Stephen Derby

About

Stephen Derby is a robotics and automation researcher whose career has spanned foundational challenges in industrial robot safety, motion planning, and advanced manufacturing. Based at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Derby has made enduring contributions across several interconnected domains. His early work on robot safety and collision avoidance (1986, 39 citations) addressed the growing industrial need to protect workers as robotic deployment accelerated, establishing principles that remain relevant to this day. Simultaneously, his research into simulating robot arm motion profiles (1983, 23 citations) helped engineers achieve smoother, more efficient robot movements by adapting cam-motion techniques to multi-link systems. Derby's path planning algorithms for kinematically redundant robots and cooperating robotic systems represent particularly sophisticated contributions, offering general, CAD-compatible solutions to one of robotics' most complex geometric challenges. His applied manufacturing research extended into electronics remanufacturing, developing and statistically analyzing robotic systems for surface-mount component replacement on printed circuit boards (1998, 23 citations). More recently, Derby turned his expertise toward sustainable energy, investigating automated assembly processes for polymer-electrode membrane fuel cells (2011, 14 citations), addressing the critical transition from prototype to high-volume production. Collectively, his work reflects a career dedicated to making robotic systems safer, smarter, and more manufacturable.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   A Safety and Collision Avoidance System for Industrial Robots

   39 citations · 1986
2. 2
   Designed experiments to investigate the solder joint quality output of a prototype automated surface mount replacement system

   23 citations · 1998
3. 3
   Simulating Motion Elements of General-Purpose Robot Arms

   23 citations · 1983
4. 4
   Fuel Cell ASAP: Two Iterations of an Automated Stack Assembly Process and Ramifications for Fuel Cell Design-for-Manufacture Considerations

   14 citations · 2011
5. 5
   Two-Phase Path Planning for Robots With Six or More Joints

   8 citations · 1990
6. 6
   Planning collision-free paths for kinematically redundant robots by selectively mapping configuration space

   6 citations · 1988
7. 7
   An Algorithm for CAD-Based Generation of Collision-Free Robot Paths

   5 citations · 1988
8. 8
   Designed experiments to analyze the solder joint quality output of a SMD remanufacturing system

   5 citations · 2002
9. 9
   A method for planning collision free trajectories for two cooperating robots

   4 citations · 1992
10. 10
    A Divide-and-Conquer Method for Planning Collision Free Paths for Cooperating Robots

    4 citations · 1992

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links