Research,
Teaching, and Service: Self-Evaluation
Ken
Goldberg
IEOR
and EECS Depts, UC Berkeley
From 1991-1995, I was Assistant
Professor of Computer Science at USC.
In 1995, I came to UC Berkeley’s IEOR Department and was promoted to
Associate Professor in 1997. This
self-evaluation summarizes my research, teaching, and service activities since
that promotion.
Research Highlights:
·
Joseph Engelberger Award (2000)
(major award in Robotics field)
·
IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award (2001)
·
Joint appointment as Associate
Professor of Electrical Engineering/Computer Science (2000)
·
11 journal papers (8 in print,
3 to appear)
·
Editor, The Robot in the
Garden, MIT Press (2000)
·
23 refereed conference papers
·
1 patent granted (1 pending)
·
45 invited lectures
·
Exibited telerobotic art
installations at three Biennial Exhibitions:
Whitney Museum of American Art
(2000), Kwangju in Korea (2000), ICC in Tokyo (1999)
·
Visiting Professor, MIT Media
Lab (Sabbatical, Fall 2000)
·
Gunter Wittenberg Award for Best
Paper, Assembly Automation Journal (1999)
·
Elected to Senior Member, IEEE
(1998)
Teaching Highlights:
·
Taught two Database Design
courses, IEOR 115 and 215, each year
·
Taught three semesters of
Industrial Production Methods, IEOR 140
·
Taught Advanced Topics in
Robotics (CS 294-5 and IEOR 290K) as overload
·
Co-Taught Special Topics in
Visual Studies (Art 160A) as overload
·
Currently developing a new IEOR
course: Interaction Design for Engineers
·
Taught an MFA course on
Internet-based art at San Francisco Art Institute (1999)
·
Advised two Postdoctoral
students
·
Graduated 2 PhD students from
USC
·
Currently advising 4 PhD
students at Berkeley, one will graduate in August 2001
·
Supervised 6 undergrad research
projects under the URAP and URO programs
·
Co-advised graduate student
team that won the 1999 IIE/TEFEN case study competition
Service Highlights:
·
Advisory Committee, IEEE
Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)
·
Long Range Planning Committee,
IEEE RAS
·
Co-Founder, Co-Chair: Technical Committee on Online Robots, IEEE
RAS
·
Workshops and Tutorials Chair,
IEEE RAS Annual Conferences: 1998 and 2000
·
Organized symposium sessions
for National Academy of Engineering: 1998 and 1999
·
Organized 35 evening lectures
for Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
·
Co-Organizer, Berkeley
Symposium on Critical and Historical Issues in Net Art, 2000
·
College of Engineering
Committees: Admissions, Interdisciplinary, and Common Lower Division
·
IEOR Undergrad Admissions Chair
My
research in robotics has two foci. The
first is primarily theoretical, the second primarily experimental. My theoretical work is in robotic automation
and manufacturing, where I formalize and develop algorithmic approaches to
feeding (orienting), grasping, and fixturing industrial parts. My secondary focus is more experimental:
developing robots that are controlled via the Internet. In the past four years, my theoretical work
with algorithms has increasingly influenced my experimental work with online
robots, and my experimental work with the Internet suggests new theoretical
questions. Since I frequently
collaborate with faculty in other departments, in particular Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, the EECS Department voted to grant me a joint
appointment in July 2000. As described below, my work with online robots has
also had impact in contemporary art and has brought me into regular contact
with faculty and students outside of the College of Engineering.
From
1990-95, I developed the first algorithm for feeding (orienting) polygonal
parts. I proved the algorithm to be
complete (that it applies to all polygons) and showed that solving a problem
instance requires time proportional to the square of the number of part edges (O(n2)). In 1995, this bound was lowered to O(n) by Ierardi and Chen. In 1999, Van der Stappen, Overmars, and I
lowered this bound to constant time (O(1)) for almost all parts, showing that plan length depends on
the aspect ratio of the part’s bounding box [IA23 - references are to papers as
numbered below and in my CV]. My
algorithmic model has been applied in
a number of contexts, from orienting microscopic parts on vibrating plates
[IA22][ID40][IE08] to feeding parts on a conveyor belt using fences
[IA18]. My students and I introduced
algorithms for designing horizontal pins to topple parts [IB01] and for
designing polygonal holes (traps) in a track to drop parts in undesirable
orientations [ID47]. For feeding 3D polyhedral parts, Adept
Technology of San Jose commercialized a robot system with machine vision to
pick up properly oriented parts after they are randomly dropped on a conveyor
belt. To support this system, we developed
several new methods for estimating the pose distribution of dropped parts
[IA21]; these were incorporated into Adept’s software to predict feeder
throughput. We have also applied
queuing models to tune conveyor belt speeds [IA20][ID45].
