Podcasts about cal academy

Is AI a big scam? In their co-authored new book, The AI Con, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna take aim at what they call big tech “hype”. They argue that large language models from OpenAI or Anthropic are merely what Bender dubs "stochastic parrots" that produce text without the human understanding nor the revolutionary technology that these companies claim. Both Bender, a professor of linguistics, and Hanna, a former AI researcher at Google, challenge the notion that AI will replace human workers, suggesting instead that these algorithms produce "mid" or "janky" content lacking human insight. They accuse tech companies of hyping fear of missing out (FOMO) to drive adoption. Instead of centralized AI controlled by corporations, they advocate for community-controlled technology that empowers users rather than exploiting them. Five Takeaways (with a little help from Claude)* Large language models are "stochastic parrots" that produce text based on probability distributions from training data without actual understanding or communicative intent.* The AI "revolution" is primarily driven by marketing and hype rather than groundbreaking technological innovations, creating fear of missing out (FOMO) to drive adoption.* AI companies are positioning their products as "general purpose technologies" like electricity, but LLMs lack the reliability and functionality to justify this comparison.* Corporate AI is designed to replace human labor and centralize power, which the authors see as an inherently political project with concerning implications.* Bender and Hanna advocate for community-controlled technology development where people have agency over the tools they use, citing examples like Teheku Media's language technology for Maori communities.Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program and affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. She is frequently consulted by policymakers, from municipal officials to the federal government to the United Nations, for insight into into how to understand so-called AI technologies.Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it. With Emily M. Bender, she also runs the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype for a live audience online on Twitch and her podcast. She has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. She is also recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany's Queer 50 (2021, 2024) List and Business Insider's AI Power List, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

#artificialintelligence #decentralization #aiforgood Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. Dr. Hanna has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves as a co-chair of Sociologists for Trans Justice, as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the Scholars Council for the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry. FastCompany included Dr. Hanna as part of their 2021 Queer 50, and she has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-hanna-ph-d https://alex-hanna.com/ https://twitter.com/alexhanna https://www.dair-institute.org/

Methuselah the Australian lungfish arrived at the Steinhart Aquarium in 1938, when Willie Mays was six years old and Al Capone was still seeing time in Alcatraz. Cal Academy of Sciences biologist Ryan Schaeffer gives Total SF co-hosts Peter Hartlaub and Heather Knight a tour of the famous fish's enclosure, before talking about the life, care, puppy-like quirks and history of the world's oldest fish in a zoological settling. Produced by Peter Hartlaub. Music from the Sunset Shipwrecks off their album "Community," Castro Theatre organist David Hegarty and cable car bell-ringing by 8-time champion Byron Cobb. Follow Total SF adventures at www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

March is animal month on Total SF, where hosts Peter Hartlaub and Heather Knight showcase some of the most iconic animals in San Francisco, and poll listeners and readers to determine the official animal of San Francisco. First up is an up-close feeding with Claude the albino alligator, and an interview with California Academy of Sciences biologist Emma Kocina. She talks about Claude's training, the details behind his breakup with alligator roommate Bonnie and the strange things people drop in Cal Academy enclosures. Produced by Peter Hartlaub. Music from the Sunset Shipwrecks off their album "Community," Castro Theatre organist David Hegarty and cable car bell-ringing by 8-time champion Byron Cobb. Follow Total SF adventures at www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With two new penguin chicks arriving at California Academy of Sciences late last year, Academy biologist Holly Rosenblum gave the Total SF team a behind-the-scenes tour — and an exclusive interview with the baby birds. Also in this episode, hosts Heather Knight and Peter Hartlaub announce their new quest to find an official animal of San Francisco (the penguins are nominated!) and Rosenblum explains the international breeding program to save the African penguins — which includes travel on commercial flights. Learn more about the African penguin colony and the best time to visit at calacademy.org Produced by Peter Hartlaub. Music from the Sunset Shipwrecks off their album "Community," Castro Theatre organist David Hegarty and cable car bell-ringing by 8-time champion Byron Cobb. Follow Total SF adventures at www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An interview with Sarah Grimes, the stranding coordinator for the Mendocino Coast about the five deceased whales spotted in 2022.  Twice the number Grimes normally sees.  Grimes talks about the unusual species that stranded this year, including a Sperm whale and a Hubbs beaked whale. Photo courtesy of Sarah Grimes.

