Bruce Randall Donald
Associate Professor
brd@cs.cornell.edu
Progress in Robotics Research
My interests include
robotics,
microelectromechanical systems,
geometric algorithms, and artificial intelligence.
Robotics is the science that seeks
to forge an intelligent, computational connection between perception
and action.
Working with graduate student Jim Jennings, research associate Daniela
Rus, graduate student
Russell Brown, and lab alumnus Jonathan Rees
(now at MIT), we developed a team of autonomous
mobile robots that can perform sophisticated distributed manipulation tasks
(such as moving furniture). The robots run
robust SPMD protocols that are completely asynchronous and require no
communication. With grad student Karl
Böhringer and EE Professor Noel MacDonald, we are building a
massively parallel array of microactuators in the
Cornell National Nanofabrication Laboratory. The array
is a SCREAM chip containing over 11,000 actuators in 1 square
centemeter, and can orient small parts without sensory
feedback. Our microfabricated actuator arrays could be used to
construct programmable parts-feeders (at any scale), or to build
self-propelled IC's (walking VLSI chips.) Graduate student Amy
Briggs worked with Dan Huttenlocher's vision group to develop a sensor planning and surveillance system for a team of
mobile robots. The robots use on-board vision to detect and
intercept targets in the lab.