For part
fixturing, we developed a geometric approach to loading parts into fixtures
[IA19] and a new model of shape tolerance [ID41]. For grasping industrial parts, we developed new algorithms for
finding grip points [ID46] and for designing "self-aligning" gripper
jaws [ID58]. Mike Tao Zhang, the PhD
student focusing on the latter project, has published 4 papers and will
graduate in August 2001.
To
facilitate this research in Assembly Line Part Handling Algorithms, I
established the ALPHA lab in 1169 Etcheverry Hall. It currently supports four PhD students and 3-5
undergraduates. The lab includes two
industrial robots and a dozen workstations.
Our research is supported primarily by grants from the National Science
Foundation, with additional support from California under the MICRO program,
Adept Technology, Hewlett Packard, and Ford Motor Company.
In 1998, a project in my graduate course on Database Design led to an interest in information retrieval, specifically Collaborative Filtering (CF): techniques for recommending items to users based on their ratings of sample items. I developed Eigentaste, a constant-time CF algorithm based on Principal Component Analysis and demonstrated it in Jester, an online web site that recommends jokes. UCB's Patent Office filed for a patent on the Eigentaste algorithm in July 1999 and our paper [IB03] will appear in the July 2001 issue of the Journal of Information Retrieval.
My
students and I also develop interactive, Java-based, Internet interfaces to
demonstrate our geometric algorithms for fixturing [IA17], feeding, and
grasping (these are linked from my web site below). I'm co-inventor on a May 1999 Patent for a method to “bookmark”
Internet pages with a television remote control. In addition to these interests I am beginning to explore a new
area: fast algorithms for planning
minimally invasive surgery combining finite element methods with numerical
optimization.
Experimental Research: Online
Robots
In 1994, I
led the research team that developed the first robot to be remotely operated
over the Internet by the general public.
“Online robots” is becoming an active research area. To be widely accessible, online robots must
cope with large variations in time delay, demand, and user skill level; they
must also detect and recover from unsupervised errors. Our second online robot
system, The Telegarden, allows anyone on the Internet to plant and water seeds
in a living garden. The system,
currently hosted at the Ars Electronica Center in Austria, has been online
almost continuously since August 1995.
These two projects were Finalists for the National Information
Infrastructure Awards. I led an IEEE
workshop on online robots in 1999 and in 2000 co-edited two special issues of
the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine.
In May 2001, I co-founded the IEEE Technical Committee on Online Robots
which now has 36 participating researchers.
I develop online robot
experiments as art installations to raise conceptual issues related to
authenticity and immediacy. My artwork
addressing these topics has been exhibited internationally, at the Walker Art
Center, ZKM in Germany, ICC Biennale in Tokyo, the Berkeley Art Museum, the
Kwangju Biennial in Korea, and in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2000
Biennial. My work has been reviewed in
Time Magazine, CNN, NPR, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chronicle of Higher
Education, California Monthly, the New Yorker, Le Monde, El Pais, and
Scientific American. In The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and
Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet (MIT Press, 2000), I contextualized
my work with that of other artists in a collection of 18 contributed articles
on artistic and philosophical issues that arise when perception is mediated
through a distance. I am currently
co-editing a second collection aimed at engineers; Beyond Webcams, an
Introduction to Online Robots, which will be published by MIT Press in Fall
2001. I have presented this research at
Stanford, MIT, NYU, CMU and to the National Academy of Sciences Committee on
Information Technology and Creativity.
In December I will present to group on “The Common Languages of Art and
Science” at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin.
I am now
exploring algorithms for collaborative control of online robots. I am beginning to develop analytic models of
many-one (collaborative) motion control and to quantify the effects of
behavioral diversity, noise, and time delay.
Initial results suggest that collaborative motion control is
surprisingly robust to such effects [ID55].
I want to develop an IT framework for education and journalism that
would allow groups of people to simultaneously share access to valuable remote
experiences. I performed some work on
this topic when I visited MIT in Fall 2000; the UC Regents and MIT filed a
provisional patent on a “Tele-Actor Framework” in March 2001.
