Sofiane Achiche

Sofiane Achiche
Polytechnique Montréal · Department of Mechanical Engineering

PhD Mechanical Engineering

About

212
Publications
52,544
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Introduction
Sofiane Achiche currently works as full professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal. Sofiane does research focuses on Design Support of Mechatronics , Health Monitoring of Mechatronics and Applied Design of Mechatronics using applied AI.

Publications

Publications (212)
Article
Full-text available
Background We developed MARVIN, an artificial intelligence (AI)‐based chatbot that provides 24/7 expert‐validated information on self‐management‐related topics for people with HIV. This study assessed (1) the feasibility of using MARVIN, (2) its usability and acceptability, and (3) four usability subconstructs (perceived ease of use, perceived usef...
Article
Full-text available
The complexity of mechatronic systems has increased with the significant advancements of technology in their components which makes their design more challenging. This is due to the need for incorporating expertise from different domains as well as the increased number and complexity of components integrated into the product. To alleviate the burde...
Article
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Background: Pharmacists need up-to-date knowledge and decision-making support in HIV care. We aim to develop MARVIN-Pharma, an adapted artificial intelligence-based chatbot initially for people with HIV, to assist pharmacists in considering evidence-based needs. Methods: From December 2022 to December 2023, an online needs-assessment survey evaluat...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Pharmacists need up-to-date knowledge and decision-making support in HIV care. We aim to develop MARVIN-Pharma, an adapted artificial intelligence-based chatbot initially for people with HIV, to assist pharmacists, considering evidence-based needs. Methods: From Dec 2022 to Dec 2023, an online needs-assessment survey evaluated Québec ph...
Article
Upper extremity prostheses have seen significant technological advances in recent years, primarily with the advent of myoelectric prostheses and other designs incorporating mechatronic elements. Although they do not replicate the functionality of the natural hand, users now have a way of communicating their movement intentions to the prosthesis. Ho...
Preprint
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This paper introduces the Structural Optimization gym (SOgym), a novel open-source reinforcement learning environment designed to advance the application of machine learning in topology optimization. SOgym aims for RL agents to learn to generate physically viable and structurally robust designs by integrating the physics of TO directly into the rew...
Preprint
This paper introduces YOLOv8-TO, a novel approach for reverse engineering of topology-optimized structures into interpretable geometric parameters using the YOLOv8 instance segmentation model. Density-based topology optimization methods require post-processing to convert the optimal density distribution into a parametric representation for design e...
Article
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Background Artificial intelligence (AI)–based chatbots could help address some of the challenges patients face in acquiring information essential to their self-health management, including unreliable sources and overburdened health care professionals. Research to ensure the proper design, implementation, and uptake of chatbots is imperative. Inclus...
Preprint
Full-text available
BACKGROUND Self-management interventions are emphasized as a way to optimize health outcomes and care, but they necessitate supporting patients to access timely and reliable health information, which remains a challenge. In the realm of digital health, artificial intelligence-based chatbots capable of conversing with users in natural language have...
Article
Cerebral Palsy is the most prevalent cause of gait disorder in childhood, affecting the range of motion, power, and joint torques of children. Several treatments are available, ranging from physical therapy to surgery. However, these treatments are usually complex, costly, and long. Robotic exoskeletons could provide longer, more frequent, and pers...
Article
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Topology optimization has been identified as a powerful tool to improve aircraft structures for many years. Yet, innovative layouts have not been successfully implemented in commercial aircraft for several reasons. One reason identified by our research group is the lack of design constraints during topology optimization, such as buckling stability,...
Article
In the context of mechanical engineering design, the field of machine learning accelerated topology optimization is dominated by image-based models trained in a supervised manner on datasets with a limited diversity of boundary conditions. State-of-the-art methods show poor generalization capabilities and are strongly coupled to finite element mesh...
Article
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Braided preforms are now used for structural composite parts. They have made their way into the aeronautic and the automotive sectors. With the development of variable carriers’ paths braiding machines, the braid geometry can now be tailored to specific needs and be fabricated to a near net shape of the final product. However, the carrier’s path va...
Article
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Traditionally manufactured for ropes and fishing lines, braids are now found in structural composite parts used in the transportation industries and the medical sector. Braiding machines are increasing in size and complexity. However, engineers mostly rely on expertise and on trials and errors to select a collision-free carrier arrangement, which i...
Preprint
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Objectives: To quantify the magnitude of spinal deformity in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), the Cobb angle is measured on X-ray images of the spine. Continuous exposure to X-ray radiation to follow-up the progression of scoliosis may lead to negative side effects on patients. Furthermore, manual measurement of the Cobb angle could lead to u...
