Bruce Randall Donald

Bruce Randall Donald
Associate Professor
brd@cs.cornell.edu
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/brd/brd.html
Ph.D. MIT, 1987

My interests include robotics, micro-electro-mechanical systems, computational geometry, and AI. Robotics is the science that seeks to forge an intelligent computational connection between perception and action.

Recently 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. Graduate student Karl Böhringer, Electrical Engineering Professor Noel MacDonald and I are building a massively parallel array of microactuators in the Cornell National Nanofabrication Laboratory. The array, containing over 15000 actuators in 1 square inch, 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). We are working with researchers at Stanford University to build and test a second-generation array of polyimide thermal/electrostatic actuators, which can be used to manipulate flip-chips. In this work, we are building the control system and implementing the Cornell algorithms for micro-manipulation.

This work forms a research program in distributed manipulation-systems in which distributed systems of sensors, actuators, and computers cooperate to perform manipulation tasks.

University Activities

On leave, 1995-96, at Stanford University and Interval Research Corporation, Palo Alto, CA.

Professional Activities

Associate Editor/Area Chair: Robotics: Intelligence and Computation
ARPA ISAT summer study on cost-effective, capable, and configurable multiple robots
Program Committee: Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR)
Member: Impact Task Force on Computational Geometry
Referee: IEEE (PAMI, SMC, ICRA, TRA); AAAI; IJCAI; International Journal Robotics Research; NSF; Springer-Verlag; Harvard University Press; Discrete and Computational Geometry; Algorithmica; ACM STOC; ACM SCOG; SIGGRAPH

Lectures

Theoretical issues in sensor invariants. Invited tutorial. IEEE/SICE/RSJ International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems. Washington, DC, June, 1996.
Toward ubiquitous, distributed manipulation: teams of mobile robots and arrays of microelectromechanical silicon cilia. Interval Research Corporation, Palo Alto, CA, May 1996.
Massively-parallel algorithms for micro-manipulation. Computer Science Colloquium, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, April 7, 1996.
Toward ubiquitous, distributed manipulation. Computer Science, University of Washington, March 1996.
____. Computer Science, Duke University, March 1996.
____. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University, March 1996.
Minimalism for distributed manipulation. Invited speaker. IEEE ICRA Workshop on Minimalism in Robot Manipulation, Minneapolis, MN, March 1996.
Toward ubiquitous, distributed manipulation. Computer Science Colloquium, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, December 1995.
____. Robotics Institute Colloquium, Robotics Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, December 1995.
Distributed manipulation using mobile robots and MEMS. Computer Science Colloquium, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 1995.
Distributed manipulation using massively parallel micro-fabricated actuator arrays. Berkeley Engineering Systems Colloquium, U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 1995.
Small and large: Distributed robotic manipulation. Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1995.

Publications

Application challenges to computational geometry, The computational geometry impact task force report. Technical Report TR-521-96, Princeton University, April 1996. See http://www.cs.princeton. edu/~chazelle/taskforce/CGreport.ps (with Chazelle et al.)
Classification and lower bounds for MEMS arrays and vibratory parts feeders: What programmable vector fields can (and cannot) do. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Minneapolis, MN, April 1996 (with K.-F. Bohringer and N.C. MacDonald).
Single crystal silicon actuator arrays for micro-manipulation tasks. IEEE Workshop on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), San Diego, CA, February 1996 (with K.-F. Bohringer and N.C. MacDonald).
Robust geometric algorithms for sensor planning. Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, Toulouse, France, 1996 (with A. Briggs).
Upper and lower bounds for programmable vector fields with applications to MEMS and vibratory plate parts feeders. Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, Toulouse, France, 1996 (with K.-F. Bohringer and N. MacDonald).
Information invariants in robotics. Artificial Intelligence 72, 1-2 (January 1995), 217-304.
Provably good approximation algorithms for optimal kinodynamic planning for Cartesian robots and open chain manipulators. Algorithmica 14, 6 (1995), 443-479 (with P. Xavier).
Provably good approximation algorithms for optimal kinodynamic planning: Robots with decoupled dynamics bounds. Algorithmica 14, 6 (1995), 480-530 (with P. Xavier).
Moving furniture with teams of autonomous mobile robots. Proceedings, IEEE/Ro-botics Society of Japan International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Pittsburgh, PA, 1995 (with J. Jennings and D. Rus).
Distributed robotic manipulation: Experiments in minimalism. International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, Stanford, CA, 1995.
Information invariants for distributed manipulation. First Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics. A. K. Peters, Boston, MA, ed. K. Goldberg et al., 1995 (with J. Jennings and D. Rus).

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