My grad
and undergrad IEOR courses on Database Design include semester-length projects
where student teams work with local companies and campus organizations. I also
teach Industrial Production Methods
where student teams identify and solve production problems for local
companies. I have developed and taught
two courses as overload: IEOR 290K/CS 294 (Algorithms for Robotic
Manipulation), and Art 160A (Special Topics in Visual Studies). The former is a research-level project
course for graduate students and the latter is a 2-credit undergraduate course
on Internet Art. In spring of 1999, I
taught an MFA course on Internet Art at the SF Art Institute. In Spring 2001 I will restructure IEOR’s
Human Factors course into IEOR 170: Interaction Design for Engineers.
During
this period two of my graduate students from USC completed their PhDs: I
continued to advise them from Berkeley and flew to USC for advising meetings
and for their defenses. I am currently
advising four PhD students at Berkeley, one will finish in August 2001. A new PhD student will join my group in
August. I have also advised two
postdocs: Karl Bohringer is now Asst.
Prof. of EE at U Washington and Michael Idinopulos is with McKinsey Consulting.
Since July 1997, I have served on 11
Qualifying Exam Committees for students in EECS and ME.
I advise
2-4 undergraduate and Masters students per semester in Independent Study
projects. I’m active in Berkeley’s
Undergraduate Research Opportunity programs and involve undergraduates in
research at all levels in my laboratory.
I’m proud to report that two of my undergrad researchers co-authored
papers and presented research results at the IEEE International Conferences on
Robotics and Automation (in 1999 and 2000).
I have also served as INFORMS student advisor and with Prof. Candace
Yano, co-advised the team of grad students that won the national Tefen
Consulting Prize at the Spring 1999 INFORMS meeting.
My work
with online robots has potential for education at all levels. It can expose students to control of real
robots and can provide remote access to distant laboratories and research
environments. I am working with colleagues
in the UK and Turkey to develop an online laboratory to demonstrate this potential. In addition to teaching and advising, I
have given 45 invited lectures in the past 4 years at universities, research
labs, and corporations. In June 2001,
the IEEE awarded me the Major Educational Innovation Award for “pioneering work
on Internet Robotics and the influence that this has had on education in
robotics and advanced technologies at large.”
I am
active in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, the major research society
for robotics. In 1994 I was elected to
a three-year term on the Society's Advisory Board and in 1997 was re-elected to
a second term. I am active in the
Society’s Long Range Planning Committee.
In 1998 and 2000, as Chair of Workshops and Tutorials for the IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), I oversaw the
review and delivery of twenty-five full and half-day workshops. I regularly serve on the Program Committee
for the IEEE ICRA and the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems. In 1998, I was elected to Senior Member of the IEEE.
I currently serve on the Editorial Advisory Board for the
Assembly Automation Journal and was Program Committee Member for the 1998 ACM
Symposium on Computational Geometry. In 2002, I will Chair the biannual Workshop on Algorithmic
Foundations of Robotics (WAFR) in Nice France.
I have
also been active in the National Academy of Engineering's annual Frontiers of
Engineering Symposium, held in Irvine each October. This highly selective Symposium brings together 100 top engineers
under the age of 45 to exchange new research results. I was invited to attend the 1997 symposium and was asked to
organize a special session on Frontiers of Robotics for 1998. My introduction to the session was published
in the NAE report. I co-organized a
session on Information Technology for the 1999 Symposium.
University
Service
At UC
Berkeley, my primary service activity has been organizing the Art, Technology,
and Culture Colloquium. I choose
speakers with an Advisory Board made up of faculty from Art History, Film
Studies, SIMS, Architecture, and other divisions across the campus. Since founding the series in Spring 1997,
I've coordinated 40 evening lectures by well-known artists, curators, and
writers. The ATC series has developed
an international reputation and is sponsored by Berkeley's Office of the
Chancellor, the College of Engineering, the Art Practice Department, and the
Townsend Center for the Humanities. I co-chaired
the 2000 Symposium on Critical and Historical Issues in Net Art and I am active
in the San Francisco visual art community, serving on the board of New Langton
Arts, a non-profit art center.
Also at
the University level, I served on the Art Practice Faculty Search Committee in
1998 and the Hewlett Foundation Courses Committee, where I reviewed proposals
for new courses team-taught by pairs of faculty from LAS and the professional
schools. I also participate in the
Regents and Chancellor's Scholarship Interviews, judge the Irving Prize for
American Wit and Humor, and have served as a respondent to Shawn Brixey and
Katherine Hayles after their lectures at the Townsend Center.
In the
College of Engineering, I have served on the Admissions Committee,
Interdisciplinary Engineering Research Committee (IERI), the Nasa Ames Campus
Exploratory Committee, and the Common Lower Division Curriculum Task Force. I
maintain an active interest in Human Centered Computing; as part of Berkeley’s
new CITRIS Center, I am working with faculty in Engineering and Environmental
Design to develop a Berkeley Institute of Design.