My guest today is Siena Mckim. Siena is a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara studying sponges in the kelp forest, which is arguably one of the most iconic marine communities. In particular, she's looking at sponge symbionts - basically, the tiny marine organisms that use sponges as a habitat. Today we hear about Siena's unique path to marine biology, developed in part from an unlikely interest in algae while at the University of Michigan, and accelerated by a love of SCUBA diving.We then quickly transition to the wild diversity of sponges, including glass sponges the size of a minivan, to sponges that sneeze, and even carnivorous sponges! As mentioned, Siena is looking at sponge symbionts, so we discuss that research and some of the discoveries and mysteries that she is tracking.Siena shares tons of fun facts in this episode, too. For example, I had to ask a cliché SpongeBob SquarePants question that might also be on your minds, but I was surprised at the answer! I'll just say that you'll have to listen to find out the reality of sponge fashion choices. And PLEASE read on below to see photos of some of these amazing creatures!And of course, Siena offers tips for locating sponges yourself, whether on docks, in tidepools, snorkeling, SCUBA diving, or even in freshwater.This interview was a lot of fun, and Siena's enthusiasm really shows. You can find Siena on Instagram as imlichentoday, and on iNaturalist with the same handle.See the FULL SHOW NOTES for photos of many of the subjects discussed today!Links To Topics DiscussedPeople and OrganizationsGeorge Matsumoto - MBARI researcherTom Turner's Lab at UCSB - and Tom on iNaturalistOlogies episode w/ Cal Academy of Sciences' Rich Mooi about Echinology (Michael mentioned this episode during the interview)Dockfouling w/ Cricket Raspett - past Nature's Archive episode with all of the ins and outs of finding cool marine creatures on docks.Books and VideosEVNautilus - YouTube channel that Siena recommendsMBARI - The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has an amazing YouTube channel - and look for them on social media, too!YouTube Video of sponges filtering dye - Jonathan Bird's Blue WorldSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/naturesarchive)

Dr. Scott Sampson is the CEO of the California Academy of Science and an amazing Paleontologist.  His love of dinosaurs at a young age catapulted him into a world of science, and he even had his own show about it - Dinosaur Train on PBS.From all his work in the field, and in museums, Dr. Sampson is embarking on a new journey - how to run a museum post pandemic!  Tune in a listen as Dr. Sampson details his life choses and decisions, and what is coming up for Cal Academy of Science in the near future. Support the show (https://www.gofundme.com/manage/stem-communications-fund)

FULL SHOW NOTESToday's guest is Alison Young, Co-Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the California Academy of Sciences. Alison has a background in marine biology, including a MA in Marine Biology from Humboldt State University and a BA in Biology from Swarthmore College.At the Cal Academy, Alison is a driving force behind the City Nature Challenge, which is a 4 day global BioBlitz event that had over 1.25 million nature observations in 2021 across 400 different global locations. Mark your calendars! This year it runs from April 29 to May 2 local time, and I hope all of you plan to participate! I know my calendar is full of fun and unique events all four days!Today Alison and I discuss the community, science, and fun that is the City Nature Challenge, and how you can participate in this year's event. Whether you live in a city or not, in northern or southern latitudes, or are stuck at home, you can participate, and Alison offers wonderful insights for all of those scenarios.We discuss the goals of the challenge, and of course, exactly what it is. Alison also tells us how the City Nature Challenge grew from what was initially thought to be a one-time competition between two rival cities - Los Angeles and San Francisco, to the massive annual event that it is today.And Alison offers several tips for making useful observations in iNaturalist, taking good photos, and how to make the City Nature Challenge a fun and enticing event even if the season or weather isn't what you'd consider optimal for your area.You can get more information at citynaturechallenge.org, and follow the city nature challenge at citnatchallenge on both twitter and instagram. And follow Alison at alisonkestrel on Twitter and Instagram, or just kestrel on iNaturalist.FULL SHOW NOTESLinksPeople, Events, OrganizationsGreat Southern BioBlitz - an event for the Southern HemisphereJulia Butterfly Hill - lived in a Redwood tree for 738 days to draw attention and prevent cutting of rare old growth redwoodsLila Higgins, Senior Manager, Community Science at Natural History Museum of LA CountySnapshot Cal Coast - A California Coast bioblitz event BooksThe Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction by David Quammen. This 1997 book was influential to Alison.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/naturesarchive)

