Abdenbi Mohand Ousaid

Sinan Haliyo

Stephane Regnier

Vincent Hayward

Sinan Dogan

Stéphane Haliyo

Member, IEEE Vincent Régnier

Fellow, IEEE Hayward

A stable and transparent microscale force feedback teleoperation system

Keywords: Bilateral coupling, force measurement, haptic interface, microrobotics, stability, teleoperation, transparency

I. INTRODUCTION

D IRECT human interaction with the microscale world is an important challenge in microrobotics. Such direct interaction has applications in nanotechnology, biology, material characterization, or in the investigation of the physics of microscale phenomena. In these situations, operators are confronted with manual tasks that are highly unusual and unpredictable. In addition, these tasks must be carried out under impoverished sensory conditions. Direct interaction with the microscale is typically performed while viewing the task through a microscopefrequently with no other depth cue than blur and focus-and with object motions that are governed by unusual physics. Mechanical behavior is no longer dominated by gravity and elasticity, and short-range forces including electrostatic, capillary, and van der Waals forces dominate [START_REF] Israelachvili | Intermolecular and Surface Forces[END_REF]. Force feedback teleoperation with a sufficient level of fidelity in the reproduction of these physics would assist the operators in carrying out manipulation and assembly tasks, among other options.

Since the 1990s, several such microteleoperation systems have been proposed with a view to provide haptic feedback

The authors are with Sorbonne Universités, University of Pierre and Marie Curie, F-75005 Paris, France (e-mail: mohand_ousaid@isir.upmc.fr; sinan.haliyo@upmc.fr; stephane.regnier@upmc.fr; hayward@cim.mcgill.ca).

in order to improve manipulation capabilities at the microscale.

In early examples, Hamature and Morishita proposed a nanomanipulation system to allow human operators to experience the "nanometer world" [START_REF] Hatamura | Direct coupling system between nanometer world and human world[END_REF]. Hollis et al. introduced haptic feedback for the first time when operating a noncontact scanning tunneling microscope [START_REF] Hollis | Toward a tele-nanorobotic manipulation system with atomic scale force feedback and motion resolution[END_REF]. Hunter et al. designed a "telemicrorobot" system to interact with microscopic objects [START_REF] Hunter | Manipulation and dynamic mechanical testing of microscopic objects using a tele-micro-robot system[END_REF]. Sitti and Hashimoto coupled a force feedback device with an atomic force microscope (AFM) through homothetic gains to perform transformation between micro-and macroscales [START_REF] Sitti | Tele-nanorobotics using atomic force microscope[END_REF]. Bolopion et al. combined two AFM in order to achieve 3-D microassembly of spherical objects with haptic feedback [START_REF] Bolopion | Haptic teleoperation for 3-d microassembly of spherical objects[END_REF]. Other developments include a remote handling task between Paris, France, and Oldenburg, Germany [START_REF] Bolopion | Remote microscale teleoperation through virtual reality and haptic feedback[END_REF], bilateral teleoperation systems using magnetic levitation [START_REF] Mehrtash | Bilateral micro-macro teleoperation using magnetic levitation[END_REF] or haptic feedback systems based on high-speed vision tracking [START_REF] Ni | Asynchronous event-based visual shape tracking for stable haptic feedback in microrobotics[END_REF]- [START_REF] Ni | 2d high speed force feedback teleoperation of optical tweezers[END_REF]. Recently, Matsumi et al. proposed a force sensorless bilateral control where reaction force observer and disturbance observer are applied to both master device and slave device [START_REF] Matsumi | Large scale micro-macro bilateral control using piezoelectric cantilever with plant nominalization[END_REF].

An essential shortcoming of aforementioned systems is the lack of transparency. The force signal fed back to the user is significantly different from that taking place in microscopic physical phenomenon. The causes of this problem are threefold. The first is computational since a micro-to-macro teleoperation chain requires scaling gains in the order of 10 4 to 10 7 . With those values, it is difficult to simultaneously guarantee the stability and transparency of the microteleoperation system. One approach is to ensure that the coupling is passive, but this technique comes at the expense of transparency [START_REF] Bolopion | Analysis of stability and transparency for nanoscale force feedback in bilateral coupling[END_REF]. The second cause of loss of transparency is the probe itself, which is used to interact with the sample. The most common type is based on the deflection of an elastic cantilever as in AFM [START_REF] Binnig | Atomic force microscope[END_REF], where the interaction force is measured by monitoring the deflection of the cantilever. Elastic elements, however, introduce instabilities, such as a jump to contact when the cantilever tip is brought close to the sample where the gradient of the attraction force exceeds the cantilever stiffness. As a result, the deflection of the probe is no longer an accurate reflection of the interaction force. Because of the jump to contact phenomenon, the relation between force and position is no longer one-to-one. Thus, the transmitted information becomes tainted with hysteresis. The third cause comes from the force feedback devices. They are ill-fitted to render the high dynamic range typical of microscale phenomena. To our knowledge, no commercially available devices can provide a dynamics range greater than 1:100 when the human touch is capable of sensing 1:1000 [START_REF] Ousaid | Haptic interface transparency achieved through viscous coupling[END_REF]. Friction, inertia, hysteresis, and noise are all detrimental effects that tend to degrade the precision of such systems. The original microscale phenomenon is, thus, filtered thrice, by the tool, by the bilateral coupling, and by the haptic interface so that what is felt by the operator is only a faint and tainted replica of the original phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a microteleoperation chain for microscale applications that simultaneously preserves stability and transparency. Instead of focusing on bilateral coupling schemes to guarantee system performance, stability, and transparency, both the master and slave devices were designed to achieve this purpose and to enable the application of a direct control scheme. In direct coupling, the position of the haptic device is scaled down so as to serve as a set-point for the probe position relative to the sample, and the measured force is scaled up to be fed back to the user. The stability of such a system can be established when both the master and slave are passive [START_REF] Richard | Stable haptic interaction with virtual environment[END_REF]. It follows that each component of the system should individually be designed and controlled to exhibit passive linear behavior.

This manuscript comprises six sections. The causes of loss of transparency arising from force measurements, from haptic devices, and from haptic coupling methods are analyzed in Section II. This section also presents the criteria used to assess the stability and transparency of the teleoperation system. The design constraints for each component are then discussed. In Section III, a detailed description of a practical realization and control implementation is provided. Section IV deals with the integration of the complete teleoperation chain with the transparency and stability test. The validity of the proposed approach is then experimentally verified in Section V. This paper is concluded in the last section.

