Julien Serres appointed senior member of the IUF

Julien Serres (alumni EEA 1999), university professor at Aix Marseille University, is responsible for the Biorobotics division at the Institute of Movement Sciences – Étienne-Jules Marey (CNRS/Aix Marseille University, ISM UMR7287) in Marseille.

His appointment as a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), under the Innovation Chair as of October 1, 2022, attests to the excellence and impact of his scientific work in collaboration with the industrial partners of his research team, such as the automobile manufacturer STELLANTIS within the framework of the Automotive Motion Lab (Stellantis OpenLab – amU), the defense industry with SAFRAN Electronics & Defense as part of a CIFRE thesis, or the ongoing work with the Marseille-based SME SOLNIL within the framework of the ECOPOL project [2025 - 2027] to develop biomimetic sensors inspired by the eyes of insects.

This five-year appointment enables Julien Serres to unleash his research potential by dedicating most of his time to technology and knowledge transfer to the industry and raising ambitious funds such as European projects.

The Innovation Chair Project

Julien Serres' research aims to develop bio-inspired localization methods to facilitate the navigation of autonomous vehicles in complex or GPS-deprived environments. Conventional methods require access to GPS or 5G, as well as a digital twin mapping the locations. In contrast, navigating insects exploit little-known techniques, particularly involving polarized vision. The sky’s polarization pattern then represents a reliable source of information for absolute or relative localization, just as honeybees do daily to return to their nest after journeys of several kilometers.

Julien Serres' Expertise

Julien Serres knows how to put himself in the cockpit of a bee or an ant. His initial training at ENS Cachan in applied physics now allows him to understand the complexity of the vision-motion coupling of a flying insect performing a specific task, just as an autonomous flying vehicle would. For the past twenty years, he has been studying bees through various experiments in flight arenas, analyzing their relative movement in response to optical disturbances. This enables him to deepen his knowledge of vision-motion coupling, particularly involving highly refined perceptual visual mechanisms, which he then seeks to reproduce technologically, as well as understanding how insects use this information to regulate their movement.

These small animals could teach autonomous delivery vehicles how to navigate and remain resilient in the face of failing anthropic infrastructures (GPS, Starlink, 5G, cloud computing, etc.).

Over the next five years, Julien Serres has set himself the goal of developing an optical compass inspired by insects or a polarimetric sextant inspired by migratory birds. He also seeks to raise awareness in society about how these small navigating insects function, as he considers them a concentration of high technology from which humanity should draw inspiration to address the challenges of tomorrow’s autonomous mobility.