Kenneth Yigael Goldberg (born 1961) is an American artist, writer, inventor, and researcher in the field of

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

and

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

. He is professor and chair of the

industrial engineering and operations research Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information a ...

department at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and holds the William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at Berkeley, with joint appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), Art Practice, and the School of Information. Goldberg also holds an appointment in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...

Background

Goldberg was born in

Ibadan Ibadan (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano, with a total population of 3,649,000 as of 2021, and over 6 million people within its me ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

, where his parents taught at Mayflower Private School, and grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.Remote Control - East Bay Express
Web-piloted humans, telegardens, robots that paint -- it's all in a half-day's work for Cal engineering whiz and conceptual artist Ken Goldberg. Goldberg's father worked as an engineer, and Ken would work on projects with his father. Goldberg expressed an interest in art during high school, but his parents suggested he study something more practical. He received a BS in electrical engineering and BS in economics, summa cum laude, from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1984. Goldberg also received his Ph.D. in computer science from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

in 1990. While studying abroad in Edinburgh, Goldberg took a course on artificial intelligence that began his interest in robotics and their artistic potential. He then taught in the department of computer science at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

from 1991–1995 and was visiting faculty in 2000 at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

Career

Robotics

Goldberg and his students have published over 170 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

Automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

, and social information filtering. Goldberg leads the UC Berkeley Automation Sciences Lab, which pursues research in Cloud Robotics and Automation, Social Information Retrieval using geometric algorithms, and Algorithmic Automation for Feeding, Fixturing, Grasping, with an emphasis on geometric algorithms that minimize sensing and actuation. In his PhD dissertation, Goldberg developed the first algorithm for orienting (feeding) polygonal parts and proved that the algorithm can be used to orient any part up to rotational symmetry. He also patented the kinematically yielding gripper, a new

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

gripper that complies passively to hold parts securely without sensing. Goldberg is Co-Founder and editor-in-chief of the ''

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering''. His research has resulted in eight United States

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

. Goldberg is credited with developing the first robot with web interface (August 1994). His subsequent project, the Telegarden, allowed remote visitors, via the Internet, to view, water, and plant seeds in a living garden.Ken Goldberg: 4 lessons from robots about being human Video on TED.com
/ref> This project was online continuously for nine years in the lobby of the

Ars Electronica Center Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the ...

. Goldberg is a leading researcher in networked

telerobotics Telerobotics is the area of robotics concerned with the control of semi-autonomous robots from a distance, chiefly using television, wireless networks (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the Deep Space Network) or tethered connections. It is a combinatio ...

and Cloud Robotics and has developed a series of collaborative tele-operation systems such as the Tele-Actor, in which a human moves through a remote environment guided by remote participants via the Internet. Goldberg is co-founder, with Ayorkor Korseh, of the African Robotics Network (AFRON), established in 2012 to promote communication and collaborations that will enhance robotics-related education, research, and industry on the continent of Africa. AFRON's Ultra-Affordable Educational Robot design competition was recognized with a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award in 2013. Goldberg is co-founder of the

Berkeley Center for New Media The Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) is a research, teaching, and public events program at UC Berkeley. Its mission is to critically analyze and help shape developments in new media from cross-disciplinary and global perspectives that emphas ...

and served as its director from 2007-2010, and is co-founder and director of the Data and Democracy Initiative of the

Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) is a research institute operated by the University of California to facilitate the real-world application of technological research. App ...

. For his research, Goldberg was awarded the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

Young Investigator Award in 1994, the

Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1995, the

Joseph F. Engelberger Joseph Frederick Engelberger (July 26, 1925 – December 1, 2015) was an American physicist, engineer and entrepreneur. Licensing the original patent awarded to inventor George Devol, Engelberger developed the first industrial robot in the Uni ...

Robotics Award in 2000, the

Major Educational Innovation Award in 2001. Goldberg was named

IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

in 2005 "for contributions to networked telerobotics and geometric algorithms for automation."

Artwork

In the field of

collaborative filtering Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...

, Goldberg developed Eigentaste, a constant-time recommendation algorithm. It is featured in his online project, Jester, which is an online personalized joke

recommender system A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular u ...