In the
IEOR Dept, I Chair our undergrad Admissions Committee, reviewing undergraduate
and transfer applications and serve on the IEOR External Relations
Committee. I redesigned the IEOR web
page and display case and wrote a short essay: "What is an Industrial
Engineer?" to help attract
undergraduates.
Further information and full CV is
available at:
www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg
References
A. Archival Journal Papers
[IA23] Geometric Eccentricity and the Complexity of Manipulation Plans, (with F. van der Stappen and M. Overmars), Algorithmica, 26(3/4), 494-514. March 2000.
[IA22] Algorithms for Sensorless Manipulation Using a Vibrating Surface (with K. Bohringer and V. Bhatt and B. Donald), Algorithmica, 26(3/4), 389-429. March 2000.
[IA21] Part Pose Statistics: Estimators and Experiments (with B. Mirtich, Y. Zhuang, J. Craig, B. Carlisle, and J. Canny), IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. 15(5), 849-857, October, 1999.
[IA20] Tuning Robotic Part Feeder Parameters to Maximize Throughput, (with D. Gudmundsson), Assembly Automation, 19(3), 216-221, Fall 1999.
[IA19] A Complete Algorithm for Fixture Loading, (with K. Yu), International Journal of Robotics Research. Volume 17 (11), pp. 1214-1224. November, 1998.
[IA18] Computing Fence Designs for Orienting Parts, (with R.P. Berretty and F. van der Stappen and M. Overmars), Computational Geometry and Applications, 10. Page 249-262. 1998.
[IA17] FixtureNet: Interactive Computer Aided Design via the WWW, (with R. Wagner and G. Castanotto), International Journal on Human-Computer Studies, 46, 773-788. August 1997.
[IA16] A Complete Algorithm for Designing Passive Fences to Orient Parts, (with J. Wiegley, M. Peshkin, and M. Brokowski), Assembly Automation, 17:2, August, 1997.
IB. Journal Papers Accepted for Publication
[IB03] Eigentaste: A Constant-Time Collaborative Filtering Algorithm, Ken Goldberg, Theresa Roeder, Dhruv Gupta, and Chris Perkins, Information Retrieval, 4(2), July 2001. (to appear).
[IB02] The 2-Center Problem with Obstacles, Dan Halperin, Micha Sharir, and Ken Goldberg, Journal of Algorithms, Accepted June 2001.
[IB01] Designing Pin Sequences for Part Feeding, Tao Zhang, Ken Goldberg, Robert-Paul Berretty, Gordon Smith, and Mark Overmars, Robotica, Accepted January 2001.
ID. Conference and Symposium Papers
[ID60] Shape Tolerance for Robot Gripper Jaws, Tao Zhang, Lawrence Cheung and Ken Goldberg, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Robots and Systems, October 2001.
[ID59] Orienting Parts by Inside-Out Pulling, RP Berretty, Ken Goldberg, Mark Overmars, and Frank van der Stappen, IEEE ICRA, Seoul, Korea. May 2001.
[ID58] Design of Gripper Jaws Based on Trapezoidal Modules, Tao Zhang and Ken Goldberg, IEEE ICRA, Seoul, Korea. May 2001.
[ID57] Collaborative Tele-directing, Judith Donath, Dana Spiegel, Matt Lee, Kelly Dobson and Ken Goldberg, ACM Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI), Seattle, WA. March, 2001.
[ID56] The Toppling Graph: Designing Pin Sequences for Part Feeding, (with Tao Zhang, Gordon Smith, RP Berretty, and Mark Overmars), IEEE ICRA, San Francisco, CA. April, 2000.
[ID55] Collaborative Teleoperation on the Internet, (with Steve Bui, Billy Chen, Bobak Farzin, Jacob Heitler, Derek Poon, Rory Solomon, and Gordon Smith), IEEE ICRA, San Francisco, CA. April, 2000.
[ID54] Compensatory Grasping with the Parallel-Jaw Gripper, (with Tao Zhang, Gordon Smith), 4th Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, Dartmouth, NH. March, 2000.
[ID53] A Brief History of Robotics, National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, Irvine, CA. (published 1999).
[ID52] Geometric Trap Design for Automatic Part Feeders, (with R-P. Berretty and M. Overmars and F. Van der Stappen), International Symposium on Robotics Research. October 1999.