II. ACHIEVING TRANSPARENCY

The root causes of loss of transparency in a microscale teleoperation chain are both computational and physical. The pathway from the physical phenomenon to the user is now dissected to propose designs that can achieve transparency, that is, frequency-invariant proportionality in forces and displacement in the desired operating range.

A. Force Measurement

At the microscale, adhesion forces become dominant compared to gravitational and inertial forces. Van der Waals, electrostatic, and capillary forces play a key role in the interaction between microscopic objects [START_REF] Israelachvili | Intermolecular and Surface Forces[END_REF]. In contrast with the macroscopic world where most forces tend to impede movementoften locally and linearly-microscopic forces are attractive, nonlinear, and state dependent. Those phenomena can be properly rendered to the operators only if they can be measured over the entire range of the interaction distances, say from 0.4 nm to large values. The most widely used tool at this scale is the AFM probe. Its mode of operation is to balance an elastic cantilever of appropriate stiffness with a force of interaction. Since an AFM cantilever has the mechanical behavior of a flexible beam, it is inherently unstable and ill-fitted to deal with attractive forces. To illustrate this shortcoming, Fig. 1(a) shows the interplay between the forces of interaction when an AFM tip approaches a water-coated surface in ambient conditions. Fig. 1(b) shows the effect of these phenomena as measured by an AFM probe with an appropriate stiffness. As the probe approaches the surface, the gradient of the van der Waals force exceeds the probe stiffness before the Coulomb force becomes significant, causing the tip to jump to contact from point A,to point B according to a very fast movement (pull-in). The curve between points C and D represents the elastic behavior of the cantilever when the probe tip is stuck to the surface by capillary forces. The force of interaction is known but the displacement of the tip is very small and, thus, unable to explore the full range of tip-sample distances. At point D, the elastic force overcomes the force of adhesion and a jump occurs to a quasi-static equilibrium in E, again according to a fast jumping movement (pull-off).

It is clear that the AFM deflection delivers partial information regarding the actual interaction. It is possible to extract some information from the jump to point B (and in some cases from C to D), but they only relate to values at contact. The temporary instability inherent to the mechanical behavior of a cantilever means that the whole approach-retract curve reveals only two data points related to the underlying physics. The differences between curves in Fig. 1(a) and (b) clearly illustrate an important source of loss of transparency between the physical phenomenon and the measurement.

One approach to overcome these limitations is to employ feedback. Feedback can be used to cause a system to track a desired state to become robust to disturbances and noise. It also has the ability to provide a system with useful properties for sensing such as enlarged bandwidth, better linearity, and modulation of the sensitivity. Another great advantage of feedback is to provide stability for a system that is not stable, such as here, a measurement based on the deflection of a probe. Provided that the probe can be actively controlled, that the actuator is accurate, and that it has sufficient bandwidth and control authority, then the sought after force signal can be derived directly from the control signal needed to balance the unknown interaction force. An electrostatic energy-based actuator possesses these properties. A sensor design using a force balancing concept presented further in Section III-A is employed in this paper.

B. Haptic Interface

Haptic interfaces based on force feedback enable bidirectional human-system interaction through the sense of touch in response to user movement [START_REF] Hayward | Haptic interfaces and devices[END_REF]. As already alluded to, interaction at the microscale requires a device that has large dynamic range and a wide bandwidth [START_REF] Hayward | Performance measures for haptic interfaces[END_REF]. The first property quantifies the ratio of the largest to the smallest force that can be reproduced reliably through the interface. The second property refers to the capacity of the interface to operate within a large frequency range that is commensurate with the human sensory capacities. From a temporal view point, physical phenomena generating transient signals, such as the sudden attraction of small objects due to the action of close-range van der Waals forces, are accessible to touch since this channel can separate sensory events as close as 10 m•s in time [START_REF] Pastor | The functional neuroanatomy of temporal discrimination[END_REF]. Persisting oscillations such as those resulting from Brownian motion can be detected by touch since there is signal energy within the frequency range of touch, that is, from dc to about 1.0 kHz [START_REF] Verrillo | Psychophysics of vibrotactile stimulation[END_REF]. Small-scale phenomena are, thus, well within the human sensory capacities in the temporal domain; it is simply that at the human scale, they are too weak to be felt.

In recent years, many types of haptic interfaces have been created in laboratories or proposed in the commercial market. To our knowledge, however, all of these interfaces, based on the "impedance causality" [START_REF] Hayward | Haptic interfaces and devices[END_REF], operating open loop, cannot reproduce an impedance that is smaller than their intrinsic "ground impedance" [START_REF] Hayward | Do it yourself haptics: Part-I[END_REF]. This so-called ground impedance is made up mostly of inherent friction and inertia, and because a higher force output comes with higher inertia, the dynamic range and bandwidth are linked by a fundamental tradeoff, even if friction can be brought to nearly zero in noncontact designs. Highperformance devices present to the operator's hand an inertia that is always higher than 0.2 kg, and frequently much more than this value. In order to cope with these limitations, a haptic interface design approach introduced in [START_REF] Millet | The ultimate haptic device: First step[END_REF] offered promise as the basis for an efficient master device. A more developed system, described in [START_REF] Ousaid | Haptic interface transparency achieved through viscous coupling[END_REF], provided us with an interface having a dynamic range and a bandwidth that was fully compatible with the entire range of human sensorimotor capabilities. This device may be said to achieve a high degree of transparency to a human operator, in the sense that all the unwanted signals it produces are below human detection thresholds and that its output is a linear function of its input under reasonable operating conditions: The commanded torque should not saturate the device and the hand of the operator should be in contact with the handle in order to keep its velocity small.

C. Bilateral Coupling

The control scheme is the third source of degradation of the user sensorimotor experience. The direct coupling control scheme, as depicted in Fig. 2(a), is a simple formulation, the success of which depends solely on the individual properties of the coupled subsystems. The key advantage of this scheme is that it requires only two gains, α f and α x , to be specified. As shown below, this control can achieve a high degree of transparency, but the system stability depends on these coefficients. In comparison, the indirect coupling control scheme can overcome the stability problem by introducing two controllers C 1 and C 2 , as depicted in Fig. 2(B). The first controller, for instance, a PI controller with parameters k p and k d , as in [START_REF] Bolopion | Tuning the gains of haptic couplings to improve force feedback stability in nanorobotics[END_REF], can be tuned to modify stiffness and damping of the response. The second controller, for example a proportional controller, can be used to produce a position or a velocity reference of the sample holder. The system transparency, however, is affected by the damping introduced to dissipate the instability causing excess energy. A viable solution to achieve both transparency and stability simultaneously is, thus, to arrange for direct coupling between two passive subsystems, instead of using indirect control to compensate for lack of passivity in the master and slave devices [START_REF] Richard | Stable haptic interaction with virtual environment[END_REF]. Such a coupling scheme can be classified as a "two-channel position-force" bilateral coupling, but with the additional property of transparency that is normally lacking in ordinary two-channel coupling schemes.