. Goldberg's work in filtering algorithms has also extended to social media and foreign policy. His project, Opinion Space, is a data visualization which enables organization and analysis of constructive suggestions, using an intuitive graphical map of ideas. This platform is currently utilized for collective idea discovery by the U.S. Department of State, and corporations such as Unilever and GM. Goldberg is founding director of UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series, established in 1997. This monthly speaker series brings artists, writers, and curators such as

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

Miranda July Miranda July (born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger; February 15, 1974) is an American film director, screenwriter, singer, actress and author. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital presentations and live performance art. She w ...

Billy Klüver Johan Wilhelm Klüver (November 11, 1927 – March 20, 2004) was an electrical engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories who founded Experiments in Art and Technology. Klüver lectured extensively on art and technology and social issues to be address ...

David Byrne David Byrne (; born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of ...

and

Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...

to give evening lectures and is free and open to the public. Goldberg is editor of several books, including ''The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet'' (MIT Press, 2000), and ''Beyond Webcams: An Introduction to Online Robotics'' (MIT Press, 2001), which both explore what is knowable at a distance. Goldberg has worked on several net-based installation pieces from 1995 to today. One of his more well-known works, ''Legal Tender,'' allowed users to perform experiments on hundred dollar bills. After being given a sector of the bill to burn, users were flashed with the message of the illegality of tampering with U.S. currency. Follow up works such as ''Ouija 2000'' and ''Public Keys'' built upon the idea of audience participation over the internet. As an artist, Goldberg's work has been exhibited at the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

Catharine Clark Gallery Established in 1991, the Catharine Clark Gallery presents the work of contemporary, living artists using a variety of media. The gallery is located in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill Neighborhood, at 248 Utah Street. The Catharine Clark Gallery is ...

, Pompidou Centre (Paris), Walker Art Center, Ars Electronica (Linz Austria),

Electronic Language International Festival The Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (FILE; English: Electronic Language International Festival) is a New media art festival that usually takes place in three cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has ...

(São Paulo), ZKM (Karlsruhe), ICC Biennale (Tokyo), Kwangju Biennale (Seoul), Artists Space, and The Kitchen (New York). He has held visiting positions at

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

, and the

Art Center College of Design Art Center College of Design (stylized as ArtCenter College of Design) is a private art college in Pasadena, California. History ArtCenter College of Design was founded in 1930 in downtown Los Angeles as the Art Center School. In 1935, Fred R. ...

. ''The Tribe'', a short film he co-wrote with his wife,

Tiffany Shlain Tiffany Shlain (born April 8, 1970) is an American filmmaker and author. Described by the public radio program ''On Being'' as "an internet pioneer", Shlain is the co-founder of the Webby Awards and the founder of the International Academy of Dig ...

(who directed and produced the film) was selected for the 2006

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

and the 2006

Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by TriBeCa Productions, Tribeca Productions. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive progra ...

. Their second film collaboration, ''Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death, and Technology,'' is a documentary feature film selected for the 2011

. Goldberg's Ballet Mori project, performed by the San Francisco Ballet, won an Izzie award at the

Isadora Duncan Dance Awards The Isadora Duncan Dance Awards or Izzies honor San Francisco Bay Area dance artists for outstanding achievements in a range of categories including: choreography, sustained achievement, individual performance, company performance, costume design, ...

in 2007. Goldberg collaborated with Gil Gershoni on ''Are We There Yet?'', a solo acoustic art installation commissioned by the Creative Work Fund and exhibited in 2011 at the

Contemporary Jewish Museum The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) is a non-collecting museum at 736 Mission Street at Yerba Buena Lane in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The museum, which was founded in 1984, is located in the historic ...

in San Francisco. Goldberg collaborated with

Martin M. Wattenberg Martin M. Wattenberg (born 1970) is an American scientist and artist known for his work with data visualization. He is currently the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. ...

and Fernanda Viégas on the visual installation ''Bloom'' that is in the permanent collection of the

Nevada Museum of Art The Nevada Museum of Art, is an art museum in Reno, Nevada. Located at 160 West Liberty Street in Reno, it is the only American Alliance of Museums (AAM) accredited art museum in the state of Nevada. The museum has chosen a thematic approach, placi ...

.Making Art Out of Earthquakes
Berkeley's Ken Goldberg explores how to help people understand the physical realities of a geologically active world.BLOOM: Ken Goldberg, Sanjay Krishnan, Fernanda Viégas, and Martin Wattenberg Nevada Museum of Art
/ref>

References

External links