Q+A with BRETT
11/01/15 — “How can we get a robot to think about situations it's never seen before?” asks EECS professor Pieter Abbeel. In this Q&A, BRETT, resident robot in Abbeel's lab, describes its experiences with deep learning.
AI & robotics
Pi-Bot inventors, STEM proselytizers dive into ‘Shark Tank’
10/30/15 — Lavanya Jawaharlal, a senior in mechanical engineering, and her engineer sister Melissa founded STEM Center USA to open up access to the fields of science, technology, engineering and math to more diverse students.
Dash launches new toy robot that you desperately need
10/20/15 IEEE Spectrum — Berkeley-born Dash Robotics, home of the serious toy robot, has just launched a brand new one that's easier to build and program and faster than ever: the Kamigami.
Preschool for robots
09/08/15 Bloomberg Business — Want machines to learn the way human toddlers do? You need a “classroom” equipped with Lego blocks and plenty of patience. Just ask Brett, or robotics professor Pieter Abbeel.
Musk, Hawking among experts to urge ban on military robots
07/31/15 New York Times — Thousands of artificial intelligence researchers and experts are calling for a worldwide ban on so-called autonomous weapons, warning that they could set off a revolution in weaponry comparable to gunpowder and nuclear arms. Signatories include EECS professor Stuart Russell, Apple co-founder (and Berkeley alum) Steve Wozniak, and dozens of other Berkeley Engineering faculty and students.
The exoskeletons are coming
07/16/15 MIT Technology Review — Workers could soon strap on a power-assist suit to maneuver heavy objects, as several companies are working toward commercially available exoskeletons, including Ekso Bionics, cofounded by Berkeley mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni.
Camp gives middle school girls hands-on experience in engineering
07/16/15 — At UC Berkeley's Girls in Engineering summer camps, middle schoolers go from robots to cow legs to edible juice caviar, all in one whirlwind week.
Multicampus ‘People and Robots Initiative’ targets advances, challenges
07/01/15 CITRIS — Cloud Robotics, Deep Learning, Human-Centric Automation, and Bio-Inspired Robotics are among the primary research themes of the new CITRIS initiative that focuses on innovative theory, benchmarks, software, and approaches to address challenges in the interest of society.
To teach the world robotics
06/17/15 — An electrical engineering professor and a graduate researcher designed a massively open online course to teach an intro to hacking electronics course.
Teaching robots to be moral
06/10/15 California magazine — As robots and other machines controlled by artificial intelligence are getting more sophisticated and more widely used, calls have gone out to try to instill morals in their decision-making pathways. But how? Computer science professor Stuart Russell weighs in.
Beyond drone warfare: Prof warns of ‘automated killing machines’
05/28/15 — In an op-ed piece for the science journal Nature, Stuart Russell, an expert in artificial intelligence, outlines the debate over the use of AI weapons systems, and notes widespread agreement on the need for “meaningful human control” over targeting and engagement decisions. “Unfortunately,” he adds, “the meaning of ‘meaningful' is still to be determined."
Robotic cockroaches are perfect tiny aircraft carriers for robotic birds
05/27/15 Gizmodo — Researchers in the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab created a robot system capable of running and flying by combining their VelociRoACH (a ground-based robot modeled after a cockroach) with the H2 Bird ornithopter (a birdlike robot).
New ‘deep learning’ technique enables robot mastery of skills via trial and error
05/22/15 — UC Berkeley researchers have developed algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error using a process that more closely approximates the way humans learn, marking a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence.
New approach trains robots to match human dexterity and speed
05/22/15 New York Times — Linking several powerful software techniques, as Berkeley engineers have done with BRETT (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks), makes it possible for a robot to learn tasks rapidly with a relatively little training.
Robots are really bad at folding towels
05/20/15 NPR — Seven years ago, Berkeley researcher Pieter Abbeel set out on a quest: to teach a robot how to fold laundry. This proved to be a remarkably difficult task - and the difficulty of the task illuminates some key things about the limits of machines. See story and hear four-minute podcast.
How smart is today’s artificial intelligence?
05/20/15 PBS News Hour — How far away are we from making intelligent machines that actually have minds of their own? Berkeley researchers Stuart Russell and Pieter Abbeel weigh in on this nine-minute PBS News Hour segment, along with Elon Musk and Google's Ray Kurzweil.
Throw this camera drone in the air and it flies itself
05/15/15 Wired — The Lily is a drone that doesn't need a controller, or a pilot; it just follows you. It's the first product from Lily Robotics, founded by a pair of recent UC Berkeley graduates including CTO Henry Bradlow (B.S.'13 EECS).
Dash Robotics
05/01/15 — These biomimetic, origami-like kits are designed to get kids (of all ages) hooked on building robots.
Super-cute robot bug gets $1.4M to teach kids to code
04/27/15 Venture Beat — Dash Robotics, which began as a research project at Berkeley Engineering and CITRIS, has secured $1.4 million in seed funding to help refine and market its small bio-inspired origami robots that teach kids how to program while they play.
CITRIS launches “People and Robots” initiative
04/23/15 CITRIS — The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society has launched the CITRIS People and Robots Initiative, a multidisciplinary, multi-campus research program that builds on 40 years of robotics research, a network of alumni, and many active labs and projects.