Tuesday 1/23 at 10 AM: Computer Science Colloquium Talk
Title:
Coordinating Multiple Moving Objects: From
Robots to Microdroplets
Speaker:
Srinivas Akella Dept. of Computer Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York 12180 http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sakella/
Abstract:
Coordinating the collision-free motions of multiple moving objects is
a challenging problem, with applications ranging from automotive
workcells to lab-on-a-chip devices. I will first describe our work on
the coordination of multiple robots with dynamics constraints, with
applications in manufacturing cells and UAV coordination. I will
discuss two variants of this problem when the paths (or trajectories)
of the robots are specified: when the robots have simple double
integrator dynamics, and when the robots are manipulator arms with
complex dynamics, and show how to automatically generate minimum time
solutions. I will then describe the coordination of microdroplets in
digital microfluidic "lab-on-a-chip" systems. A digital microfluidic
system controls individual droplets of chemicals on a planar array of
electrodes; the chemical analysis is performed by moving, mixing, and
splitting droplets. The same array can be used for multiple analyses
in parallel. This promising new technology can impact processing of
biochemical assays by offering tremendous flexibility and parallelism
through software control. Since the simultaneous coordination of even
tens of droplets on the array is extremely difficult to program
manually, we have developed algorithms to automatically enable the
flexible coordination of hundreds of droplets. I will discuss our
ongoing work in applying these algorithms to problems in biology.
Speaker biography:
Srinivas Akella is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science
department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. He was
a Beckman Fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and
Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, before joining
RPI. He received his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Madras and his Ph.D. in Robotics from the School of Computer Science
at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER
award. His research interests are in robotic motion and manipulation
planning, and in developing algorithms for applications in automation,
microsystems, and bioinformatics.
Our end-of-course robot exhibition will take place on January
25, starting at 9:30 AM. Please make sure you are available at least
through lunch hour.
Final papers due on the last day of Winter Study: January 26.
Please submit them by e-mail as PDF documents.
