Kenneth Y. Goldberg (born 1961) is a Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR), with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of the Berkeley Center for New Media. He is an artist, writer, inventor, and researcher in the field of robotics and automation.
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Goldberg was born in Ibadan, Nigeria and grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He received a BS in Electrical Engineering and BS in Economics, summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. Goldberg also received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. He then taught in the department of computer science at the University of Southern California from 1991–1995 and was visiting faculty in 2000 at the MIT Media Lab. [1]
Goldberg and his students develop new algorithms for Feeding, Fixturing, Grasping and Assembly, with an emphasis on minimalist approaches that require a minimum of sensing and complexity. For 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 gripper that complies passively to hold parts securely without sensing. Named IEEE Fellow in 2005, Goldberg co-founded the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering and his work has resulted in six United States patents.
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. This project was online continuously for nine years in the lobby of the Ars Electronica Center. Goldberg is a leading researcher in networked telerobotics 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 Founding Director of UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, established in 1997. This monthly speaker series brings artists, writers, and curators such as Billy Klüver, David Byrne and Bruno Latour 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), which explores what is knowable at a distance.
For his research, Goldberg was awarded the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1994, the National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1995, the Joseph F. Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, the IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award in 2001.
As an artist, Goldberg's work has been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, Pompidou Center (Paris), Walker Art Center, Ars Electronica (Linz Austria), File festival (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, MIT Media Lab, and the Art Center College of Design.
The Tribe, a short film he co-wrote with his wife, Tiffany Shlain (who also directed and produced the film) was selected for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. Goldberg's Ballet Mori project, performed by the San Francisco Ballet, won an Isadora Duncan Award in 2006.