A recent feature in Berkeley Engineer magazine highlights the career of CITRIS investigator Ken Goldberg, whose more than three decades of work have helped shape modern robotics. From developing one of the first commercial package-sorting robots to mentoring generations of students in UC Berkeley’s Automation Laboratory (AUTOLab).
That spirit of innovation was on display when Goldberg and his AUTOLab students demonstrated a robotic system to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The demonstration sparked the creation of Ambi Robotics, a company that uses AI-powered robots to stack and sort real-world packages in warehouses. Goldberg believes that the next leap in robotics will come from a combination of “good old-fashioned engineering” and advances in AI.
Goldberg is a professor of industrial engineering and operations research (IEOR) at UC Berkeley, with a joint appointment in electrical engineering and computer sciences. He also served as the founding director of the CITRIS Center for People and Robots (CPAR).