IRT JULES VERNE
Presentation
IRT Jules Verne is the french technological research institute serving the manufacturing industry.
Focusing on strategic sectors such as aeronautics, naval mobility, energy, ground transportation and defense - IRT Jules Verne works to ensure France's industrial competitiveness and sovereignty. With its industrial and academic partners, IRT Jules Verne develops innovative technologies in 5 main areas : Forming & Preforming Processes | Assembly | Process Digitization | Mobility in Industrial Environments | Manufacturing Flexibility.
To achieve its mission, it draws on high-level skills combined with state-of-the-art equipment in 5 areas of combined expertise: Modeling and simulation | Composite materials processes | Metallic materials processes | Robotics and cobotics | Process monitoring, inspection and control.
The institute offers comprehensive solutions, including full-scale industrial demonstrators if required.
For a response tailored to your technological challenges, IRT Jules Verne has set up a flexible, agile organization and focuses on performance, flexibility and business transitions.
Collaboration between Jules Verne Institute and its partners takes many forms:
- The institute sets up and manages collaborative projects with several industrial and academic players,
- It provides services or transfers to meet the specific needs of industrial players,
- IRT Jules Verne is also a partner or coordinator of major national and European projects.
In all types of collaboration, the research’s results contribute to transferring new technologies to factories in the short and medium term.
IRT Jules Verne is located at the heart of the Industrial Innovation Campus of Nantes Métropole, with 4,000m2 of workshop dedicated to industrial research.
As a member of Nantes University, IRT Jules Verne is part of the French ecosystem of excellence for the industry of the future, and is deploying a coordinated strategy with the EMC2 competitiveness cluster.
Regarding the Nuclear Sector:
IRT Jules Verne began its collaboration with the nuclear sector in 2021 with the FETCH project (EdF/DP2D & Graphitech) on the automation of the dismantling of the Brennilis power plant. Building on this success, IRT Jules Verne has strengthened its partnerships, notably with EdF, which became a member in 2023 and has been serving on the Board of Directors since 2024.
The work carried out in the nuclear sector focuses on visual servoing, geolocation in complex environments, and the automation of high-strain tasks. In 2025, new projects will address the perception of complex environments and the deployment of specific tools adapted to these conditions, mobility on complex metallic structures, and cobotics in cluttered environments.
Discussions are ongoing with EdF R&D on topics such as numerical simulation of welding and metal additive manufacturing.
IRT Jules Verne also collaborates with Framatome, Orano, and other key players in the nuclear sector on issues such as the automation of welding processes, process simulation, and the automation of non-destructive testing.
A member of Nuclear Valley since 2022 and co-chair of its robotics commission, IRT Jules Verne supports the sector in improving its industrial performance. Its expertise in manufacturing helps reduce production costs and lead times, optimize automation, and enhance control and maintenance throughout the lifecycle of nuclear power plants.