In the simple direct coupling scheme, the degradation of transparency arises entirely from the force sensor and the haptic interface. Each of these components are studied in Section III. An active, closed-looped force sensor using force balancing is presented first. The aforementioned dual-stage haptic interface is then briefly described as a good candidate for use as master interface for a microscale teleoperation system. The teleoperation chain established by direct coupling between the sensor and the haptic interface is then shown to achieve both transparency and stability, theoretically and experimentally.

D. Stability Analysis

Stability is a critical requirement on a teleoperation system. Its theoretical validation can be conducted by methods based on the classical control theory, passivity approaches, wave variables, or modern tools, such as H ∞ or µ-analysis, that can quantify the stability robustness against uncertainties. A frequently used technique is the Llewellyn's absolute stability criterion, which can be applied to teleoperation systems since these systems are akin to a transmission system. This criterion assumes that the user's hand to be a passive component as well as the environment [START_REF] Colgate | Robust impedance shaping telemanipulation[END_REF], and that there is no time delay [START_REF] Llewellyn | Some fundamental properties of transmission systems[END_REF]. These criteria have the form of three conditions that must be verified

E. Transparency Analysis

Transparency describes the ability of a teleoperation system to provide a faithful transmission of force and position signals between the master and the slave devices [START_REF] Lawrence | Stability and transparency in bilateral teleoperation[END_REF]. A teleoperation system is said to be transparent if the human operator feels as if she or he is interacting directly with the environment [START_REF] Raju | Design issues in 2-port network models of bilateral remote manipulation[END_REF]. In other words, no dynamics should intervene between the operator and the environment. In order to quantify the transparency of a system, different measures have been proposed, such as impedance criteria, Z-width measure, or transmitted impedance sensitivity. The latter criterion is based on the comparison between the operator-side impedance Z h and the environmentside impedance Z p , as a function of the scaling gains. Formally, the "perfect" transparency of a microteleoperation system is achieved if

Z h = α f α x Z p .
The mechanical impedance felt by the operator is compared with the environment impedance in terms of their physical parameters stiffness, damping, and mass. This criterion was used to test the transparency of the proposed system in Section IV-C.

III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

A. Force Sensor

A rigid probe was kinematically constrained to a single translation motion through a glass fiber suspension. The probe was attached to an electrostatic actuator that actively balanced the interaction force by zeroing displacement by feedback. The force measurement was, hence, directly a function of the electrostatic energy stored in the actuator, instead of strain energy as in a classical AFM probe.

1) Fiber Suspension: The sensor probe was mounted on a carrier supported by a fiber suspension that is schematically shown in Fig. 3. The suspension provided nearly perfect kinematic guidance and reduced the number of degrees of freedom to one. Three vertical fibers constrained the motion of the carrier to planar motions. Two horizontal fibers constrained the motion to a single translation by preventing rotations around the vertical axis and movements in the horizontal plane. The length of the fibers was much larger than their deformation. They were held at both extremities with a rocker and leaf-spring mechanism. The compliance of the suspension could be tuned by adjusting the tension of the fibers to ensure perfectly linear motion.

An optical lever, comprising a laser light source, a mirror embedded in the carrier, and a four-quadrant photodiode was used to measure the displacement of the probe. The resulting system is shown in Fig. 3(a), including fiber attachments and the optical lever.

2) Bipolar Differential Electrostatic Actuator: Referring to Fig. 3(b), assigning a control voltage v such that -v 2 = v 3 = v, and fixing v 1 to a constant value, it can be shown that the actuator force f a is given by 2Cv 1 v, that is, the actuator force is Fig. 3. Elements of the force sensor. (a) Fiber suspension to guide the mechanical probe and optical lever to detect its displacements. (b) Bipolar differential electrostatic actuator. Linearity of operation is achieved by its symmetrical design. When the armature is deflected from its rest position, the capacitance lost by one-half is gained by the other, conserving linearity.

proportional to its capacitance C to v and to v 1 [START_REF] Sidobre | Calibrated measurement of the behaviour of mechanical junctions from micrometre to subnanometre scale: The friction force scanner[END_REF]. The latter value can be used to adjust the actuator constant. It is important to note that this force does not depend on the position of the carrier because the overlapping surface area on the mobile and the fixed armatures are constant, as guaranteed by design.

Unlike conventional electrostatic actuators, the force developed by the actuator is linear with respect to the control voltage. This property is of considerable benefit over other systems with intrinsic dependencies between force and displacement.

a) Mechanical Behavior: As a suspended mass constrained to move in a straight line, the dynamics of the system was well described by a second-order differential equation involving all forces applied to the probe

f p = mẍ -k 0 x -b ẋ -f a
where f p was the interaction force between probe and sample, mẍ was the inertial term, f a was the force provided by the actuator, k 0 x was the force due to suspension compliance, and b ẋ was the viscous damping term owing to the flow of ambient air between the blades of the actuator.

b) Physical Realization: The system, as illustrated in Fig. 4, comprises a frame made of polyoxymethylene plastic (180 mm×180 mm×40 mm, 10 mm in thicknesses) supporting the fiber positioning and tensioning mechanisms. The fixed actuator armatures were rigidly connected to the frame. The carrier was machined out of magnesium to minimize mass (1.2 g). Its dimensions are 22 × 8.5 × 7.4 mm. The gap between fixed and moving armatures is 0.3 mm. The springs were made out of phosphor bronze. Care was exercised to minimize hysteresis by using long glass fibres (180-mm longer, 0.1 mm diameter) and careful fiber attachment. The probe was made from a pulled glass tube of 1 mm in diameter (Sutter glass puller, PI1000). The laser source (Camero 4 mW, 635-nm wavelength) and a quadrant photodiode detector (Silicon Sensor, model QP5.8-6 SD) were placed behind the frame to measure the probe displacements. The electrical connection to the moving armature actuator was provided by a coiled tungsten filament. The potential applied to the fixed armatures v and -v was provided by two high-voltage operational amplifiers (±200 V, APEX PA82J).

c) Sensor Calibration: The plant was linear and of second order, with a natural pulsation w 0 , and a damping coefficient ζ. The Laplace transfer function was

G(s)= kw 2 0 s 2 +2ζw 0 s + w 2 0
where k, w 0 , and ζ were identified from a step response [START_REF] Ousaid | Micro-force sensor by active control of a comb-drive[END_REF], with k =0.032, ζ =0.0047, and w 0 =64rad/s. The gain k a that links the excitation voltage to the force developed by the actuator is given by

k a = k 0 k 1 k 2
where k 0 is the stiffness of the fiber suspension, k 1 is the optical lever constant that links the photodiode voltage to the position of the carrier, and k 2 is the actuator constant that links the excitation voltage to the photodiode output. The experimental characterization validated the linear behavior of all the components of the system [START_REF] Ousaid | Micro-force sensor by active control of a comb-drive[END_REF], [START_REF] Ousaid | H-infinity optimal control enabled micro-force sensing[END_REF]. Identified parameters were k 0 = 3.83 N/m, k 1 = 387 µm/V, and k 2 =0.0274. Therefore, the gain k a is 40.68 µN/V.

