Posts Tagged ‘Controls’
Winners of 2024 CITRIS Aviation Prize reach great heights
What would it take to connect the University of California’s campuses in Berkeley, Davis, Merced and Santa Cruz with a safe and sustainable system of air taxis, equipped to ferry students, faculty, staff and cargo across Northern California? That’s the question posed by the 2023–24 CITRIS Aviation Prize, the student design competition organized by CITRIS Aviation, a…
Read MoreResearchers achieve extremely fast charging speeds for commercial lithium-ion batteries
For consumers considering an electric vehicle (EV), long charge times, some up to 12 hours, can be a deal-breaker. But researchers may have discovered a way to reduce the charging time of the lithium-ion batteries used in EVs to less than 15 minutes. Led by Ravi Prasher, adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley…
Read MoreU.S. Department of Energy Awards $18 Million for Cutting-Edge Technologies to Optimize Vehicle Performance and Efficiency
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The U.S. Department of Energy today announced $18 million in funding for four cutting-edge projects that will help passenger vehicles operate more efficiently, reduce energy consumption, and contribute to the Biden Administration’s goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. This funding is part of Phase II of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s (ARPA-E)…
Read MoreCapstone Project Profile: The Future of Hauling – Autonomous Cargo Transporter
Reducing the amount of human error with repetitive tasks that may involve heavy loads can allow an improvement in operating efficiency and human safety, since humans are prone to injury and are required to work for a certain number of hours at a time. Our team is developing a universal platform that will be able…
Read MoreCapstone Project Profile: Developing an Affordable Alternative for Autonomous Vehicle Localization using High-Definition Radar Images
Localization of autonomous vehicles on the road currently relies on LiDAR (using lasers) and camera sensors which simultaneously map the environment around the car. Using high-definition radar images, we propose an algorithm to achieve an equivalent performance with a technology that is cheaper, easier to install, and less susceptible to adverse weather conditions such as…
Read MoreImproving Urban Traffic Throughput with Vehicle Platooning
Before California sheltered in place, UC Berkeley and ITS researchers were out in traffic showing how forming vehicle platoons can dramatically improve urban traffic flow in Arcadia, CA. They recently published a paper(link is external) and video(link is external) on their research and demonstration. Funded by the National Science Foundation and DOT, Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) Chair Roberto…
Read MoreME Alum Negar Mehr Wins 2020 IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award
ME Alum Negar Mehr has won the 2020 IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award. The IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award is given annually for the best dissertation in any ITS area that is innovative and relevant to practice. This award is established to encourage doctoral research that combines theory and practice, makes in-depth technical contributions, or…
Read MoreME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka Receives IEEE ITS Lifetime Achievement Award
ME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka is the recipient of the 2020 IEEE ITS Lifetime Achievement Award. The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to (a) an outstanding leader in the organizations they have led; (b) a thought leader in the ITS field; and (c) a champion of vision of ITS and its fulfillment within and beyond the…
Read MoreProfessor Murat Arcak Awarded 2020 Automatica Paper Prize
ME and EECS Professor Murat Arcak has been awarded the 2020 Automatica Paper Prize by the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). Professor Arcak will receive the prize at the upcoming virtual IFAC World Congress for his paper, “Symmetry reduction for dynamic programming.” The Automatica Paper Prize is awarded for outstanding contributions to the theory…
Read MoreME Professor Kameshwar Poolla Awarded AACC’s 2020 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award
ME Professor Kameshwar Poolla has been awarded the prestigious 2020 O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award, by the American Automatic Control Council (AACC), for his paper “Distributed Storage Investment in Power Networks,” presented at last year’s American Control Conference. This is Professor Poolla’s second time winning this award; his first was in 1993 for his…
Read MoreClarity of Thought: An Interview with Somayeh Sojoudi
Somayeh Sojoudi is an assistant professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Shahed University (in Tehran, Iran), her master’s degree in ECE from Concordia University, and her PhD in Control and Dynamical Systems from CalTech. After earning her PhD, she worked as a…
Read MoreME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka to Be Awarded the 2020 IFAC Nichols Medal
ME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka will be awarded the prestigious 2020 Nichols Medal at the 21st International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) World Congress in Berlin, Germany on Sunday, July 12, 2020. Professor Tomizuka is being awarded for his pioneering contributions to the control of mechatronic systems. Created in 1996, the Nichols Medal recognizes outstanding contributions of…
Read MoreCapstone Project Profile: Modeling the Energy Impact of Autonomous Vehicles
The transportation sector was responsible for 28.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, but the automotive industry is trying to decrease its contribution to climate change. This project quantified the energy impact of utilizing electric autonomous vehicles (AV) over traditional human-driven vehicles through the development of two AV simulation models. The models input…
Read MoreCapstone Project Profile: Coding-Free Robot Control – Rapid Learning for Automated Processes
Industrial robot arms are widely used in various fields including manufacturing automation. When these robots need to adapt to a new production task, reprogramming of the control is the key. Our goal is to make this transition process more user-friendly, cost-effective, and adaptive, by enabling a robot arm to mimic human motions without explicit programming.…
Read MoreBipedal Robot Cassie Cal Learns to Juggle
There’s no particular reason why knowing how to juggle would be a useful skill for a robot. Despite this, robots are frequently taught how to juggle things. Blind robots can juggle, humanoid robots can juggle, and even drones can juggle. Why? Because juggling is hard, man! You have to think about a bunch of different things at once,…
