Page type: faculty

Bruce Randall Donald;Bruce Randall Donald;Associate Professor;brd@cs.cornell.edu;Ph.D. MIT, 1987; Weather in Palo Alto.;My Official Departmental Home Page.; Cornell Robotics and Vision Laboratory;Dan Huttenlocher and I founded the;Cornell Robotics and Vision Laboratory in 1991.;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.; Demos;Massively parallel micro-fabricated actuator arrays.;;MPEG video of Tommy chasing Lily. Tommy and Lily are mobile robots we built. Using algorithms developed;by the;vision group in our;lab, Lily can track Tommy and follow him, using visual information;alone. This video shows Lily's view of the `chase.';Face Morphing.;Selected Recent Publications;;K.-F. Böhringer, B. R. Donald, and N. C. MacDonald, Upper and;Lower Bounds for Programmable Vector Fields with Applications to MEMS;and Vibratory Parts Feeders, International Workshop on the;Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, Toulouse, France (1996).;;A.J. Briggs and B. R. Donald, Robust;Geometric Algorithms for Sensor Planning, International;Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, Toulouse,;France (1996).;;K.-F. Böhringer, B. R. Donald, and N. C. MacDonald,;Single-Crystal Silicon Actuator Arrays for Micro Manipulation Tasks,;IEEE Workshop on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS),;San Diego, California (February 1996).;;K.-F. Böhringer, B. R. Donald, and N. C. MacDonald,;Classification and Lower Bounds for MEMS Arrays and Vibratory Parts Feeders:;What Programmable Vector Fields Can (and Cannot) Do - Part I,;IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA),;Minneapolis, Minnesota (April 1996).;; K.-F. Böhringer, B. R. Donald, and N. C. MacDonald,; New and;Improved Manipulation Algorithms for MEMS Arrays and Vibratory Parts;Feeders: What Programmable Vector Fields Can (and Cannot) Do - Part;II,;IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation;(ICRA), Minneapolis, Minnesota (April 1996).; Provably;Good Approximation Algorithms for Optimal Kinodynamic Planning: Robots;with Decoupled Dynamics Bounds (with P. Xavier) Algorithmica; (Vol 14, no 6) (1995). pp. 443-479.; Provably;Good Approximation Algorithms for Optimal Kinodynamic Planning for;Cartesian Robots and Open Chain Manipulators (with P. Xavier);Algorithmica (Vol 14, no 6) (1995). pp. 480-530.; .;Kinodynamic Motion Planning (with P. Xavier, J.;Canny, and J. Reif) Journal of the ACM, Vol. 40, No. 5, Nov.,;1993. pp. 1048-1066.;;Information Invariants for Distributed Manipulation (with J.;Jennings and D.;Rus) in International Journal of Robotics Research, (in;press) (1996).;B. R. Donald, J. Jennings, and D. Rus, Minimalism +;Distribution = Supermodularity , Journal of Experimental and;Theoretical Artificial Intelligence (JETAI), (in press) 1996.; . I am; writing a book entitled; Information Invariants in Robotics. A draft of the first;quarter of this book appeared as a paper in Artificial;Intelligence. Here it is:;Information Invariants in Robotics. Revised MS based on the paper;"On Information Invariants in Robotics," Artificial;Intelligence Vol. 72 (Jan, 1995) pp. 217-304.;;Distributed Robotic Manipulation: Experiments in;Minimalism, in; International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, (ISER);Stanford, CA (1995).;;Moving Furniture with Teams of Automonous Mobile Robots, (with J.;Jennings and D.;Rus) in; Proc.~IEEE/Robotics Society of;Japan International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems, (IROS);Pittsburgh, PA (1995).;; Sensorless;Manipulation Using Massively Parallel Micro-fabricated Actuator;Arrays (with;K.-F. Böhringer, R. Mihailovich, and Noel C. MacDonald),; Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and;Automation, San Diego, CA (May, 1994). A;demo and more detailed explanation.; .; Program Mobile Robots in Scheme(with J. Rees);Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation;Nice, France (May, 1992), pp. 2681-2688.;;Information Invariants for Distributed Manipulation (with J.;Jennings and D.;Rus) in; The First Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of;Robotics, A. K. Peters, Boston, MA. ed. R. Wilson and;J.-C.Latombe (1994).;;Automatic Sensor Configuration for;Task-Directed Planning (with;Amy Briggs), Proceedings 1994;IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, San Diego,;CA (May 1994).; Other;Publications.;Recent Theses and Papers of PhD Students; Patrick Xavier, PhD 1992. Except for the thesis, these TR's are; mostly superseded by three, more recent journal papers listed starting here.; Amy;Briggs, PhD 1994.; (Her Papers and Thesis).;Russell Brown, PhD 1995.; (His Papers and Thesis).; Jim Jennings.;Karl-F. Böhringer.; Post-Docs Trained in Our;Lab;; Daniela Rus.;; Jonathan Rees.;; Dinesh Pai.;More papers are avalable through the;Cornell CS TR server.; Some other papers are listed here.;Cornell CS TR version of my Online Tech Reports;Cornell Library Catalog;CS TR index;Obtaining Copies of Papers;Copies of our papers are available via anonymous FTP.;Pictures; We have developed a team;of small autonomous mobile robots that can move;furniture around in our lab.;<--- Click here for a group portrait of our robots.; Click here;to see a picture of;Tommy and Lily mobot pushing a couch.; Click here;to see a picture of;Tommy and Lily rotating a couch.; Click here to see a;picture of;Tommy the mobile robot, drawn by Loretta Pompilio.; Click here;to see pictures of people and robots working in the lab.; Our lab was on The Discovery;Channel ("Beyond 2000") and you can find out more about it here.;Fun;A Poem by Alfred, the Mail Agent.;Family Pictures.; I play in;Harmful If Swallowed.; in Ithaca.; I sometimes play with; in California.;More;Other people and robots in the;Cornell Robotics and Vision Laboratory.;Cornell Robotics and Vision Laboratory home page.; Other people in the Cornell CS department; Click here;for search tools and information access stuff.; Return to Cornell CS Top-Level;Why I say click;here.; "You will have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood."; --- Merian C. Cooper to Fay Wray;