3) Active Probe Control Design: In a passive sensor, a force measurement is found from the deformation of a structural element, that is, by opposing an elastic force to an unknown force. In order to decouple measurement from structural stiffness, an active control approach was employed here. Active feedback was used to oppose an adjustable known electrostatic force to the unknown force to be measured such that the probe was at all times immobilized at an equilibrium position. In this case, the force measurement is not computed using the signal coming from the displacement sensor or any deformation, but the value of the opposed artifice used to balance the force. In such a system, the only dynamics involved during measurement is the movement of electrons on the armatures, a motion which is much easier to control at high speed than a mechanical element as in a conventional AFM setup.

Fig. 5(d) illustrates the general principle of the active force measurement method. The interaction force f e appears as a perturbation to be rejected by the controller in order to maintain the sensitive part of the sensor at an equilibrium position. This compensation provides directly the measurement of f p which is equal and opposite to the control signal, provided that the error is small. This error is kept minimal by imposing a tracking error smaller than 0.1% in the controller synthesis , as shown in Section III-A3 (weight function w 1 ). Additional benefits include improving sensor linearity, precision and robustness to parameter uncertainties (such as mass, elasticity, and damping), and improving bandwidth within the limits of the control authority of electrostatic actuator. To obtain optimal performance, a H ∞designed position controller was implemented. The controller output was the actuator control potential v(t), and its error input derived from the signal supplied by the photodiode. The force measurement was determined from the actuator calibration constant.

Fig. 6 shows a general setup for a H ∞ design problem the solution of which is well known as described in [START_REF] Iwasaki | All controllers for the general h ∞ control problem: LMI existence conditions and state-space formulas[END_REF]- [START_REF] Doyle | State space solutions to standard h2 and h1 control problem[END_REF]. The three weighting functions were used to describe the performance criteria in the control design. The result is a rational function K(s) that stabilizes the closed loop, considering u and e 3 as inputs, while e 1 and e 2 are seen as output signals to be kept under control.

The weighing functions, W 1 (s) and W 2 (s) related to the error signal e(t) and the control signal v(t), respectively, specify the performance that the controller should achieve [START_REF] Li | An h infinity; design for aircraft longitudinal flight control[END_REF]. The weighing function W 1 specified a tracking error of about 0.1% in the low frequencies, a gain margin of 0.6, and a bandwidth of 60 rad/s. The function W 2 specified the limit on the control signal imposed by the saturation of the amplifiers and a high-frequency cutoff to avoid dynamics being improperly modeled

W 1 (s)= s + 102 1.7 s +0.6
,W 2 (s)= s + 200 0.001 s + 20000 .

The weighing function W 3 was null. The H ∞ controller K(s) was then found by minimizing the bound of the H ∞ -norm from w and u to e 1 and e 2 . The procedure led to a value of 1.17 for the bound and a controller K(s) of the fourth order. The resulting open-loop system response is shown in Fig. 7, showing good gain and phase margins, of 16.6 dB and 67.4 • , respectively. The corresponding zero-order hold discretetime transfer function K(z) with a sampling period, h =1ms, I summarizes the values and units of these coefficients. x h is the handle position. f p is the external force applied to the probe by the sample. τ is the viscous torque generated by the coupler and τ d is the desired handle torque. which is easily evaluated in real time.

4) Active Sensor Validation:

Owing to the considerable dynamic range of the sensor, essentially the full range of all specifiable voltages, its proper operation was verified through relatively high interaction force values. A good source of such force is simple magnetic attraction. A fragment of pure iron attracted by a small magnet should be virtually free of hysteresis. Closerange magnetic attraction follows mostly a 1/z 2 law that should be reflected by the sensor holding an iron fragment (1.3-mm thickness) approaching a small magnet (1 × 1.5 × 5 mm), as illustrated by Fig. 8. The magnet was moved by a micropositioning stage and its displacement detected by an interferometer (SIOS, Model SP-120). The bench was placed on an antivibration table to reduce external perturbations.

The magnet was approached at a constant velocity of 0.4 mm/s until the sensor reaches its upper limit, around 350 µN, at a distance of 0.6 mm, then was retracted at the same ve-Fig. 8. Test bench. A magnet was approached and retracted from an iron fragment. The sensor acted in passive mode when the feedback control was inactive and in active mode when the probe was held in place by feedback. Fig. 9. Magnetic force measurement versus probe-sample displacement in passive and in active mode. The response is close to a 1/z 2 law. When the active mode is enabled, note the absence of hysteresis which was effective down to the last bit of the 16-bit analog-to-digital converter.

locity. The force induced by the field of the permanent magnet on the particle was measured by the sensor by balancing this force in real time. Fig. 9 shows the measured magnetic force in the horizontal direction versus the relative distance. The curve shows that, as the distance decreases, the force increases rapidly according to distance -2 , as predicted by the theory. It is also clear from the result that the sensor captured the whole range of the magnetic force behavior, during the approach and retraction phases, with no instabilities or hysteresis, despite huge changes in the gradient. This test demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed active probe in its capacity to cope with huge variations in force magnitude and gradient. In contrast, the active probe could track the entirety of the interaction force, eliminating measurement hysteresis as well as the blind region, limited only by actuator saturation. With a resolution of 400 nN and a dynamic range of about 1:1000, the sensor sensitivity was well within the range of capillary forces.

B. Dual-Stage Haptic Inteface

The dual-stage haptic interface with 1 DOF depicted in Fig. 10 (left part) was connected to the active probe. Its hardware design is described in detail in [START_REF] Millet | The ultimate haptic device: First step[END_REF]. Unlike conventional haptic interfaces using a single electromagnetic motor, this interface is based on a dual-stage architecture comprising a large and a small motor coupled by a viscous coupler based on eddy currents. As a result of the arrangement, the primary output torque is a highly accurate reflection of the slip velocity in the coupler. A velocity feedback scheme eliminates the effect of the large motor's inertia on the output torque, increasing transparency. Hence, the torque output is disconnected from the large motor's inertia, resolving the antagonism between a large torque and better dynamic tracking of a classical scheme.