​In this podcast, we continue our visit at Sisterhood Gardens and our series on City Gardens. Today, we meet Sisterhood volunteer Tim Wong. Tim shares his life story with us. He grew up on the Peninsula and moved to The City in 2016. This coincided with the founding of Sisterhood Gardens. Tim grew up in an area replete with butterflies, something he was drawn to from a young age. He was interested in the insects and their relationship with plants. His earliest memories of coming to San Francisco involve his grandparents, who lived in the Sunset. His school took the kids to the California Academy of Sciences, which we'll get back to in a moment. Tim was in The City almost every weekend. He never necessarily envisioned himself living in San Francisco. After high school, he moved to San Diego to go to UCSD, where he studied environmental systems, ecology, and evolution as well as marine science. He was aiming toward marine biology. Through school, he worked in an aquarium, which later led to his volunteering at Cal Academy of Sciences. Today, Tim works at the academy in its rainforest exhibit. As we're discussing his various rolls at work, we take a detour to hear some of the places Tim has dived, including off the shore here in Northern California. Tim says he's drawn to his work at the academy and the garden because of the sense of community and giving back. We end this podcast with Tim's thoughts on what it means to still be here. If you'd like to volunteer at Sisterhood or get involved somehow, please visit their website. We recorded this podcast at Sisterhood Gardens in Oceanview in March 2022. Photography by Jeff Hunt

In this podcast, Dara charts her path from educational work to going back to grad school for non-profit program management. That led her to helping start The Dinner Party, a non-profit with the goal of bringing people who are experiencing loss together over potluck dinners. That served as a segue to Reimagine: End of Life, a festival that kicks off this week with 250+ events all over the city and Bay Area. Dara also talks about the roots of one of her newest gigs: stand-up comedy. Her upcoming shows, both part of Reimagine, include Good Grief on Oct. 29 at Punchline (after the show, Bitch Talk Podcast will host a live Q&A with some of the featured comedians), and a Halloween show at Cal Academy of Sciences called Ghost Stories. Please visit those links for tickets and more info. Our contribution to Reimagine this year is a show called Is San Francisco Dying? We ask you to ponder that question by hearing 20 diverse San Franciscans share stories of their lives here. Their photos (by Michelle) are on the wall for you to get to know them better. And we're inviting you to share your own memories with the community by writing them down and locating your stories somewhere on our giant map of San Francisco. If you missed Part 1 of Dara's podcast, please go back and listen. We recorded this podcast at The Laundry in September 2019. Film photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Episode 100 of The Big Event is an interview with Scott Sampson — new executive director of the California Academy of Sciences and "Dr. Scott" on the PBS children's show "Dinosaur Train." Host Peter Hartlaub asks Scott about the past, present and future of the Cal Academy, coyotes in Golden Gate Park and that time the paleontologist named a new dinosaur after a famous rock star. Scott also talks about "Dinosaur Train," the educational show that he's been involved with since 2009. Produced by Peter Hartlaub. Music is "The Tide Will Rise" by the Sunset Shipwrecks off their album "Community." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June is Aquarium Appreciation Month! Do YOU appreciate aquariums? We do! Andrew & Polly talk biodiversity with 7-year-old Nate from The Show About Science, marine camouflage with nudibranch aficionado Rebecca Johnson from Cal Academy, and seahorses with Jenn (who just likes them a lot.) We appreciate The Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Shedd, Aquarium of the Bay and The California Academy of Science, and so many more. Plus aquarium joke.