[ID51] Jester 2.0 : Evaluation of a New Linear Time Collaborative Filtering Algorithm, (with D. Gupta, M. Digiovanni, and H. Narita), Poster Session and Demonstration, 22nd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. August, 1999.
[ID50] MEMS Fixtures for Handling and Assembly of Microparts (with I. Tahhan, Y. Zhuang, K. Bohringer, and K. Pister), SPIE Conference on Micromachining and Microfabrication. Sept, 1999.
[ID49] Micro-Assembly Using Auditory Display of Force Feedback, (with T. Eme, P. Hauert, W. Zesch, and R. Siegwart), SPIE International Symposium on Intelligent Systems and Advanced Manufacturing. September 1999.
[ID48] Geometric Algorithms for Trap Design, (with R-P. Berretty and M. Overmars and F. Van der Stappen), 15th ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry. May 1999.
[ID47] Trap Design for Vibratory Bowl Feeders (with R-P. Berretty, L. Cheung, M. Overmars, G. Smith, F. van der Stappen), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). May, 1999.
[ID46] Computing Parallel-Jaw Grip Points (with Gordon Smith, Eric Lee, Karl Bohringer, and John Craig), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). May, 1999.
[ID45] Estimating and Optimizing Throughput of a Robotic Part Feeder Using Queueing Theory, (with D. Gudmundsson), IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). October, 1998.
[ID44] Microassembly Technologies for MEMS, (with M. Cohn, K. Bohringer, J. Norworolski, A. Singh, C. Keller and R. Howe), SPIE Conference on Micromachining and Microfabrication. Santa Clara, CA. Sept 1998.
[ID43] Parallel Microassembly with Electrostatic Force Fields (with K. Bohringer and M. Cohn and A. Pisano and R. Howe), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). Leuven Belgium. May, 1998.
[ID42] Algorithms for Fence Design, (with R. P. Berretty and M. Overmars and F. Van der Stappen), 3rd Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), also published in Robotics, The Algorithmic Perspective, ed. by P. Agarwal, L. Kavraki, and M. Mason. A. K. Peters. March, 1998.
[ID41] Shape Tolerance in Feeding and Fixturing, (with J. Chen and M. Overmars and D. Halperin and K. Bohringer and Y. Zhuang), 3rd Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), also published in Robotics, The Algorithmic Perspective, ed. by P. Agarwal, L. Kavraki, and M. Mason. A. K. Peters. March 1998.
[ID40] Electrostatic Self-Assembly Aided by Ultrasonic Vibration (with K. Bohringer and M. Cohn and A. Pisano and R. Howe), American Vacuum Society 44th National Symposium. San Jose. October, 1997.
[ID39] Analysis of Part Motion on a Longitudinally Vibrating Plate, (with D. Reznik and J. Canny), IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). Grenoble, France. Sept, 1997.
[ID38] Geometry-Based Part Grouping for Assembly Planning, (with H. Moradi and S. Lee), IEEE International Symposium on Assembly and Task Planning. Los Angeles, CA. Aug 7-9, 1997.
[ID37] FixtureNet II: Interactive Redesign and Force Visualization on the Web, (with C. Anderson and Y. Zhuang), ASME Design for Manufacturing Conference. Sacramento, CA. Sept 14-17, 1997.
[ID36] Design Rules for Tolerance-Insensitive and Multi-Purpose Fixtures, (with Y. Zhuang), International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), Monterey, CA. July, 1997. Also available from UC Berkeley's Engineering Science Research Center: ESRC97-02.
IE. Books and Book Chapters
[IE11] Beyond Webcams: An Introduction to Online Robots, co-Editor (with Roland Siegwart). MIT Press, Forthcoming, 2001.
[IE10] Geometry and Part Feeding, A.F. van der Stappen, R.-P. Berretty, K. Goldberg, and M.H. Overmars. In: Modelling of Sensor-Based Intelligent Robot Systems (H. Bunke, H.I. Christensen, G. Hager, R. Klein Eds.) Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag, Berlin (2001).
[IE09] The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, Editor. MIT Press, June, 2000.
[IE08] MicroAssembly, (with K. Bohringer and R. Fearing), in Handbook of Industrial Robotics, 2nd Edition, edited by S. Nof. John Wiley and Sons, 1999. pp 1045-1066.
IIA. Patents Granted
[IIA04] May 1999: A Television Event Marking System, (with G. Kelly and J. Gee and P. Levinson and S. Fullam), A method for bookmarking viewer-selected TV broadcast events using a standard remote control. U.S. Patent 5,907,322.
CV
with complete list of publications, art exhibitions, professional
activities, and invited talks