1) Control Scheme: Referring to Fig. 5(a), the control system specified two torque commands and one torque output, which can potentially enable a number of options and functions. Here, the primary control objective was to provide output torque τ regulation and tracking. One effect of this particular control objective was to disconnect the effects of the large motor dynamics from the experience of the user to improve transparency.

To achieve this objective, the reference torque τ d was compared to the torque produced by the coupler τ , which is proportional to the relative velocity between the large and small motors. The large motor was enslaved by the compensator C(z) from the torque error. As shown in Fig. 5(a), this controller comprised three polynomials. The first polynomial T (z) set the tracking dynamics. The other two polynomials R(z) and S(z) fixed the regulation dynamics. The small motor, open-loop controlled, reduced the transient errors to compensate for the slower response of the main stage. In the low frequencies, the regulation error was small; thus, the work expended to backdrive the large motor was entirely supplied by the power amplifier, reducing the effective inertia to that of the small motor. A polynomial pole placement controller was used to achieve effective regulation and tracking [START_REF] Ousaid | Haptic interface transparency achieved through viscous coupling[END_REF].

2) Performance: Forces as low as 5 mN were reliably detected by the users, a level of force which is in accordance with the detection performance of humans [START_REF] Dosher | Human interaction with small haptic effects[END_REF]. The dynamic range covered by the interface was from 5.2 mN to 5.7 N, which is the maximal force rendered by the interface. This ratio of 1000 between the smallest and largest forces rendered matches the range of the force sensor. In terms of haptic interfacing, the transparency and dynamics let users detect details that were ten times smaller in magnitude than when using a conventional design [START_REF] Ousaid | Haptic interface transparency achieved through viscous coupling[END_REF].

IV. MICROTELEOPERATION SYSTEM

A. Direct Coupling

A direct force feedback control scheme (see Fig. 10) required two homothetic gains α f and α x representing the force and displacement scaling factors, respectively, to adjust the scale between the macro-and the microenvironments. The force was scaled up by α f =0.5 × 10 5 . The position of the handle was scaled down by the gain α x and the result used as a set point for the transducer carrying the sample holder. For a good tradeoff between precision and manipulation comfort, the value of 1/α x was 1.4 × 10 -2 . The transfer function of the micropositioner M (z) could be considered as unity since it easily tracked the hand movements.

B. Stability

To test the stability of the proposed system, we used the Llewellyn's absolute criterion presented in Section II-C. The three conditions of the criteria were tested according to the selected homothetic gains as per Table II. Fig. 12. Four phases of interaction between a probe and a wet object: "approach," "pull-in," "retraction," and "pull-off."

As shown in Fig. 11, where the quantities C1, C2, and C3 are plotted, the criterion was satisfied over the entire system bandwidth, providing a sufficient condition for stability of the microteleoperation system.

C. Transparency

The impedance criteria was used successfully to analyze the transparency of the present system and reported in [START_REF] Ousaid | Stability and transparency analysis of a teleoperation chain for microscale interaction[END_REF]. The result shows that the impedance of the microenvironment is transmitted to the human operators with a high degree of transparency for two specific cases, when the slave is in noncontact mode (Z p → 0, no applied force) and the slave is in contact mode (Z p =0, applied force).

V. VALIDATION

A. Experimental Platform

The experimental bench employed to validate the system is depicted in Fig. 10. The platform was placed in a controlled environment to ensure the most favorable conditions. The physical setup includes three main components. The master device, unlike conventional haptic devices, employed a dual-stage architecture. As previously described, it had a large and a small motor connected through a viscous coupler, which under feedback control compensation provides very high mobility. Scaled up interaction forces are applied to the hand operator through this haptic interface, which is closely approximated to a pure force generator. The active force sensor includes an electrostatic comb motor controlled so that restoring forces are applied to the interacting probe in order to keep it immobile. It, thus, appears to be rigid, yet its internal energy can vary, providing the measurement. This sensing principle, based on a feedback control, overcomes the limitations related to passive sensors by actively stiffening the probe. The sensor was placed in an enclosure to isolate it from acoustic perturbations. The sample holder was supported by two positioners. A motorized micropositioning stage (Sutter MP-580) was used for coarse positioning. An electromagnetic voice coil transducer taken from a loudspeaker was used for fine positioning. A camera with appropriate optics enabled the experimenter to view the sample-probe interaction in realtime. Thin probes were obtained by stretching glass rods to the desired tip sizes. The system was controlled by an ordinary personal computer running the real-time operating system Linux/RTAI. The discrete-time controllers ran in a single loop at a rate of 1 kHz. Table II summarizes the values and units of experimental information, such as sampling rate or homothetic gains.

B. Tests and Results

All experiments were performed in a clean room to limit interference from environmental conditions. The system was tested on a benchmark case for microscale force sensing, measuring, and reproducing the time course of the interaction of a thin-glass probe with a water droplet.

A droplet of 0.8 mm diameter was pipetted to the tip of a needle supported by the sample holder. Such an interaction, illustrated in Fig. 12, has four main phases, "approach," "pullin," "retraction," and "pull-off." The droplet was approached toward the probe, contacted it and then was retracted to form an approach-retract cycle. The interaction force, measured by the sensor, was fed back to the user through the haptic device. Fig. 13(a) shows the evolution of the measured force as a function of time and as a function of displacement. In the approach phase, the force signal was reduced to noise. At the instant of contact, the probe was suddenly attracted by the droplet owing to capillary forces. Penetrating the droplet corresponded to a gradual increase of the interaction force. Retraction inverted the sign of the force and the interaction exhibited hysteresis until the contact snapped off for a certain deflection. Fig. 13(b) illustrates the force transmitted to the operator as a function of time and as a function of handle displacement. The force felt by the operator through the handle was very close to the scaled measured force. As shown in Fig. 13(c), the error between the estimation of the transmitted force and the force fed back to the user remained smaller than 1% and the error between the desired and the actual probe-sample displacement measured in handle displacement units was smaller than 0.1%, demonstrating the high degree of transparency of the system.