Dr. Bea worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Royal Dutch Shell around the world. His research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is co-founder of Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UCB.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon and welcome to spectrum. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'll be the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two interviews with Robert B professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. [00:01:00] Dr B served as an engineer for the U S Army Corps of Engineers, Shell oil, shell development and Royal Dutch Shell. His work has taken them to more than 60 locations around the world. Has Engineering work, has focused on marine environments, is research and teaching, have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is cofounder of the Center for catastrophic risk management at UC Berkeley in part two. Brett swift asks professor B about the California Delta balancing development and environmental conservation and shoreline retreat. [00:01:30] Is civil engineering misunderstood Speaker 4: or do people simply have a love hate relationship with the built environment? I think a mixture of civil engineering has been changing, so people's preconceived views in many cases are out of date and it's also low of, hey, when the built in art man bite you, it hurts and [00:02:00] hurt, encourages. Hey, there is a big reliance on it though at the same time as well. Yes. Airports, bridges, tunnels, water supply system, sewage supply, large ill NGS. That's our game. We're out of Egypt and Rome. That's where we got our start. And now the new term is infrastructure. Yes. To sort of put all that together into one idea. Yes. [00:02:30] Are there landscapes scale projects out there that people should be aware of and cognizant of? Yeah, that are underway or have recently completed? Yes. One we've been watching carefully is location than the other lunch and it's what's called the water works and the reason we zoom in closely is it's an excellent laboratory test bed for a comparable [00:03:00] problem we face here in California with aren't California Delta infrastructure systems. Speaker 4: Now the Lens, much more comeback, but it deals with an unforgiving test that's the North Sea. And so they've been learning actually over a period of 3000 years. How would it work in a constructive collaborative way with water? We face the same problem here at home. [00:03:30] Often the attention associated with civil engineering projects is due to the tension between environmental degradation and economic gain. Is it possible to have balance when you're doing something on this kind of scale? Answer is yes and it's a term bounce. Nature itself can be extremely destructive to itself. Watch an intense [00:04:00] storm attack, a sensitive reef area in the ocean. The tension and it can be constructive if it's properly managed, is we need to develop these systems, some of which need to make money and at the same time we need to ensure that what is being achieved there is not being degraded, destroyed by unintended consequences [00:04:30] to the environment. Speaker 4: One of the very good things that happened to civil engineering here at Berkeley is we changed our name. We're known as civil and environmental and that's to bring explicit this tension between built works, the natural works, and for God's sakes, remember we have a planet that we've got to live on for a long time. As engineers, we are still [00:05:00] learning how to deal with that tension and particularly when something's on a really large scale, best of intentions going forward, body of knowledge at the time you do the project, how do you know what the environmental impacts are going to be? Those unintended impacts reveal themselves. How do you walk these things back? How do you backtrack from having installed something on a landscape level? That clunky question. [00:05:30] That's one of the reasons for my fascination with the Netherlands, but the way I've worked there for a year, complements of previous employer [inaudible] is Royal Dutch Shell, so I was there learning all the dodge had confronted flooding from the North Sea and essentially the approach was built a big dam wall between you and at [00:06:00] water, you're on the dry site and it's on wet side. They promptly learned that was not good. The in fact heavily polluted areas that they were attempting to occupy and suddenly a new thing started to show in their thinking called give water room so that today they have actually sacrificed areas back to the open ocean [00:06:30] to get water. The room needs to do what it needs today and in the end the entire system has been improved. We've been trying to take some of those hard won lessons back to our California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: You were [00:07:00] listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Brad swift is interviewing Bob