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About

Cedric Cocaud is a robotics researcher whose work bridges bio-inspired actuation and autonomous navigation. His key research areas include artificial muscle actuators, bipedal locomotion, and environment mapping for mobile robots. Cocaud made significant early contributions to the use of shape memory alloys as artificial muscles, developing a procedure to optimize muscle placement in robotic arms by applying kinesiology principles—work that laid groundwork for more lifelike, compliant robotic manipulators. His 2004 paper on a two-DOF anthropomorphic arm driven by artificial muscles has garnered 7 citations, while his 2006 study on position control of an experimental SMA-driven arm added 5 more. In autonomous navigation, Cocaud pioneered a probabilistic quadtree mapping technique that records static and dynamic obstacles with certainty estimates, enabling near-real-time guidance for mobile robots (6 citations). He also explored biped stability using fuzzy control for a 6-DOF robot in dual-support phase (3 citations). Though his citation counts are modest, Cocaud’s work represents foundational steps in integrating biological principles into robotic hardware and control systems, offering valuable insights for students and researchers in bio-robotics and autonomous systems.