Read MoreME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka Receives Medal at ASME’s 2019 DSCC
ME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka was awarded the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Soichiro Honda Medal at the 2019 Dynamic Systems and Control Conference in Park City, Utah on October 10, 2019. ASME established the medal in 1982 to recognize an individual for an outstanding achievement or a series of significant engineering contributions in developing…
Read MoreSwappable Flying Batteries Keep Drones Aloft Almost Forever
Battery power is a limiting factor for robots everywhere, but it’s particularly problematic for drones, which have to make an awkward tradeoff between the amount of battery they carry, the amount of other more useful stuff they carry, and how long they can spend in the air. Consumer drones seem to have settled around about a…
Read MoreParalyzed Man Walks with Brain-Controlled Exoskeleton
A man paralyzed from the shoulders down has been able to walk using a pioneering four-limb robotic system, or exoskeleton, that is commanded and controlled by signals from his brain. With a ceiling-mounted harness for balance, the 28-year-old tetraplegic patient used a system of sensors implanted near his brain to send messages to move all…
Read MoreThis Robot Ostrich Can Ride Around on Hovershoes
Proponents of legged robots say that they make sense because legs are often required to go where humans go. Proponents of wheeled robots say, “Yeah, that’s great but watch how fast and efficient my robot is, compared to yours.” Some robots try and take advantage of wheels and legs with hybrid designs like whegs or wheeled feet, but a simpler and…
Read MoreME Chair Roberto Horowitz Receives Medal at AMES’s 2018 DSCC
ME Chair Roberto Horowitz was awarded the Rufus Oldenburger Medal at the 2018 Dynamic Systems and Control Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on October 2, 2018. Professor Horowitz was presented with the prestigious medal during the Awards Ceremony on October 2, 2018, on behalf of the 2018 DSCC Organization Committee and the Dynamics Systems and Control Division (DSCD) of the American Society of Mechanical…
Read MoreME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka Receives AACC’s Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award
ME Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka is the recipient of the 2018 American Automatic Control Council’s AACC’s Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award. He accepted the award at the American Control Conference ACC Awards Ceremony in Milwaukee on June 28, 2018. The Bellman Award is given for distinguished career contributions to the theory or application of automatic…
Read MoreME Chair Roberto Horowitz Awarded ASME 2018 Rufus Oldenburger Medal
Professor Roberto Horowitz, our current department chair and the James Fife Endowed Chair in Engineering, has been selected to receive the ASME 2018 Rufus Oldenburger Medal in recognition of his pioneering and impactful contributions to control applications in mechatronics, magnetic data storage and traffic systems. The Rufus Oldenburger Medal is a prestigious ASME Society award…
Read MoreMPC Lab Members Win 2017 IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering Best Paper Award
ME PhD candidate Ashwin Carvalho and former PostDoc Stéphanie Lefévre, along with ME Professor Francesco Borrelli, have won the 2017 IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering Best Paper Award. The award, given by the IEEE Robotics Automation Society, recognizes the best paper published in the previous calendar year, and is judged on technical merit, originality, potential…
Read MoreDoD Announces Award of New Advanced Robotics Manufacturing ARM Innovation Hub
Today, the Department of Defense awarded the 14th Manufacturing USA NNMI-National Network of Manufacturing Innovation Program institute – the Advanced Robotics Manufacturing ARM Innovation Hub. It is the eighth DoD-led institute. The ARM Institute joins the Manufacturing USA network in its collective effort to help revitalize American manufacturing and incentivize companies to invest in new…
Read MoreTeam Led by ME Professor Francesco Borrelli Awarded $3 Million from US Department of Energy
A team led by ME Professor Francesco Borrelli has been awarded $3.33 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy ARPA-E. The funding will be used to develop an innovative Vehicle Dynamics and Powertrain VD&PT control architecture based on a predictive and data-driven approach. The team, which also consists of…
Read MoreME Ph.D. Students Sarah Koehler and Negar Zahedi Mehr Win Best Paper Award
ME Ph.D. Students Sarah Koehler and Negar Zahedi Mehr have won the Best Paper Award at the 2016 IEEE 19th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems. The conference is the annual flagship conference of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society and welcomes articles in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems, dealing with new developments in…
Read MoreResearch on the Berkeley Autonomous Car Recognized by the US Secretary of Transportation
ME Professors Francesco Borrelli and Karl Hedrick, ME Ph.D. student Ashwin Carvalho, and Associate Director for Self-Driving Vehicle Development, Chan Kyu Lee, were in attendance for the US Department of Transportation’s DOT announcement of a new policy on Automated Vehicle Development. The group was invited by Anthony Foxx, the DOT’s Secretary of Transportation, to take…
Read MoreME Professor Francesco Borrelli Wins IFAC Industrial Achievement Award
The International Federation of Automatic Control IFAC Council has awarded ME Professor Francesco Borrelli the 2017 Industrial Achievement Award. The award will be presented to Professor Borrelli at the 20th IFAC World Congress in Toulouse, France for his “development and application of advanced control for automotive powertrains and the productization of the OnRAMP Design Suite.”…
Read MoreME Chair Roberto Horowitz Weighs in on Safety of Self-Driving Technology
There are new details out on Tesla’s much-talked-about self-driving technology, which is now under investigation, after a man died in a car crash in Florida. Tesla, based out of Palo Alto, is now under a federal investigation after the death of 40-year-old Joshua Brown, a former Navy Seal and entrepreneur. The crash of a Tesla…
Read MoreME Professor Francesco Borrelli Elevated to IEEE Fellow
ME Professor Francesco Borrelli has been elevated by the IEEE Board of Directors to IEEE Fellow, for his “contributions to the theory and applications of model predictive control.” Congratulations, Professor Borrelli!
Read More