Bobby, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talk about the California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 7: We've talked about the delta a bit. Do you want to expand on the challenges of the Delta and [00:07:30] the downside? Speaker 4: Well, I'll start with the downside. One of the things I used to say in class when I was still teaching here is terror is a fine instructor. Okay. So the downside would be if we had what we call the ultimate catastrophe and it's foreseeable and in fact predictable [00:08:00] in our delta, we would be without an extremely important infrastructure system. For a period of more than five years. That includes fresh supply for small cities like Los Angeles and San Diego and small enterprises like the Central Valley Agricultural Enterprise. So the picture makes Katrina New Orleans look like a place [00:08:30] story. This is big time serious. You'd say hooky bomb. That's a pretty dismal picture. Why? And the answer is back to this risk crepe. The delta infrastructure systems started back in the gold rush days and we want to add some agricultural plans that we built, piles of dirt that I've called disrespectfully [inaudible]. And then we put in transportation [00:09:00] roadways, power supply, electrical power, and then we come up with a bright idea of transporting water from the north side of the delta to the South side of the Gel so we can export orders. Speaker 4: Southern California. Those people need water too. Well, it's all defend it by those same piles or hurt built back in the 1850s it's got art, gas storage under some of those islands and our telecommunications goes through there. [00:09:30] Our railroads go through air, so if you lose critical parts, those piles there, you got big problems. We can foresee it, we can in fact analyze, predict it. We've in fact quantified the risk. They are clearly unacceptable. We've talked to the people who have political insight and power. They are interested to the point of understanding [00:10:00] it and then they turn and ask, well, how do you solve the problem? Well, at this point we say we don't know yet, but we do know it's gonna take a long time to solve perhaps much like the Netherlands, 50 a hundred years. And you can see a Lee blank because there's a two to four year time window. What's this? 50 to a hundred years. Oh, can you tell me about tomorrow's problem? And tomorrow solutions [00:10:30] answer, no, this one's not that. So we've run into her stone wall. Speaker 7: So does it then become something that gets tacked on to all the other things that they want to do with the water? Because there's always a new peripheral canal being proposed. Right? Right. And the north south issue on water's not going away. So for some 50 years solution to happen in California politics, you'd have to have a pretty serious [00:11:00] consensus north and south to the shared interests there. Correct. And there's no dialogue about that really? No. Within the state, no. How about within the civil engineering community? Within the state? No. So everyone wants to ignore the obvious threat to the, so the California economy because basically you're talking about have you applied a cost to the a catastrophic event of the Delta failing? Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we thought that. Or Action Katrina, who Orleans [00:11:30] ultimately has caused the United States in excess of a hundred bill young as ours. Paul that by five or 10 because just the time extent. The population influence though we're talking about hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars. So the economic consequences of doing nothing or horrible and then you'd say, [00:12:00] well, is it possible to fix it? Answer is yes. Well, do you know exactly how? No, we don't. That's going to take time to work through. It also takes key word. You mentioned collaboration. Different interests are involved and we need to learn how to constructively and knowledgeably liberate the signings to say, here's a solution that makes sense to the environmental conscience [00:12:30] in the environment. Here's a sense or a solution makes sense to the social commercial, industrial complex. Hey, we might have a solution here. Let's start experimenting it. We don't have the basis for that lot and consequently it slips back into our busy backgrounds. Much like the San Pedro LPG tanks that are still sitting air. It's in the background and the clock is ticking Speaker 7: and the Dutch model [00:13:00] doesn't help them see how it could evolve. Speaker 4: It doesn't seem to, they sort of have distanced the experience from the Netherlands and saying, well, we could never come to an agreement like that. Of course, as soon as you say that, that's the death coming to an agreement like that. Speaker 7: Well maybe they don't see the impending danger as existential as the Dutch do. Speaker 4: I think that's very true. The Dutch can just walk [00:13:30] outside of their homes. Many of them walk up one of those levees and on the other side they see what's happening. The North Sea is big and mean and ever present and they've got one common enemy, so to speak, and that set ocean and they got to stop the flooding, but yet they can't damage the environment. So they've had to come to grips one with themselves. One more the environment and the long term view. We could do it. We haven't. