BADGR mobile robot learns to navigate on its own

Berkeley researchers have developed a mobile robot called BADGR, which learns to navigate independently. "Most mobile robots think purely in terms of geometry; they detect where obstacles are, and plan paths around these perceived obstacles in order to reach the goal," says doctoral electrical engineering and computer sciences student Gregory Kahn, one of the study's co-authors. "This purely geometric view of the world is insufficient for many navigation problems." Kahn worked on the robot with electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Pieter Abbeel, director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and co-director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) lab, and assistant electrical engineering and computer sciences professor Sergey Levine. With just 42 hours of autonomously collected data, BADGR outperformed Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) approaches in a test, and it had less data to work with than other navigation methods, according to the researchers. Link to video.

Meet Berkeley’s new data science leader

As a Microsoft technical fellow, Jennifer Tour Chayes has made a name for herself as an expert in the field of network science and a leader of multidisciplinary labs that bring data science tools to bear on a wide range of problems. In January, she will leave her current position at Microsoft to become UC Berkeley’s first associate provost for the Division of Data Science and Information and Dean of the School of Information. 

Meet Blue, the low-cost, human-friendly robot designed for AI

Enter Blue, a new low-cost, human-friendly robot conceived and built by a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Blue was designed to use recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep reinforcement learning to master intricate human tasks, all while remaining affordable and safe enough that every artificial intelligence researcher — and eventually every home — could have one.

Literally Switching Strategies to Handle the Internet Data Flood

Cloud applications and the ever-increasing demand by large enterprises to transmit and analyze “big data” are stretching the capacity of even the largest data center servers as traditional switches become data flow bottlenecks. Ming Wu has invented a new optical, or photonic, switch capable of record-breaking speed that can be fabricated as integrated circuits so they can be mass-produced, keeping the cost per device low.

Kathy Yelick Testifies on 'Big Data Challenges and Advanced Computing Solutions'

NEWS & EVENTS News Archived News CS In the News InTheLoop Seminars & Events Kathy Yelick Testifies on 'Big Data Challenges and Advanced Computing Solutions' JULY 12, 2018 Contact: John German, jdgerman@lbl.gov, +1 510-486-6601 Kathy Yelick, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab, was one of four witnesses testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology at 7 a.m. PDT / 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, July 12. The discussion focused on big-data challenges and advanced computing solutions.

Megamovie project to crowdsource images of August solar eclipse

With only six months to go before one of the most anticipated solar eclipses in a lifetime, the University of California, Berkeley, and Google are looking for citizen scientists to document and memorialize the event in a “megamovie,” and help scientists learn about the sun in the process.

Three new Signatures Innovation Fellows announced

Three faculty members have been selected as 2016-17 Signatures Innovation Fellows, receiving as much as $100,000 per year each for up to two years to pursue commercially promising data science and software projects.

Big Thinking About Big Data

To Michael Jordan, the smart way to extract and analyze key information embedded in mountains of “Big Data” is to ignore most of it. Instead, zero in on collections of small amounts of data.

Seeing Through the Big Data Fog

Joe Hellerstein and his students developed a new programming model for distributed computing which MIT Technology Review named one of the 10 technologies “most likely to change our world”.

Seeking Data Wisdom

Bin Yu’s statistical strategies work hand in hand with intense computation to penetrate storms of data.

Urban Infrastructure - Making Cities Smarter

Alexei Pozdnoukhov, a Signatures Innovation Fellow, leads research to use cellular data to aid traffic planning and operations. Fully developed, the technology could aid both traffic control and planning to keep pace with changes in transportation habits.

More gentrification, displacement in Bay Area forecast

The San Francisco Bay Area’s transformation into a sprawling, exclusive and high-income community with less and less room for its low-income residents is just beginning, according to UC Berkeley researchers who literally have it all mapped out.

UC Berkeley launches the Signatures Innovation Fellows Program

In an effort to support UC Berkeley faculty interested in commercial applications of their research, UC Berkeley is launching a new program in the data science and software areas. The new Signatures Innovation Fellows program was recently established with the generous support of UC Berkeley alumnus Bobby Yazdani.

Tropical paradise inspires virtual ecology lab

An international collaboration including Neil Davies, Director of UC Berkeley's Gump Station, is preparing to create a digital representation of of the Pacific island of Moorea to create a virtual lab to test and hypothesize the impact of human activities. 

Funding for big-data projects in ecology, astronomy & microscopy

Three professors at UC Berkeley will receive $1.5 million over the next five years from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of the foundation’s Data-Driven Discovery Initiative. The initiative, one of the largest privately funded data scientist programs of its kind, is committed to enabling new types of scientific breakthroughs by supporting interdisciplinary, data-driven researchers.

Berkeley air-monitoring project wins White House nod

The White House has given a public nod to a ground-breaking UC Berkeley air-monitoring project and its new collaboration with a Colorado public media platform, which aims to build a citizen-science story-corps to help monitor carbon emissions in the Bay Area.

Scientists enlist big data to guide conservation efforts

Despite a deluge of new information about the diversity and distribution of plants and animals around the globe, “big data” has yet to make a mark on conservation efforts to preserve the planet’s biodiversity. But that may soon change.