Latest articles
Evaluating the Energy Impact of Design Decisions in Web Applications
Introduction Software systems represent a significant and growing share of global energy consumption. Recent studies estimate that digital technologies account for approximately 6% of worldwide energy usage, with an annual increase of around 6.2%. This growing concern requires organizations, such as Berger-Levrault, to measure and reduce the environmental footprint of their software systems. During software development, architects explore various design solutions, including architectural styles (e.g., monolithic, microservices), programming languages (e.g.,
Gabriel Darbord Ph.D. thesis defense: “Automatic test generation to help modernize our applications”
Friday 5th December at 9a.m. Paris time, Gabriel Darbord, Ph.D. Candidate has defended his thesis named “Automatic test generation to help modernize our applications”. His thesis defense took place in Lille, France. Take a look at the summary below. This thesis is fully in line with the partnership between Berger-Levrault and Inria, which aims to
Enhancing Functional Testing Efficiency in Industrial Large-Scale Applications: Pertinent Test Selection
Introduction In modern software development, application reliability relies on effective testing strategies. Altough unit and integration tests secure internal consistency, functional testing remains essential for validating user-facing behaviors. For large-scale applications like Alpha Tool, running thousands of functional tests is challenging: it consumes vast resources, slows down delivery, and complicates analysis. This article explores the
Investigating Hand-Bound Pads for AR Input Using Hand-Tracking Only
What is Augmented Reality, and how is it used for Augmented Maintenance? Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing human-computer interaction, allowing digital content to be seamlessly integrated into the physical world. Unlike traditional desktop or mobile interfaces, AR enables spatially situated interactions, where virtual content is embedded within the user’s
Making Large Numbers Count: Cognitively Informed Alternatives to Log-Scale Bar Charts
From carbon emissions to national budgets, we’re frequently asked to interpret values that span from thousands to millions and billions. These wide ranges—what we call Orders of Magnitude Values (OMVs)—are cognitively demanding for the general public and hard to represent with common charts. So, how can we make sense of large numbers in order to
Explanation of the Coruscant Mobile project
This research is the result of a collaboration between Ali Can Kocabiyikoglu, Pascal Zaragoza, and Vincent Laval, part of the AI Laboratory | BL Research Team. The Challenge of Modern Maintenance Support A maintenance technician faces an unfamiliar “Error 20” on a medical device. Their hands are busy with tools, eyes on the equipment, yet
From law to customer in seconds: automating legal compliance
Adherence to legal mandates is crucial for businesses, as failure to comply can lead to substantial penalties. In an environment where legal documents are constantly evolving, companies increasingly rely on automated processes to streamline analysis and to ensure ongoing compliance. The full automation process typically involves: (1) extracting legal terms and their relationships, and (2)
Airflow: feedback on BL.Predict and Foundation use cases
Introduction In a context where the automation of data workflows has become a fundamental pillar of project reliability and scalability, Apache Airflow has established itself as an essential tool within the technical ecosystem of our BL Research team, dedicated to Research and Technological Innovation at Berger-Levrault. Whether orchestrating text document processing chains or driving transformations
Applying Agentic AI towards enabling computerized maintenance management systems
In the critical domain of Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), solutions like CARL Source empower businesses to efficiently create, schedule, and manage maintenance tasks. These platforms are widely used to coordinate work orders for repairing industrial machinery across multiple factories worldwide. *Update: Coruscant is the name given internally to this R&D project. The commercial name
Enhancing Domain-Specific RAG Applications through Synthetic Fine-Tuning
Keywords: Synthetic Data, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Small Language Models (7B LLM), Large Language Models (LLM like GPT-4o or GPT4.5), Model Adaptation, Efficient Model Tuning, Low-Resource Fine-Tuning, Synthetic Fine-Tuning. 1. Introduction In the context of our Research & Innovation efforts at Berger-Levrault, we are exploring how large language models (LLMs) can enhance customer support through intelligent,
Hamza Safri Ph.D. thesis defense: “Federated learning for the IoT : Application for Industry 4.0”
Thuesday 24th June at 3pm Paris time, Hamza Safri, Ph.D. Candidate has defended his thesis named “Federated learning for the IoT: Application for Industry 4.0”. His thesis defense took place at the Inria Minatec Grenoble, Grenoble, France. Take a look at the summary below. Keywords: Model generalization, predictive maintenance, industrial IoT, federated learning, edge network,
PMS 2026 – 34th International Conference on Program Comprehension (Toulouse – France)
ICPC – 34th International Conference on Program Comprehension (Rio de Janeiro – Brazil)
CHI 2026 – International conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Barcelona – Spain)
Forum for advances in visualization and visual analytics – VIS 2025 (Vienna – Austria)
Yearbook Research & Innovation 2025: Governed, Responsible, and reality-based Research!