Finally, Fig. 14 shows the interaction force transmitted as a function of time and as a function of handle displacement to the operator in two different cases: with a probe of 80 µm in diameter, and with a probe of 140 µm in diameter. All the phases of the approach-retraction interaction curve are well represented, as shown in Fig. 14. The resulting curves clearly show the pull-in force corresponding to the instant when the droplet attracts the probe and the pull-off effort corresponding to the instant when the contact is broken during the retraction phase. The influence of the diameter of the probe is also clearly visible when comparing the two cases. A large probe increased contact surface between the droplet and the probe. As the system is sensitive to capillary forces, following the Young-Laplace law, the force measurements depend on the probe diameter according to 2πRγ, where R is the probe radius and γ the surface tension. The interaction curve illustrated in Fig. 14 showed that it was indeed the case for probe diameters of 80 and 140 µm.

The system remained stable and achieved a high degree of transparency since the stiffness of the water droplet was less than 0.05 N/m. The force felt by the operator through the interface handle was very close to the force measured by the sensor amplified by α f . The system was also tested by several users with experience in microscale phenomena. In all cases, subjects stated that various interaction forces were correctly rendered and praised the sense of realism provided by the richness of the interaction. From the point of view of physics, the system magnifies microscopic forces with a high degree of transparency, while unconditionally preserving system stability, so that the work done in real time by the user's hand is more than a million times that which is done in the microworld.

VI. CONCLUSION

A microteleoperation system with haptic feedback was described. This system uses an active microforce sensor, where the measurement was provided by an electrostatic actuator controlled to cancel the action of interaction forces. These forces were transmitted to the operators using a direct force feedback scheme and through a haptic interface capable of very high rendering fidelity. This dual-stage device employed two coupled motors for a single-axis force feedback and achieves a ratio of 1000 between the maximum and minimum displayed forces that can be as low as 5 mN. The force felt by the user was a pure homothetic function of the real interaction owing to the transparency of both the sensor and the haptic interface. The overall stability was guaranteed by the passivity of each component and was also verified using the Llewellyn's criteria. The system was validated by interactively probing the interaction forces of a glass probe with a water droplet over approachretraction cycles. The system showed great promise in several microscale applications, in particular, the characterization and manipulation of soft matter such as in biological samples, or in the measurement of noncontact forces.

Ongoing work includes the transfer of the operating principle of the active probe to MEMS devices in order to reduce the mass of the sensor and its size. The bandwidth of the active sensor is then expected to reach the kilohertz range. Future work is also concerned with extending the capabilities of the system to multiple degrees of freedom, both for the slave and the master devices.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. (a) Van der Waals and Coulomb forces result in an overall effect shown in the thicker line. (b) Same interaction "seen" by an AFM probe of appropriate stiffness. The thick solid lines represent sections of the interaction where accurate measurements can be made. The thin solid line represents the quasi-static elastic behavior of the probe.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Control schemes. (a) Direct force feedback control. (b) Indirect forceposition control.

C1:

  Re(p 11 ) ≥ 0 C2: Re(p 22 ) ≥ 0 C3: 2Re(p 11 )Re(p 22 ) -|p 12 p 21 |-Re(p 12 p 21 ) ≥ 0 where p 11 , p 12 , p 21 , and p 22 are the entries of the admittance matrix representing the system as a two-port network. This matrix relates the force signals f h and f p to the displacement signals ẋh and ẋp . This analysis is carried out for our setup in Section IV-B.

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. General view of mechanical elements of the sensor prototype.

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Control structure of the microteleoperation system. (a) Haptic interface control. T (z) determines tracking performance while S(z) and R(z) fix regulation performances. (b) Homothetic gains. (c) Control of the relative probe-sample displacement. (d) Active probe control. The physical quantities appearing in this diagram are r, the handle radius (35 mm), h, the sampling period (1 m•s), B 1 and B 2 , both equal to B the viscous coefficient of the coupler, and J 1 and J 2 represent the inertia of the large and small motors, respectively. TableIsummarizes the values and units of these coefficients. x h is the handle position. f p is the external force applied to the probe by the sample. τ is the viscous torque generated by the coupler and τ d is the desired handle torque.

Fig. 6 .Fig. 7 .

 67 Fig. 6. Synthesis of the controller from H ∞ optimal minimization.

Fig. 10 .Fig. 11 .

 1011 Fig. 10. Microteleoperation system.

Fig. 13 .

 13 Fig. 13. Interaction of a glass probe with a water droplet. (a) Evolution of the measured force as a function of time and as a function of the holder-droplet gap. (b) Force felt by the operator hand during the interaction as a function of time and as a function of handle displacement, that accurately replicates the microscopic interaction. (c) Error between the estimation of felt force and the scaled up measured force and error in the probe-sample displacement.

Fig. 14 .

 14 Fig.14. Force feedback felt by the operator during an approach-retract cycle.


Bruno Maggi

CERTOP Jens Thoemmes

From the point of view of work sociology

Introduction

This contribution aims to discuss from a sociological point of view the scope, value and limitations of the "Organization and Well-being" Research Program's approach. Given our interest in this Program's approach we will try first to present the most salient features and then make out the differences that exist with our approach. Basically, the approach of the O&W Program constitutes a rich and heuristic point of view. It is concerned with the work process. The approach distinguishes a) technical actions independently of operators, b) their accomplishments -therefore with the operators and the characteristics of the situation (space, time, modes and values), c) technical knowledge mobilized into action related to the object, the means and the process. This analytical distinction allows a description of the process which then leads to an interpretation of the organizational constraint, the choices that preceded it and the possibility of transformation of the work process with the goal of improving the well-being of workers.

To develop our reading of this approach we would first go over some of its features: distinction description/interpretation, work as a process of action and transformation, "the worker" at the center of such approach.

Then we will refer specifically to its theoretical framework in order to show the foundation of the approach and to expose what seems questionable, namely the way of conceiving interdisciplinary.

Finally, we end our reading by returning to the subject's autonomy, a broader debate that can be submitted for discussion with another vision of this concept in order to clarify its status in the approach presented here.

The elements of a research approach

The approach is summed up in its title: it is firstly analyzing organizational dynamics, here called "organization" in an "interdisciplinary" way and, secondly, to enable greater welfare of workers, the "well-being". The approach is practical in this double sense: to describe an observed reality and to promote better working conditions. The process is finalized with clearly stated objectives. For each research it offers a detailed protocol, methodical and multidimensional. In order to understand better the implementation of this approach, several elements must be underlined.

The first is the strict distinction between a description of the observed reality and the interpretation of the work situation. These two levels do not mix. This distinction allows for example other researchers, approaches or disciplines, to accept the description of a situation, while challenging the proposed interpretation.

