berkeley

If you hate folding laundry, you might like what you see in a recent video from researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. They programmed a robot to fold towels.

The researchers used Willow Garage's PR2, a general-purpose humanoid robot with two seven-axis arms and a wheeled base. In an ICRA 2010 paper, they present a cloth-grasping algorithm for getting the robot to pick up and fold towels it hadn't previously analyzed.

Fitted with four stereo cameras, PR2 was able to successfully figure out, grasp, and fold 50 single towels, as well as a pile of five … Read more

Intel Labs is showing off technology that could make smartphones a lot smarter by integrating technology that monitors ambient air quality.

As part of an annual Open House on Wednesday at the UC Berkeley campus, Intel Labs Berkeley is demonstrating the most tantalizing fruits of its research, including Common Sense, a technology that would allow consumers to collect and analyze environmental data and then share it over the Internet.

"It's about air quality," said Anthony Joseph, director of Intel Labs Berkeley. "We've developed a portable device a little bit larger than a cell phone (see photo) and it collects information about nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone."

Joseph said it also has a GPS sensor and GSM radio to send back geolocated data.

"As you go about your day, it can monitor the air quality around you," Joseph said. "You can collect all of that data, process it, and then share that data with users."

The technology offers more granular data compared with the "coarse-grained" readings provided by devices deployed the California Air Resources Board or the Environmental Protection Agency, Joseph said. "This gives you block by block (environmental) information," he said.

And Intel Labs is already seriously considering practical application. "We are looking at a number of different options," he said. "One would be to produce a large run of these. We've had a lot of requests to purchase these." Intel Labs already did an experimental deployment on street sweepers, according to Joseph.

And smartphones? "Another long-term idea is embedding these sensors in cell phones," he said. "The phone has communications, it has GPS, and you're just adding a few sensors… Read more

Updated 3:45 p.m. PST with note of the filing made by the Open Book Alliance.

Objections to the Google Books settlement are once again filling the mailbox of Judge Denny Chin, as another deadline in the saga looms.

It's the second go-round for objectors to the settlement, which would allow Google to partially display in-copyright but out-of-print books alongside books authorized by publishers and public domain works in Google Books. Google and the plaintiffs--the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers--came within weeks of getting their settlement approved by the U.S. Federal Court for the Southern … Read more

I can understand why people are so keen to find alien life. It isn't so much a scientific fascination with what might be out there. It's more a pained hope that what is out there might be more enjoyable than what is down here.

So I am wrestled to the ground by a certain sympathy for Brad Niesluchowski.

According to the Arizona Republic, Niesluchowski was asked to resign after allegedly using his position at the Higley Unified School District to exercise his own (and our) need for an alien encounter.

This was not a case of uploading pictures … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Ahead of a key international summit on climate change, Google hosted a panel discussion at its offices here Monday on the need for the U.S. to play a key role in the development of the next generation of energy.

Energy experts from Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and MIT joined Google's Dan Reicher, director of climate and energy initiatives and energy venture capitalist Tim Woodward of Nth Power in a wide-ranging discussion on a very timely topic: how to transition the world toward a more sustainable form of energy consumption and production. They were … Read more

Researchers in California are developing a simple robot cockroach that can be assembled in an hour, move quickly, and survive 92-foot falls.

The Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, or DASH, is a neat example of the insectile robotics from UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab.

Robot cockroaches have been designed before, but DASH seems relatively simple to put together before it can be used to creep everyone out.

The 4-inch, 16-gram bug is put together by folding cardboard and polymer sheets. A DC motor runs the six legs while a servomotor bends the frame to induce left or right turns.

It … Read more

BERKELEY, Calif.--Google's Dan Clancy had patiently answered question after question regarding Google's' Book Search settlement with publishers and authors until late in the afternoon Friday, when he was finally left speechless.

Louis Trager, a reporter from Washington Internet Daily, asked Clancy what kind of message was sent when Google decided to "copy first and answer questions later." The question--for which there's no safe answer, if you're in Clancy's shoes--perhaps underscored the core of the opposition to the settlement, reached in October, after Google was sued in 2005 for scanning out-of-print works without … Read more

Is Google ready--or willing--to become a library?

Librarians, academics, and privacy advocates will gather Friday on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley to discuss the implications of Google's proposed settlement with publishers that, if implemented, will allow it to bring millions of books online.

At issue are concerns over privacy, quality, and Google's intent with the project, the only one of its kind in the U.S. to receive the legal authority to scan books that are out of print but under copyright protection--estimated by the Internet Archive to comprise 50 percent to 70 … Read more

UC Berkeley researchers announced in April a special lens that turns a normal cell phone camera into a portable microscope powerful enough to offer bright field microscopy. They called it CellScope.

Well, the device just got even more powerful. The group announced Tuesday that the CellScope is now capable of taking color images of malaria parasites and even of tuberculosis bacteria labeled with fluorescent markers.

The version of the Cellscope introduced in April works with handhelds and even Netbooks and can be used for bright field microscopy, which uses simple white light--such as from a bulb or sunlight--to illuminate samples. The new version adds fluorescent microscopy to the repertoire. The device can now take pictures of a target--such as a parasite, bacteria, or cell--tagged with a specific fluorescent wavelength emitted by a special dye.

To achieve this, the researchers used filters to block out background light and convert the light source--a simple LED--into the 460-nanometer wavelength required to excite the green fluorescent dye in the sample. After that they were were able to take fluorescent images of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (which causes TB in humans) with a 3.2-megapixel off-the-shelf phone camera. The images were then automatically analyzed using software to show the total of bacteria in the blood sample.

This new development means the prototype of the CellScope can also be used in field settings for disease screening and diagnoses.… Read more