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 6: [00:14:00] Spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l Ex Brooklyn. Brett swift is with our guests, Professor Robert B of UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talked about Shortline retreat and regulation of oil and gas extraction Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:14:30] with the sea level rise and with storms becoming more volatile and surges from the oceans becoming real factors on shorelines. How should communities and nations approach the idea retreating from the ocean? Speaker 4: Well, again, thankful to our brothers and sisters and Europe. [00:15:00] They're several decades ahead of us in asking and answering exactly that question. They've developed three strategies. They look at existing locations. They then examine each of the three strategies to see which makes longterm sense. The first strategy is fight. A good example would be United Kingdom, the tims flood [00:15:30] barrier. Yeah, you might like to move London, but to not gonna move it very quick easily. And so the answer comes back we need to defend, but you only defend what you can defend, which means you don't try and defend the entire coast of England. You defend small parts of it that can be adequately defended. That's the fight strategy. The next one is flight. I call it get [00:16:00] out of dodge city. And so they say we need to stay age, a strategic withdrawal so that we withdrawal slowly surrendering back to the environment which needs to be surrendered back to the environment and eventually we're gone. The next one is freeze. What the mean is we'll occupy it until it's destroyed and then we're gone. As we looked at the coast, New York, [00:16:30] New Jersey after Sandy, I wish we had done some of that thinking. I hope we do some of that thinking for our California Delta. Speaker 7: I was thinking about civil engineering as it's applied in different parts of the world where a nation state is in a different stage of development. And how do you see civil engineering interacting in those environments differently and taking in risk management and how it's applied? Speaker 4: Well, I guess each society [00:17:00] has to go through its own learning experiences. You can always look at other society and say, oh they weren't very smart or they certainly could have done it this way, rather they did it. So we all into the after the game quarterbacking sort of Mo seems like each of these countries societies has to go through its own learning experience. [00:17:30] As I said earlier, those risk assessment and management businesses one damn thing after another and this learning transfer of insight forward seems to be as frustrating and difficult. Speaker 7: So offshore. Let's Speaker 4: talk about the challenges inherent in that. What do you think about the debate about the risk? How should that debate be framed? [00:18:00] The risks are higher, which means that likelihoods failure that you engineer into the system, it would be much lower, have to have backups in defense and depth and people who actually know they're doing the question is, will we in fact do it before we have a disaster? Don't tell me you think it's safe. Show me and demonstrate to me is that demand has not happened here in the u s yet. [00:18:30] I'm very concerned. For us, I think the government changed some of the permitting process. Is that window dressing? What does it have some real impact on how people behave in the field? It depends on geographically where you're ant Alaska has been very demanding at the Alaskan state level relative to oil and gas operations and when you see a signature [00:19:00] go home or permit, you can pretty well bet that there's sufficient documentation demonstration to justify that signature. Speaker 4: Other parts of the u s are less diligent and so it depends geographically where you're at and what you're dealing. Well, it's not actually reasonable to expect to be able to appropriately regulate, govern and industry [00:19:30] as powerful as the oil and gas industry was spotting governance. Governance needs to be consistent and when the signature goes on to a form that says, yes, I have the ability to immediately abate the source of a blow out. You have the ability the fire engine is built, it's in this station with trained people. Let's ring the bell and see if that fire engine can run. That hasn't happened yet. I [00:20:00] remain personally very concerned for these Oltra high risk operations we're considering in the United States wars. Does the same spottiness occur with fracking in