On December 3rd, we held another session of our Over-the-Lunch iCoSys Seminar – a cosy moment to learn something new, catch up with colleagues, and share pizza together.

What we talked about

Bringing intelligence to autonomous drones
Presented by Diego Fraile
Diego gave us an inside look at the activities of the GRID – the Groupe de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les Drones – with a focus on iCoSys’ contributions.
We explored several key modules needed to make a drone truly autonomous:

• map creation

• obstacle avoidance

• map re-localisation

• object recognition

He also showed a simulation environment that helps test, compare, and debug these modules – essential before sending anything into the air!

Benchmarking foundation models for time-series forecasting
Presented by Frédéric Montet & Benjamin Pasquier
This talk compared well-known models from Amazon, Salesforce, and Google with classic statistical and deep-learning approaches.
The team evaluated how these models perform in different scenarios:

• zero-shot (no training data)

• few-shot (very little data)

• full training

They also discussed speed, usability, and what really matters when deploying forecasting tools in industry.

Thanks to everyone who came by, grabbed a bite, and shared a moment with us.

Already looking forward to the next one!