Beyond Webcams: An Introduction to Online Robots

by Kenneth Y. Goldberg (Editor), Roland Siegwart (Editor)

Remote-controlled robots were first developed in the 1940s to handle radioactive materials. Trained experts now use them to explore deep in sea and space, to defuse bombs, and to clean up hazardous spills. Today robots can be controlled by anyone on the Internet. Such robots include cameras that not only allow us to look, but also go beyond they enable us to control the telerobots' movements and actions. This book summarizes the state of the art in Internet telerobots. It includes robots that navigate undersea, drive on Mars, visit museums, float in blimps, handle protein crystals, paint pictures, and hold human hands. The book describes eighteen systems, showing how they were designed, how they function online, and the engineering challenges they meet.

331 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2001

About the author

Ken Goldberg teaches and supervises research in Robotics, Automation, and New Media in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at UC Berkeley. Ken holds dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania (1984) and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (1990). He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995 and is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, with secondary appointments in EECS, the School of Information, Art Practice, and the UCSF Dept of Radiation Oncology. Ken and his co-authors have published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering, and he holds eight U.S. patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), Co-Founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media, Co-Founder and CTO of Hybrid Wisdom Labs, Co-Founder of the Moxie Institute, and Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series.
Ken's art installations, based on his research, have been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Whitney Biennial, the Berkeley Art Museum, the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Pompidou Center, the Buenos Aires Biennial, and the ICC in Tokyo. Ken has co-written three award-winning Sundance documentary films, "The Tribe", "Yelp", and "Connected: An Autoblogography of Love, Death, and Technology." He is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.

Ken was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship by President Clinton in 1995, the National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1994, the Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, and was elected IEEE Fellow in 2005.