The second element of the approach concerns the principle according to which work is understood as a process and a series of tasks that are differentiated according to the phases of this process. Take the case of research on the welding activity [START_REF] Rulli | Work analysis for prevention according to the "Organization and Well-being[END_REF]. For each of the welding work phases the description distinguishes: a) the expected result of the phase, for example the preparation of means for welding, b) technical actions, c) the performance of the actions by one or more operators, d) technical knowledge mobilized during this phase. The process continues with the interpretation of the description. At the heart of this other way of presenting the same stage of the work process, the researchers would characterize organizational constraints which appear in the analysis. Here are successively addressed the possible consequences in terms of inefficiency relative to the desired result, such as factors slowing the preparation of means for welding, but also the risks and damage to operators. The issue of health appears in the center of interest and interpretation. Therefore, indications for the improvement of working conditions, health and safety are made. In all phases, the same activity of description and interpretation is performed, thereby producing a detailed analysis in order to find the levers for action on the "wellbeing".

The third element of the approach is to associate the workers by giving them a place of "subject" in the envisaged process, not as an observation of the work of others, but as a transformation of the earlier work process to which the research contributes. The approach is seen as a transformation of the reality with the "workers" integrated to the point that "the analysis -with its transformational and re-design consequences -is entirely carried out and managed by the subjects themselves" (Maggi, Rulli, 2012 : 20).

These three elements, distinction between description and interpretation, phases of a same process and the integration of the subjects studied in the approach already indicate the characteristics of an organizational analysis that deviates from many other approaches used in the social sciences. The so called "method of organizational congruencies" (MOC) invites subjects to describe their work by distinguishing the analytical components of the process: the desired results, the actions taken to achieve goals, the technical qualification of actions, and the regulation of all elements.

In order to explain the ways of seeing social reality, we would like to highlight briefly some theoretical foundations of this approach. This will also allow us to address another element of the approach we have omitted to mention: "interdisciplinarity".

Theory and methods

The theory of organizational action (TOA, Maggi, 2003/2016) is based on epistemological characteristics that may be displayed briefly. Work is, as we mentioned, a "process" that is of the order of "social action". The reference to Max Weber (Soziales Handeln) is fundamental here (Weber, 1921[START_REF] Weber | Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der Verstehenden Soziologie[END_REF]. The subject acts according to his sense-meaning which is oriented by the act of another. The organization then refers to "the regulatory aspect of the process of social action" (Maggi, Rulli, 2012: 6), to the constraints that it exerts on the subjects. But acting subjects are central to the process (design, implementation) and organizational choices.

The focus on "well-being" of the TOA refers to a humanist tradition. The "interest" is clearly located around health and includes the normative act of the researcher. We can call this a non positivist theory. Furthermore, the TOA is part of the legacy of sociology of work, especially that of Georges Friedmann, without sharing his pessimism nor his Marxist theory (Friedmann, 1956(Friedmann, /1963)). The wellbeing concerned is not that of a class, but of a potential transformation of the organization, for example resulting from a research command from business favoring the work of workers who are part of the methodological device. In this sense well-being is a "pragmatic" goal that ultimately could serve both sides (labor and capital).

The focus is mainly on the organizational choice of work, including Taylorism that is not regarded as a postulate, but as an organizational constraint that can change. It's one of the differences with an alternative experience of Ivar Oddone in occupational psychology and renewed forms of the "worker model of knowledge" that has sought to transform largely relations of production incorporating also the subject in the research. The method called "doppelganger" is fundamentally different from the approach of the O&W Program: "If there was someone exactly like you from a physical point of view, what would you tell him about how to behave in the factory in relation to the task, to the colleagues, to the company's hierarchy, to the union (or other workers' organizations?" (Oddone et al, 1977: 127) 1 .

The experience of the subject is passed here by the advice given to the investigator, while the O&W approach replaces this method to avoid the pitfalls of subjectivism and objectivism. Through the prism of well-being it confronts organizational choices in a process of change led by the workers. The expressions of autonomy, constraint and regulation are used to enter the objective and subjective characteristics of the process and thus to identify the organization in order to place the subject in the situation of transformation.

The other difference with the O&W approach is the epistemological position around the doppelganger method that seeks to combine cognitive analysis, subjectivist, causal, etc. The TOA judges this combined position "fragile". More fundamentally, the persistence of functionalism related to an insufficient questioning of Taylorism is criticized (Maggi, 2010a).

A final important element of the O&W approach concerns the concept of interdisciplinary research that we would like to discuss. We have never claimed that position and we do not have the experience to evaluate the substance of the disciplinary status of this approach. But we would like to generate, through a few remarks, a debate on that notion. We can only agree to the posture of cooperation between disciplines of the TOA but we wish that their scope was clarified.

In our first reading, interdisciplinarity requires exchange of analysis, methods and disciplines, it presupposes a transformation of the relationship between analysis. The O&W approach seems actually closer to multidisciplinary research where each discipline retains its specific concepts and methods. In our second reading, we could then go further, look at the theory and argue that the latter is not interdisciplinary, but un-disciplined, that is to say based on a distancing of "discipline".

We offer three additional meaning to that concept for the approach of the O&W Program: rejection of the discipline as a relevant part of the analysis, the transgression of disciplinary boundaries without replacing them by a new field and the replacement of discipline or of a perimeter of disciplines by the uniqueness of the theoretical framework.

First, the TOA has multiple inputs: ergonomics, law, sociology, psychology, language science, organization theory, economics, history, etc. But the TOA does not seem to embrace the idea of capitalization of knowledge within a discipline and for good reason. The dominant paradigms within disciplines, and the "normal" science, are rather rejected, because they are seen as a deterrent to the production of knowledge. In this "disciplinary" perspective a discussion among representatives or "spokesmen" of them seems almost impossible or at least undesirable.

Second, always against the interdisciplinary approach, the TOA is not pursuing the Weberian or Marxist idea of a general social science because this fact would exclude other important areas for research such as medicine or biology. The underlying project, but that remains to be determined, would be more that of a general science of work, but strictly focused on its purpose.

Thirdly, and more fundamentally, what matters to the TOA is the theoretical orientation, regardless of discipline. It is the commensurability of theoretical frameworks which is the criterion of collaboration and not the presence of several disciplines. The latter is desirable, but only to the extent that the theories (and hence the methods) can be considered as "close" from an epistemological perspective. One could say that the TOA is not an (attempted) interdisciplinary theory, but "undisciplined", and pushing a bit too far our argument, it shares neither its methods nor its theory and favours basically the disappearance of disciplines. We underline here a form of incoherence of the "inter-disciplinary" posture.

