Ken Goldberg
- Pioneer in Technology and Visual Expression
- Award-Winning Roboticist
- Professor, UC, Berkeley
MEET KEN GOLDBERG
Award-winning roboticist, filmmaker, and UC Berkeley Professor Ken Goldberg leads research in robotics and social media and uses compelling images and videos to convey insights into new technologies and their impact on our daily lives. He is a pioneer in technology and visual expression, bridging the cultures of Science and Art. With unique skills in creative problem solving, invention, and thinking on the edge, Ken has engaged audiences around the world in over 400 keynotes.
Ken Goldberg is an artist and UC Berkeley professor. He and his students investigate robotics, automation, art, and social media. Ken is Director of the People and Robots Initiative (a CITRIS multicampus multidisciplinary research program established in April 2015) and UC Berkeley's Automation Sciences Research Lab (since 1995). Ken earned dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1984) and MS and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon University (1990). He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995 where he is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR), with secondary appointments in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science (EECS), Art Practice, the School of Information, and in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School.
Ken has published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering; his inventions have been awarded eight US Patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), Co-Founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), the African Robotics Network (AFRON), the Center for Automation and Learning for Medical Robotics (CAL-MR), the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative (DDI), Hybrid Wisdom Labs, and Moxie Institute.
Ken's art installations are related to his research and have been exhibited at venues including the Whitney Biennial, Berkeley Art Museum, SF Contemporary Jewish Museum, Pompidou Center, Buenos Aires Biennial, and the ICC in Tokyo. Ken co-wrote three award-winning Sundance documentary films, "The Tribe", "Yelp", and "Connected: An Autoblogography of Love, Death, and Technology" and co-directed the Emmy-Nominated Short Doc "Why We Love Robots." Ken's artwork is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and he is Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series (since 1997).
Ken was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1995 by Bill Clinton, the National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1994, the Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, and elected IEEE Fellow in 2005. He lives in the Bay Area with his daughters and wife, filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain.
Ken Goldberg is an artist and UC Berkeley professor. He and his students investigate robotics, automation, art, and social media. Ken is Director of the People and Robots Initiative (a CITRIS multicampus multidisciplinary research program established in April 2015) and UC Berkeley's Automation Sciences Research Lab (since 1995). Ken earned dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1984) and MS and PhD degrees from Carnegie Mellon University (1990). He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995 where he is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR), with secondary appointments in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science (EECS), Art Practice, the School of Information, and in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCSF Medical School.
Ken has published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering; his inventions have been awarded eight US Patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), Co-Founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), the African Robotics Network (AFRON), the Center for Automation and Learning for Medical Robotics (CAL-MR), the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative (DDI), Hybrid Wisdom Labs, and Moxie Institute.
Ken's art installations are related to his research and have been exhibited at venues including the Whitney Biennial, Berkeley Art Museum, SF Contemporary Jewish Museum, Pompidou Center, Buenos Aires Biennial, and the ICC in Tokyo. Ken co-wrote three award-winning Sundance documentary films, "The Tribe", "Yelp", and "Connected: An Autoblogography of Love, Death, and Technology" and co-directed the Emmy-Nominated Short Doc "Why We Love Robots." Ken's artwork is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and he is Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series (since 1997).
Ken was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1995 by Bill Clinton, the National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1994, the Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, and elected IEEE Fellow in 2005. He lives in the Bay Area with his daughters and wife, filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain.
SUGGESTED SPEAKING TOPICS
Multiplicity has More Potential Than Singularity
"Multiplicity" describes an emerging category of systems where diverse groups of humans work together with diverse groups of machines to solve difficult problems. Multiplicity combines ideas from machine learning, the wisdom of crowds, and cloud computing. Multiplicity is not science fiction; it’s central to systems we use everyday: Google, Twitter, Salesforce, Netflix, Siri, and Uber.
Robots with Their Heads in the Clouds
The next generation of robots will be more social than solitary. Rather than viewing every robot as an isolated system with limited computation and memory, roboticists are now exploring how robots and automation systems can actively exchange information and resources via networks. Building on emerging advances in cloud computing, big data, open-source, and the Internet of Things, this paradigm has potential to significantly increase the capabilities of robots and automation systems.
Cultivating the Uncanny: Art, Fear, and Fascination with Technology
Engineers, animators, and designers apply the concept of the Uncanny Valley to technologies from AI to Robots to Siri. In 1919, a year before the word “robot” was coined, Sigmund Freud published an influential essay tracing the concept of the Uncanny back to the Renaissance. Goldberg illustrates this history with art that explores the shifting borders between the digital and the natural, including his Emmy-nominated short doc film that explores our collective fear and fascination with robots, the most human of our machines.
The Future of Brainstorming
To brainstorm at the scale of social media, we can use techniques from an unlikely source: Robotics. Goldberg presents recent results on social innovation and collective brainstorming work with the U.S. State Department, General Motors, and the State of California.
Putting the Turing into ManufacTuring: Recent Developments in Algorithmic Automation
Automation for manufacturing today is where computer technology was in the early 1960's, a patchwork of ad-hoc solutions lacking a rigorous scientific methodology. CAD provides detailed models of part geometry. What's missing is formal models of part behavior and frameworks for the systematic design of automated systems that can feed, assemble, and inspect parts. "Algorithmic Automation" introduces abstractions that allow the functionality of automation to be designed independent of the underlying implementation and can provide the foundation for formal specification and analysis, algorithmic design, and consistency checking.
"Multiplicity" describes an emerging category of systems where diverse groups of humans work together with diverse groups of machines to solve difficult problems. Multiplicity combines ideas from machine learning, the wisdom of crowds, and cloud computing. Multiplicity is not science fiction; it’s central to systems we use everyday: Google, Twitter, Salesforce, Netflix, Siri, and Uber.
Robots with Their Heads in the Clouds
The next generation of robots will be more social than solitary. Rather than viewing every robot as an isolated system with limited computation and memory, roboticists are now exploring how robots and automation systems can actively exchange information and resources via networks. Building on emerging advances in cloud computing, big data, open-source, and the Internet of Things, this paradigm has potential to significantly increase the capabilities of robots and automation systems.
Cultivating the Uncanny: Art, Fear, and Fascination with Technology
Engineers, animators, and designers apply the concept of the Uncanny Valley to technologies from AI to Robots to Siri. In 1919, a year before the word “robot” was coined, Sigmund Freud published an influential essay tracing the concept of the Uncanny back to the Renaissance. Goldberg illustrates this history with art that explores the shifting borders between the digital and the natural, including his Emmy-nominated short doc film that explores our collective fear and fascination with robots, the most human of our machines.
The Future of Brainstorming
To brainstorm at the scale of social media, we can use techniques from an unlikely source: Robotics. Goldberg presents recent results on social innovation and collective brainstorming work with the U.S. State Department, General Motors, and the State of California.
Putting the Turing into ManufacTuring: Recent Developments in Algorithmic Automation
Automation for manufacturing today is where computer technology was in the early 1960's, a patchwork of ad-hoc solutions lacking a rigorous scientific methodology. CAD provides detailed models of part geometry. What's missing is formal models of part behavior and frameworks for the systematic design of automated systems that can feed, assemble, and inspect parts. "Algorithmic Automation" introduces abstractions that allow the functionality of automation to be designed independent of the underlying implementation and can provide the foundation for formal specification and analysis, algorithmic design, and consistency checking.