We are proud to announce the publication of our 2025 Research & Innovation Yearbook! More than just an annual review, this document marks a structural shift in the way we design and conduct research. Innovation is no longer seen as a simple technological promise, but as a demanding discipline, confronted with the constraints of reality
Camille Dupré Ph.D. thesis defense: “Pad-based Interaction in Mixed Reality environments”
Thursday 18th December at 2p.m. Paris time, Camille Dupré, Ph.D. Candidate has defended her thesis named “Pad-based Interaction in Mixed Reality environments”. Her thesis defense took place at the LISN, in Gif-sur-Yvette (660 Av. des Sciences Bâtiment, 91190), France. Take a look at the summary below. Summary Mixed Reality (MR) environments integrate virtual elements into
Nihed Bendahman Ph.D. thesis defense: “Evaluation and mitigation of hallucinations in automatic summarization in the specific context of legal documents”
Monday 15th December at 2p.m. Paris time, Nihed Bendahman, Ph.D. Candidate has defended her thesis named “Evaluation and mitigation of hallucinations in automatic summarization in the specific context of legal documents”. Her thesis defense took place at the IRIT Research Laboratory, in Toulouse, France. Take a look at the summary below. Summary Legal monitoring is a
Gabriel Darbord Ph.D. thesis defense: “Automatic test generation to help modernize our applications”
Friday 5th December at 9a.m. Paris time, Gabriel Darbord, Ph.D. Candidate has defended his thesis named “Automatic test generation to help modernize our applications”. His thesis defense took place in Lille, France. Take a look at the summary below. This thesis is fully in line with the partnership between Berger-Levrault and Inria, which aims to
Berger-Levrault strengthens its ties with AI startups!
We are proud to announce that we have joined Hub France IA, the largest association dedicated to artificial intelligence in France. This network now brings together more than 250 members—companies, startups, research laboratories, and institutions—who share the same goal: to accelerate the development and adoption of AI in France and Europe. Getting closer to the
Celebrating New PhDs from the BL.Research Team!
At Berger-Levrault, research is more than a mission—it’s a shared adventure. As the new academic year begins, we are proud to celebrate the success of four of our colleagues from the BL.Research team, who have reached a major milestone in their scientific journeys: the defense of their doctoral theses. These achievements are the result of
Hamza Safri Ph.D. thesis defense: “Federated learning for the IoT : Application for Industry 4.0”
Thuesday 24th June at 3pm Paris time, Hamza Safri, Ph.D. Candidate has defended his thesis named “Federated learning for the IoT: Application for Industry 4.0”. His thesis defense took place at the Inria Minatec Grenoble, Grenoble, France. Take a look at the summary below. Keywords: Model generalization, predictive maintenance, industrial IoT, federated learning, edge network,
ESUG 2025: Six contributions and 2 prizes for the Software Engineering Lab team!
Congratulations to our PhDs Nicolas Hlad, Aless Hosry, Benoit Verhaeghe and Pascal Zaragoza from Berger-Levrault’s BL.Research team for their participation in the 2025 edition of the ESUG (European Smalltalk User Group) conference! This year’s conference took place from July 1-4 in Gdansk, Poland. The theme was innovation in Smalltalk technologies and their use in software