Article
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Most affordable eye tracking systems use either intrusive setup such as head-mounted cameras or use fixed cameras with infrared corneal reflections via illuminators. In the case of assistive technologies, using intrusive eye tracking systems can be a burden to wear for extended periods of time and infrared based solutions generally do not work in a...
Conference Paper
Machine learning-accelerated topology optimization faces the challenge of generating large amounts of optimal topologies for supervised learning on a training dataset. This data generation step is challenging for the method of Moving Morphable Components (MMC) which presents an oscillatory behavior near local optimum that negatively affects its con...
Article
To assess the severity and progression of adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), radiography with X-rays is usually used. The methods based on statistical observations have been developed from 3D reconstruction of the trunk or topography. Machine learning has shown great potential to classify the severity of scoliosis on imaging data, general...
Article
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Aerial manipulators (AMs) are flying robotic systems composed of a multicopter equipped with one or more robotic arms. The dynamic modeling of AMs is complex due to the highly coupled interactions between the multicopter and the robotic arms. In this paper, the dynamics and kinematics of a quadcopter are combined with the Newton–Euler recursive met...
Article
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Background Adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) remains problematic. Regular monitoring of its barriers is clinically recommended, however, patient-provider communication around adherence is often inadequate. Our team thus decided to develop a new electronically administered patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) of barriers to ART adherence...
Preprint
Full-text available
The potential of wearable robotics technology is undeniable. However, quantifying its value is difficult. Various types of exoskeleton robots have already been developed and tested for upper limb rehabilitation but, evaluations are not standardized, particularly in pediatric rehabilitation. This paper proposes a methodology for the quantitative eva...
Article
This work includes a complete optimization, design, sizing and validation application of density-based topology optimization for a single stiffened panel from the upper skin of a commercial aircraft wing. In this work, topology optimization is carried with Optistruct from Altair. The initial values of the density variables are shown to have the big...
Article
Upper limb prostheses can greatly improve the condition of amputees. However, prosthetic mechanisms have different topologies and there is no consensus on the choice of an appropriate mechanism. This paper evaluates the impact of prosthetic mechanism topology on the prosthesis’ performance during daily tasks. The proposed multibody model is compare...
Article
Full-text available
Sensorless and sensor-based upper limb exoskeletons that enhance or support daily motor function are limited for children. This review presents the different needs in pediatrics and the latest trends when developing an upper limb exoskeleton and discusses future prospects to improve accessibility. First, the principal diagnoses in pediatrics and th...
Article
Table tennis has long fascinated roboticists as a particularly difficult task which requires fast movements, accurate control and adaptation to task parameters. In addition, the development of such devices is useful for educating the undergraduate students. Up to now, several groups have developed robotic manipulators playing table tennis and other...
Article
Full-text available
Manufacturing processes can be monitored for anomalies and failures just like machines, in condition monitoring and prognostic and health management. This research takes inspiration from condition monitoring and prognostic and health management techniques to develop a method for part production process monitoring. The contribution brought by this p...
Article
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Digital manufacturing technology promotes the application of digital information to manufacturing processes and machine tools. However, the high entry cost and complexity of existing offerings limit the wide application of digital manufacturing in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). For CNC machine tools, precision parameters can be acquired...
Article
Full-text available
Current saliency methods require to learn large-scale regional features using small convolutional kernels, which is not possible with a simple feed-forward network. Some methods solve this problem by using segmentation into superpixels, while others downscale the image through the network and rescale it back to its original size. The objective of t...
Article
Full-text available
The need for upper limb assistive and wearable exoskeletons is growing in various fields, e.g. either to support patients with neuromuscular disabilities or to reduce the effort strains on workers. These exoskeletons should reduce the efforts required by the user during functional tasks (dynamic consideration) and should fit the user’s size (geomet...
Article
Full-text available
The original article was published with an error. The corresponding author’s email address was missing during the online publication. The email address is presented here. The Original article has been corrected.
Article
The geometry of a braid influences its mechanical properties directly. On the other hand, the path of the carriers dictates the geometry of the braid. In traditional braiding machines, the carriers move along a fixed path, via horngears, which cannot be changed during the braiding process. This limitation does not allow braiding with variable geome...
Article
We read with great excitement the recent study of Colosio et al. [2] applying the bioenergetics approach [13] to the oxygen uptake response during constant-load exercise: first, because the observed maintenance of the overall cost of locomo-tion beyond the third minute of exercise in the heavy domain dissociates the slow component etiology from the...
