Many insects and spiders get their uncanny ability to scurry up walls and walk upside down on ceilings with the help of specialized sticky footpads that allow them to adhere to surfaces in places where no human would dare to go. Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have used the principle behind these some …
The ‘Iron Man’ body armour many of us may soon be wearing
Imagine wearing high-tech body armour that makes you super strong and tireless. Such technology, more specifically called an exoskeleton, sounds like the preserve of the Iron Man series of superhero movies. Yet the equipment is increasingly being worn in real life around the world. And one manufacturer – California’s SuitX – expects it to go …
UC Berkeley researchers create robotic guide dog for visually impaired people
As UC Berkeley Ph.D. student Jun Zeng puts on a blindfold, he is led by a guide dog through a maze of cardboard boxes. They reach a narrow path, and the guide dog pauses, readjusts, then pulls on the leash to let Zeng know it is safe to continue. But this is no ordinary guide …
Capstone Project Profile: Adapting Humanoid Robots to Aid First Responders
Disaster relief demands both speed and adaptability to complex terrain; however, modern robots, which offer the potential to aid first responders, are currently specialized either for speed (wheeled robots) or for adaptability (legged robots). Our team is working to enable the transition of bipedal robots between legged locomotion and wheeled transportation. Our approach is to …
UC Berkeley Researchers Motivated by Society, Personal Interests, Scientific Community
Mechanical engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni, who has developed marketable exoskeletons — wearable devices that assist people who have limited mobility — sees applied research as a more effective means of accomplishing his goals. “There are urgent technological problems that need to be solved since the results would be life changing,” Kazerooni said in an email. …
The EDG Lab Discovers How to Better Design Skin for Handling Wet and Submerged Objects
Real world environments, such as kitchens, present objects covered in viscous fluids: soap, oil, water, etc. Understanding and designing for slippery and submerged contact, where fluid lubrication is present, is a continuing challenge in the robotics community. Contact area, bending stiffness, and the presence of a viscous fluid affect friction. This work focuses on milliscale …
Q&A with the Capstone Winners of 2020 Fung Institute Mission Award
The Fung Institute Mission Award is given to the capstone team that best exemplifies the mission of the institute: “Shaping generations of technical leaders to innovate across boundaries.” Finalists are nominated by Fung Instructors, and winners are chosen by Fung Institute staff based on the project brief.. This award is presented to the Adapting Humanoid Robots …
ME Professor Alice Agogino Named Among Top 10 Women in Robotics Industry
Squishy robots are quickly deployable mobile sensing robots for disaster rescue, remote monitoring and space exploration, created from the research at the BEST Lab or Berkeley Emergent Space Tensegrities Lab. Prof. Alice Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Product Design Concentration Founder and Head Advisor, MEng Program at the University …
UC Berkeley Researchers Find Pasta Can Help Build Assistive Robots
UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering Oliver O’Reilly and campus graduate mechanical engineering student Nathaniel Goldberg constructed a model showing changes in the shape of spaghetti after it is placed in water, which could help researchers create more human-like robots.
Is Spaghetti the Key to Building a Better Robot?
Look at some spaghetti and you might think lunch. When Oliver O’Reilly looks at spaghetti, he thinks about the future of robotics. Pasta and robots might not seem like natural bedfellows, but O’Reilly, a UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering, hopes his research can help engineers construct better models and designs for soft robots.
Capstone 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. …
Bipedal 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, …
Swappable 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 …
Paralyzed 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 …
Sensor Robots Can Handle Hazardous Situations
The “Squishy Robot” is equipped with six cameras, GPS, and various interchangeable chemical, biological, and radiological sensors that deliver data and 360-degree videos in situations where human access can be difficult or unsafe.
You Can’t Squash This Roach-Inspired Robot
If the sight of a skittering bug makes you squirm, you may want to look away — a new insect-sized robot created by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can scurry across the floor at nearly the speed of a darting cockroach.
This 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 …
ME Assistant Professor Mark Mueller and ME PhD Student Nathan Bucki Receive IEEE ICRA Best Paper Award
ME Assistant Professor Mark Mueller and ME PhD student Nathan Bucki received the Best Paper on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Award at the 2019 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). Established in 2018, the award recognizes the best paper on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles presented at the conference based …
The Squishy Robots That Could Save the World
Two years ago, Alice Agogino, a UC-Berkeley mechanical engineering professor, was working on a contract to build exploratory robots for NASA Ames. She had been recruited to help design what would eventually become a fleet of mobile, ultra-impact-resistant, remote-sensing robots that could protect sensitive scientific equipment during a drop from orbit onto the surface of …
Squishy Robotics at TechCrunch
Squishy Robotics was invited to demo at TechCrunch Robotics+AI on Thursday 18, 2019.
MPC 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 …
DoD 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 …
ME PhD Student Duncan Haldane and Fellow Roboticists at UC Berkeley Create Wall-Jumping Robot
Roboticists at UC Berkeley have designed a small robot that can leap into the air and then spring off a wall, or perform multiple vertical jumps in a row, resulting in the highest robotic vertical jumping agility ever recorded. The agility of the robot opens new pathways of locomotion that were not previously attainable. The …
SuitX’s Robot Suit Lets Paralyzed People Walk Again
SuitX, a Berkeley startup, has developed what promises to be the lightest, lowest-cost exoskeleton yet — a low-profile robotic suit that helps people who use wheelchairs stand up and walk.
ME Professor Homayoon Kazerooni’s Lab Advances as a Top 20 Finalist in “Robotics for Good” Competition
The Berkeley Robotics & Human Engineering Laboratory’s medical exoskeleton, Phoenix, and its specific use for children with Cerebral Palsy, was named as one of the top 20 finalists in the Robotics for Good competition. Phoenix was chosen from a pool of 664 entries, from 121 countries, in December of 2015. The competition and judging ceremony …
ME Professor Alice Agogino’s BEST Lab Featured on the Discovery Channel
The BEST Lab‘s tensegrity robot research was recently featured on the Discovery Channel’s nightly science magazine, the Daily Planet. The feature contrasted their sleek and faster Rev3 of the Berkeley Tensegrity Robot with Rev1. Both Rev1 and Rev2 use elastic cords and linear actuators to shape shift the tensegrity robot into punctuated rolling motion. Rev3 …
ME Professor Alice Agogino’s BEST Lab’s Shape-Shifting Robots Featured on KQED
Alice Agogino is a mechanical engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and she and her lab are among a group of engineers that are designing what might be the next generation of space exploring robots. These don’t look like the Mars rovers with the big wheels that you may be thinking of– oh no, …
ME Professor Alice Agogino’s Shape-Shifting Robots Featured on KQED Quest
Have you ever seen a skeleton held together with wire in a classroom or at a museum? What would happen if you removed the wire? All of the bones would fall into a heap on the floor! In reality, there are no wires within our bodies. Instead, our bodies are held together with ligaments and soft tissue. …