Back to the subject's autonomy

The approach and its theory cannot be observed from the perspective of Sociology, but only from a sociological point of view. In this perspective we present an unrepresentative special interrogation of a discipline that knows multiple approaches, including within the sociology of work. We share many views with the TOA, particularly his interest in the organization as a process, empirical research, avoiding the pitfall of objectivism and subjectivism, structures and actions, etc. The common interest for theories of social regulation [START_REF]Les régulations dans les organisations: Régulation de contrôle et régulation autonome[END_REF] and organizational work [START_REF] Terssac | Autonomie dans le travail[END_REF]) reinforces this proximity.

One of the issues that should be discussed concerns the autonomy of the subject in the proposed approach. This concept covers indeed multiple meanings for the only area of work [START_REF] Terssac | Autonomie dans le travail[END_REF]2012). It gave rise to an extensive debate on the definition that we will be unable to return. O&W's approach differentiates fundamentally discretion of the subject (various preset options, or without prescriptions) and autonomy (the ability to produce one's own rules). "Discretion indicates areas of action in a controlled process where the acting operator has to decide and choose in a dependency framework" [START_REF] Maggi B | De l'agir organisationnel[END_REF]/2016: Livre II, 16; 45; and about the subject the dedicated third chapter, namely: 90-101). Autonomy overcomes the dependency framework. In the TOA each individual is capable of producing its own rules. [START_REF]Les régulations dans les organisations: Régulation de contrôle et régulation autonome[END_REF] sees social regulation as the result of a confrontation (compromise) between control and autonomy. In this theory the control is strategic and aims to influence from outside on the performers and not just by prescriptions, by regulations or by the margins given to operators: the claim of control is wider and affirmed. Inversely autonomy is strategic: the performers seek to assert their position. It corresponds to a project that grows in a power relationship. For this reason we also believe that despite the heuristic nature of the approach O&W regarding health, and that's what counts in the end, the approach remains locked in a relationship between what is prescribed and real life. "Autonomy provides the solution in cases of programme's inadequacy […] discretion refers to parts of a programme that are not subject to procedures" (De la Garza, Maggi, Weil-Fassina 2011: 7-8). Autonomy and discretion are "functional" in relation to a pre-established agenda.

For us, it is not useful to distinguish between discretion (false autonomy) and (real) autonomy, since a definition of the action of the performers may be uncertain (is it a choice among proposed options or a self-generated rule?). Then this analytical distinction is subject to validation or challenge by the regulatory process itself. Discretionary choices can turn within the process into an autonomous rule and vice versa.

Our conception of autonomy is less demanding on its content than on its aim. The use of discretion may be "autonomous" if it fits against the control regulation. The option chosen by the worker may (under certain conditions) not be suitable for the hierarchy. If one can choose formally to take 4 weeks annual leave all of a sudden, the employer may be afraid at some point to have difficulties to meet the demands of customers. Maintaining that allowed choice of a long vacation by the worker may be interpreted under certain conditions as an autonomous action. Moreover, a prescription can be perfectly executed, but facing the aim of the control regulation. Applying a rule to the letter may be a sign and expression of a challenge to control. This type of autonomy is as real as the creation of one's own rules. So the meeting between autonomy and control is inherently uncertain in its form and in its results. The creation and use of the rules are subject to the power relationship between autonomy and control. We see that autonomy in these cases is not always the ability to produce one's own rules, but sometimes it is executing according to the rules, including those dedicated to control, in order to assert power. In other words, autonomy is not necessarily a characteristic of the individual, or a functional necessity that could define the substance previously, but only a projected will to oppose the claims of control. This definition is intended to enlarge the scope of what can be considered as autonomy unlike a reading that is too focused on the subject of autonomy, which nonetheless remains important. To harden the line of our position: autonomy in this context is relational and not substantial. It does not refer necessarily to prior capacity or to register tasks or actions that would be by definition "autonomous" nor to freedom from a dependency framework. For us, overcoming the dependency framework of work and business, or just the prescription as is the case for the TOA, is not a condition for autonomy. Instead, autonomy is built in a dependency framework that can be exceeded in some cases. In return the dependency framework needs autonomy to assert power and to rebuild.

We can finally ask the question concerning the transformation of the labor process, if the autonomy of the subject needs a research device, for example that of the O&W Program to express themselves, to be guided or to transform the system. One might distinguish here the "spontaneous" autonomy of the subject, and the "assisted" autonomy by the O&W Program's approach. Despite all the space that the TOA gives the subject in relation to other theories, one can examine this dependence of the subject from the researcher in the effective regulation of the process, in learning and knowledge production.

Then, the power relationship from our perspective is not between individuals, but "that which exists between a group and those who want to adjust from outside" (Reynaud, 1988: 11). We know that the TOA provides the individual the same place in its theory than the group. For our part, we reserve the term autonomy to a collective strategy in the world of work. Our research objects (working time, negotiations) showed us that we seldom assert alone our own autonomy in work and in fact there are at least a core of a few people carrying an autonomous project [START_REF] Thoemmes | Temps, travail et régulations : en quête du processus d'action multiscalaire/ Tempo, lavoro e regolazione: verso il processo d'azione a più livelli[END_REF]. This choice is not only theoretical, but also heuristic. It seems to us that to qualify the autonomy of a sole person and to link it by aggregation to a group makes it more difficult to discover the collective strategies and observe their peculiarity, social links, values and ways of action that form around. For us, autonomy is therefore immediately collective, thus freeing the concept of microeconomic theory and utilitarianism which defines the collective well-being as the aggregation of individual welfare. This latter view continues to exert considerable influence in the social sciences in various approaches. It basically reflects a fear and distrust of the collective and the fact that ultimately autonomy is supposed to be an individual affair.

Conclusion

Our route led us to a presentation of some elements of the interdisciplinary approach of the Program "Organization and Well-being", to its relationship with the theory of organizational action (TOA), to a discussion of some points that seem problematic. In particular, two key concepts that are interdisciplinary research and autonomy undoubtedly deserve further discussion to understand, if the differences we have tried to establish are real or just the result of a differentiated use of terms. Nevertheless, the problem of definition often refers to differences in the conception of reality. We would also like to state here that the points of convergence with the approach are far more numerous than the differences that we tried to explain. One of these convergences is the need to depart from the approaches who use the argument of authority, their institutional seats and more generally their claim to exclusivity of the analysis of the social. The acceptance of a plurality of views in a discipline as well as the opening posture on the contribution of other potential disciplines to one's own field of exploration seems fundamental to allow a renewal of theories and empirical approaches.

« Se ci fosse un'altra persona perfettamente uguale a te dal punto di vista fisico, come gli diresti di comportarsi in fabbrica rispetto alla mansione, ai compagni di lavoro, alla gerarchia aziendale, all'organizzazione sindacale (o ad altre organizzazioni dei lavoratori)?», transated by us.