S. Régnier. The research work, conducted in the ISIR Institute was teleoperation and haptic feedback at the nanoscale. I had a temporary position of assistant professor (ATER) in 2010-2011 at University of Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France and the ISIR Institute. I then joined the FEMTO-ST Institute in Besançon, France, in 2011. I am currently a member of the Micro and Nano Robotics team where I conduct research on non contact actuation microrobotic systems.

Non contact robotics is as a promising solution to handle objects of less than 500 micrometers. Due to the small scale, on board actuation or sensing is not possible. Remote actuation, using for example magnetic fields, enables to power these microrobots. Several actuation principles can be used depending on the properties of the objects that should be controlled. However, major challenges, such as the closed loop control of 3D trajectories or the integration of manipulation tools, must still be faced to perform advanced tasks.
Compared to classical approaches where the tools plus the objects should be moved, the use of remote force fields enables moving only the object. At small scales the inertia of the objects decreases drastically, which leads to important accelerations. My research activities focus on exploiting this property to increase the velocity of the displacements of the objects, while maintaining a good precision of the trajectory control.

More information can be found on the website: http://teams.femto-st.fr/micro-and-nano-robotics/

Main projects in which I am involved:

ANR project Optobot - Interactive Optical Robots for Biophysics - 2022-2026
Partners: FEMTO-ST (Besançon), ISIR (Paris), Institut Pasteur (Paris)

The Optobots Projects aims to develop a novel family of microrobots capable of moving in a liquid medium to perform tasks in interaction with biological samples in a Petri dish. These optobots, with dimensions around 10 micrometers, are actuated by the principle of optical tweezers, through the control of the focal position of an external laser beam. A high-frequency event-based vision tracking system allows the interaction forces to be inferred with piconewton resolution over nanonewton range. The speed of actuation and sensor feedback allows the implementation of interactive robotic controls in force and position and advanced user interfaces with haptic interfaces. The project has the ambition to promote these microrobots as novel tools in biophysics applications, to conduct in-vitro experiments on living samples.

ANR PRCI project CoDiCell - Controlled dielectrophoresis in microfluidics: application to cell sorting - 2018-2022
Partners: FEMTO-ST (France), ISIR (France), EFS (France), EPFL (Switzerland)

The ambition of the CoDiCell project is to develop innovative methodologies for the trajectory control of large populations of biological cells inside fluidic chips at high speed. It proposes to combine the approaches coming from the microfluidics and the microrobotics communities. Microfluidic chips ensure fast and long range displacements of large population of cells while microrobotics develops precise control of the trajectory of individual cells. The aim of the CoDiCell project is to develop basic scientific knowledge to perform precise trajectory control of individual cells for large scale populations at high speed. This project paves the way to adoptive cell therapy (ACT) for anticancer treatments. This innovative and highly personalized technique is based on the cloning of naturally occurring tumor-reactive lymphocytes. However, in most cases, this treatment must face a major challenge: the identification of these rare natural lymphocytes having a concentration lower than 0.1%, which is beyond the detection level of current techniques. CoDiCell aims at providing this high sorting selectivity. 

FEDER project Mimedi - Microtechniques for innovative medicines - 2018-2022
Partners: Ilsa (Marchaux), Smaltis (Besançon), Aurea Technology (Besançon), Diaclone (Besançon), BioExigence (Besançon), Med’Inn Pharma (Besançon), EFS (Besançon), FEMTO-ST (Besançon), UMR 1098 (Besançon), FEMTO Engineering (Besançon), CIC-IT (Besançon)

Advanced Therapy Medical Products (ATMPs) recently emerged in order to provide new therapy solutions for patients in therapeutic impasse or for new therapies. These ATMPs rely on the use of “drug cells” exhibiting new physiological functions, biological characteristics or reconstitution properties directly inspired from natural processes occurring in the human organism. However, fabricating these products implies using complex technologies of cell sorting, amplification, gene transduction, division and/or activation. These requirements should be met throughout the fabrication process in specific clean-room like facilities. Due to these fabrication constraints, producing such ATMPs is extremely expensive. For an easier access to ATMPs, a new production concept is required. The MiMédi project aims at proposing such new fabrication concepts (MiMédi: French acronym for “Microtechniques pour les médicaments innovants”). The goal is to associate competences in microfabrication (microfluidics, acoustics, optics, automation, micro and nano technologies) and know-how in tomorrow’s personalized medicine in a freestanding enclosure which can be placed at the patient’s bed. In that framework we will propose highly selective and compact cell sorters. 

ANR project Multiflag - Design and control of multi flagella microswimmers driven by mobile magnets - 2016-2020
Partners: FEMTO-ST (Besançon), ISIR (Paris), ICube (Strasbourg)

The MultiFlag project focuses on the design and the control of new bio-inspired microrobotic systems for future applications in the field of bioengineering. Three scientific objectives are targeted by the project: the design of multiple magnetic flagella micro-robots with optimized propulsion properties in highly viscous liquids, the design of an innovative reconfigurable robotic system to generate rotating magnetic  fields in a maximized workspace, and the simultaneous control of the microrobots by the system in reduced environments. Research themes in achieving the main goal are numerous. They cover various topics such as the simulation of locomotion at low Reynolds number, the design of magnetic micro-robots with several flagella, the synthesis of tensegrity mechanisms based robotic systems, or the redundant and simultaneous control of magnetic systems in constrained environments.

ANR project LEMA - Microcomponents Assembly in Liquid Environment - 2012-2016 
Partners : FEMTO-ST (Besançon), ISIR (Paris), LOF (Bordeaux)

This project deals with micro-assembly in the mesoscale, situated between micro and nanoscales, which comprises objects whose dimensions are from 100nm to 10µm. It addresses several scientific problematics, in the domains of microfluidics, micro-nanorobotics and nanojoining. This topic presents an applicative interest for the next generation of nanotechnological components. From a scientific point of view, mesoscale represents a paradigm in assembly methods: it is situated between nanoscale and microscale assembly, which are two completely different processes. On the one hand, self-assemblies (chemical reactions) have been used for decades to build assembled nanocomponents where positioning and joining are driven by the same physical effect (e.g. covalent forces). On the other hand, microassembly in industry is mainly based on robotic handling, positioning and gluing. Mesoscale represents a crossroad between these two approaches, where further studies are required to provide ad-hoc solutions on positioning and joining. We propose to study some hybrid approaches based on directed self-assembly. They combine physical effects (non-contact forces) usually used in self-assembly, and active trajectory control from robotics.