Conference Paper
Reducing the weight of structures remains a major challenge in the aviation industry in order to reduce fuel consumption. The stiffened panel is the main assembly method for primary structures in aircraft, e.g. fuselage or wing. Density-based topology optimization has been used in research and in industry as a tool to help create new stiffening pa...
Conference Paper
The development of unmanned aerial manipulators (UAMs) allows a novel class of flying robots to carry out a wide variety of tasks in difficult environments due to their versatility and autonomy. However, the different tasks that can be carried out might call for different control strategies. To this end, one needs to categorize the possible tasks a...
Conference Paper
Many-objective optimization problem (MaOP) is defined as optimization with more than 3 objective functions. This high number of objectives makes the comparing solutions more challenging. This holds true for design problems which are MaOPs by nature due to the inherent complexity and multifaceted nature of real-life applications. In the last decades...
Article
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(1) Background: Motion planning is an important part of exoskeleton control that improves the wearer’s safety and comfort. However, its usage introduces the problem of trajectory planning. The objective of trajectory planning is to generate the reference input for the motion-control system. This review explores the methods of trajectory planning fo...
Conference Paper
The complexity of an engineering product is based in part on the number of components and their dependencies, where the latter can be desired or undesired. In some cases, where those dependencies exist concurrently, engineers can be misled regarding the design challenge at hand due to ill-adapted representation methods, especially when managing var...
Article
The development of autonomous greenhouses has caught the interest of many researchers and industrial considering their potential of offering an optimal environment for the growth of high-quality crops with minimum resources. Since an autonomous greenhouse is a mechatronic system, the consideration of its subsystem (e.g. heating systems) and compone...
Conference Paper
Over the last decades, the use of multibody dynamics in biomechanics research has grown considerably and holds significant promises for the health and biomedical industries. Nowadays, it allows estimating internal data of the body that would be impractical or impossible to obtain experimentally, e.g. individual muscle forces. Also, multibody dynami...
Article
Full-text available
Designing a mechatronic system is a complex task since it deals with a high number of system components with multidisciplinary nature in the presence of interacting design objectives. Currently, the sequential design is widely used by designers in industries that deal with different domains and their corresponding design objectives separately leadi...
Article
Gesture recognition is a key aspect of myoelectric control of upper-limb prostheses and is rather complex to achieve for transhumeral amputees. The prosthesis control of upper arm movements must rely only on the arm muscles, which were not involved in these gestures before the amputation. For decades, machine learning has been used in research for...
Preprint
Designing a mechatronic system is a complex task since it deals with a high number of system components with multi-disciplinary nature in the presence of interacting design objectives. Currently, the sequential design is widely used by designers in industries that deal with different domains and their corresponding design objectives separately lead...
Article
The human oxygen uptake responses to exercise step on-transients present different shapes depending on the overshoot and/or the “slow component” manifestations. The conventional First-Order Multi-Exponential (FOME) model incorporates delayed add-on terms to comprise these phenomena, increasing parameter quantity, requiring a delayed recruitment of...
Article
Full-text available
The intervertebral efforts, i.e., forces and torques, during gait have been recognized as influencing the progression of scoliosis, due to the mechanical modulations according to the Hueter-Volkmann Law. Therefore, these efforts are key variables for posture correction and to control the progression of scoliosis. Using the intervertebral efforts du...
Article
The scale and master ball artefact (SAMBA) method allows estimating the inter- and intra-axis error parameters as well as volumetric errors (VEs) of a five-axis machine tool by using simple ball artefacts and the machine tool’s own touch-trigger probe. The SAMBA method can use two different machine error models named after the number of model param...
Preprint
Full-text available
Current research in convolutional neural networks (CNN) focuses mainly on changing the architecture of the networks, optimizing the hyper-parameters and improving the gradient descent. However, most work use only 3 standard families of operations inside the CNN, the convolution, the activation function, and the pooling. In this work, we propose a n...
Article
Full-text available
The volumetric error state of machine tools is related to the quality of the machined parts and the machine tool condition. Volumetric error vectors (VEs) of machine tools can be estimated using methods such as R-test, laser trackers and the scale and master ball artefact (SAMBA) method. During one measurement, a series of volumetric error vectors...
Preprint
Full-text available
In recent years, there has been a rapid progress in solving the binary problems in computer vision, such as edge detection which finds the boundaries of an image and salient object detection which finds the important object in an image. This progress happened thanks to the rise of deep-learning and convolutional neural networks (CNN) which allow to...
