UC Berkeley's Laboratory for Automation Science and Engineering, directed by Professor Ken Goldberg of IEOR and EECS, is a center for research in robotics and automation, with current projects in networked telerobotics, computer assisted surgery, automated manufacturing, and new media artforms.

• Networked Telerobotics: Systems, Collaborative Algorithms To expand access to tools, instruments, and testbeds, we're developing algorithms, systems, and interfaces for remote control of devices via networks such as the Internet. We are currently investigating a new class of hybrid teleoperated and autonomous robotic "observatories" incorporating robotic cameras that allow groups of scientists, via the internet, to remotely observe, record, and index detailed natural activity in remote locations.
• Medical Robotics: Steerable Needles, Dose Delivery To improve patient care and more accurately target treatment within the human body, we're developing new geometric models and algorithms for surgical training, planning, and analysis, including fast FEM models of medical intervention in soft tissues, new methods for dose planning, brachytherapy, new image registration techniques, and new planning algorithms for steering flexible needles.
• Algorithmic Automation: Part Feeding, Fixturing To produce the high quality, rapidly evolving products of the future, we're establishing a science base for automated assembly by analyzing its basic components. We develop efficient geometric algorithms for feeding, fixturing, and grasping industrial parts.
• new media artforms To discover what can be expressed with new technologies such as networks, robots, digital cameras, and sensors that could not previously be expressed, we're designing art installations that explore issues related to privacy, play, embodiment, and "telepistemology": what is knowable at a distance?

Contact:
Ken Goldberg
Lab Director
Prof of IEOR, EECS, and the School of Information
UC Berkeley
http://goldberg.berkeley.edu/