[UCI-Calit2] Coordinating Multiple Moving Objects

Anna Lynn Spitzer aspitzer at calit2.uci.edu
Thu May 15 14:25:38 PDT 2008


Title:		Coordinating Multiple Moving Objects: From Robots to  Microdroplets

Speaker: 		Srinivas Akella
              	Department of Computer Science
              	Center for Automation Technologies & Systems
              	Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
                	http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sakella/

Time:			10:30 a.m.

Date:			Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Location:		Calit2 Building, Room 3008

Abstract:

Coordinating the collision-free motions of multiple moving objects is a challenging problem, with applications ranging from semiconductor fabs to lab-on-a-chip devices. Akella will first describe his work on the coordination of multiple robots using math programming formulations, with applications in automation cells and UAV coordination. He 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 an array of electrodes; the chemical analysis is performed by moving, mixing, and splitting droplets. This promising new technology can impact applications in biological research, point-of-care clinical testing, and biochemical sensing by offering tremendous flexibility and parallelism through software control. Since the simultaneous coordination of even a few droplets on the array is extremely difficult to program manually, his group has developed scalable array layouts and network-style droplet routing algorithms to automatically enable the flexible coordination of hundreds of droplets. This work is among the first to present comprehensive droplet coordination algorithms for these biochips. Akella will discuss his ongoing work on enabling hardware limited electrode addressing, and his goal of developing versatile digital microfluidic biochips for applications in biology.


Speaker biography:

Srinivas Akella is with the computer science department and Center for Automation Technologies and Systems at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. He received his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He was a Beckman Fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, before joining RPI as an assistant professor. He has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and was selected as a Rensselaer Faculty Early Research Career Honoree. His research interests are in developing optimization and geometric algorithms for applications in robotics, automation, microsystems, and biotechnology.


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