Preprint
Full-text available
Aim: To develop an index for quantitative assessment of the upper limb motor function in children with cerebral palsy before and after robot-assisted therapy. Method: An upper limb motor function index was developed using kinematic, surface electromyography and three-axis inertial measurements unit data collected from 15 children with cerebral pals...
Chapter
The myoelectric prostheses are appealing solutions for transhumeral amputees as they can restore lost autonomy using the natural control of an arm. However, research still need to be performed to achieve intuitive control of prostheses by amputees, as very limited progress has been made in the past decades. Pattern recognition coupled with surface...
Article
Most of powered ankle exoskeletons add considerable distal mass to the user which limit their capacity in reducing the metabolic energy of walking. The objective of the work presented in this paper is to develop an ankle exoskeleton with a minimum added distal mass compared to existing autonomous powered ankle exoskeletons while it can provide at l...
Article
Assistive robotic arms have become popular to help users with upper limb disabilities achieve autonomy in their daily tasks, such as drinking and grasping objects in general. Usually, these robotic arms are controlled with an adapted joystick. Joysticks are user-friendly when it comes to a general approach to an object. However, they are not as int...
Preprint
Full-text available
Low back pain is one of the most common musculoskeletal disorder. To reduce its incidences, some back exoskeletons have been designed and already commercialized. However, there is a gap between the phases of device and testing on subjects. In fact, the main unsolved problem is the lack of realistic simulation of human-device interaction. Consequent...
Preprint
Several rehabilitation approaches have shown that robot-assisted therapy (robot-AT) can improve the quality of upper limb movements in children with cerebral palsy (CP). However, there is still no method for assessing upper limb motor function impairment using a combination of surface electromyography (sEMG) and inertial measurement unit (IMU) sens...
Preprint
Full-text available
Current saliency methods require to learn large scale regional features using small convolutional kernels, which is not possible with a simple feed-forward network. Some methods solve this problem by using segmentation into superpixels while others downscale the image through the network and rescale it back to its original size. The objective of th...
Article
This paper investigates the current state of design in the mechatronic industry. First, based on a literature overview, key circular product characteristics are identified, namely modularity and robustness. Then, a survey has been distributed to practicing mechatronic engineers. Based on the survey, it is found that mechatronic systems are currentl...
Conference Paper
The exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control chart is a popular tool in quality control and effective in detecting small shifts in the monitored signals. Herein, EWMA has been used for machine tool volumetric errors (VEs) change recognition. To improve its recognition capability, the influence of setup parameters including smoothing coe...
Article
Mechatronics design is complex by nature as it involves a large number of couplings and interdependencies between subsystems and components alongside a variety of sometimes contradicting objectives and design constraints. Mechatronics design activity requires cross-disciplinary and multi-objective thinking. In this paper, a fuzzy-based approach for...
Article
This paper proposes a Decision Support System that can provide European policy makers with systematic guidance in allocating and prioritizing scant public resources. We do so by taking the stance of the Smart Specialisation Strategies which aim at consolidating the regional strengths and make effective and efficient use of public investment in R&D....
Article
Detecting machine tool condition deterioration affecting its accuracy is a constant challenge for industrial machine maintenance. Machine tool volumetric errors (VEs) exhibit complex variations due, for example, to normal thermal variations, wear or faults and defective components. A monitoring technique based on the fractal analysis of VEs, estima...
Article
This paper introduces a product-related dependency index that can be used during the conceptual design of mechatronic systems. The index uses fuzzy assessment of adverse effects dependencies combined with quantitative graph theory to compute the level of detrimental interactions present in a system. The paper also illustrates how the assessment of...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper proposes a fuzzy simulation method for dynamic systems having uncertain physical parameters. The paper first introduces a fuzzy arithmetic that can be used to have a non-diverging simulation, which would not be the case if the standard arithmetic is used. Then the fuzzy simulation is tested on a self-balancing robot system. The simulatio...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Gait analysis has often been recognized as helpful for the therapeutic follow-up of adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis (IS). Methods: A multibody model of the human body was developed to display the intervertebral efforts along the spine of each adolescent with IS, and highlight the efforts that significantly differ from typical...
Preprint
Full-text available
In computer vision, the gradient and Laplacian of an image are used in many different applications, such as edge detection, feature extraction and seamless image cloning. To obtain the gradient of an image, it requires the use of numerical derivatives, which are available in most computer vision toolboxes. However, the reverse problem is more diffi...