terms of the application of best practices, everything up and able to learn is, yes. Speaker 4: By the way, franking has been underway for many decades. Industry actually hit this kind of work underway intensely in the 1970s [00:20:30] it says spottiness we're back to. That becomes crucial if the regulation governance and that's both internal governance within the industry and external governance on behalf of the public. If it is demanding, insightful and capable, we're okay, but if it's not, we're not. Okay. The systems that you have to have an interesting ability to slip to the lowest common denominator. [00:21:00] By this point, my career, I've worked in 73 different countries. I've lived in 11 different countries, I've seen a company I have a lot of respect for at Shell, operate internationally, some areas, gold standard, Norwegian sector, North Sea, and then I go to work with them in Angola. It's not a very good standard at all and [00:21:30] that's because the regulatory environment with local and national Franco relative to oil and gas is very poor, so the system seems to adopt the lowest sort of common denominator. Can. Strong industry requires strong governance to this man at the end of that experience. Bobby, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Very much pleasure for that integration. Speaker 2: [00:22:00] Mm Mm Speaker 9: [inaudible].Speaker 3: If you are interested in a center for catastrophic risk management, visit their website at cc r m. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 10: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/ [inaudible] spectrum. Now a few science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Speaker 7: Brad swift joints me to present the calendar. Have you ever been interested in learning Mat lab? If so, [00:23:00] this event is for you. Next Wednesday, December 4th math works is sponsoring a technical seminar. Some of the highlights include exploring the fundamentals of the language writing programs to automate your workflow and leveraging tools for efficient program development. This event will take place Wednesday December 4th from nine to 11:00 AM in 100 Lewis Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Make sure to register online@mathworks.com click on [00:23:30] events. Speaker 3: Research on mobile micro robots has been ongoing for the last 20 years, but no micro robots have ever matched the 40 body lengths per second speed of the common ants on our picnic tables and front lawns. Next University of Maryland Speaker 7: Mechanical Engineering Professor Sarah Berg Brighter will discuss the challenges behind micro robotic mobility as well as mechanisms and motors they have designed to enable robot mobility at the insect sized scale. The colloquium is [00:24:00] open to all audiences and will take place on December 4th at 4:00 PM in three Oh six soda hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Every Thursday night, a new adventure unfolds at the California Academy of Sciences. December 5th Cal Academy of Sciences presents its holiday themed. Tis the season nightlife featuring class acts such as slide girls and DJ set by Nathan Blazer of geographer. Whether you're dancing underneath snow flurries in the piazza, or [00:24:30] enjoying the screening of back to the moon for good in the planetarium, this nightlife will be one to remember. Tis the season will take place. Thursday, December 5th from six to 10:00 PM at the California Academy of Sciences located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Remember for this event, you must be 21 years or older, so make sure to bring your ids for alcohol enriched fun. Speaker 7: For more information, go to cal academy.org is the future deterministic [00:25:00] and unalterable or can we shape our future? Marina Corbis suggests the latter. Wednesday, December 12th citrus at UC Berkeley is hosting a talk by executive director of the Institute of the future Marina Corbis. Marina Corpus's research focuses on how social production is changing the face of major industries. In this talk, she will discuss her research along with her insight to our society's future. The talk will take place Wednesday, December 11th [00:25:30] from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM is the target Dye Hall Beneteau Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus and now Brad swift joints. Me for the news. UC Berkeley News Center reports the funding of a new institute to help scholars harness big data, the Berkeley Institute for data science to be housed in the campuses. Central Library building is made possible by grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, which together pledged 37.8 [00:26:00] million over five years to three universities, UC Berkeley, the University of Washington and New York University to foster collaboration in the area of data science. Speaker 7: The goal is to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery with implications for our understanding of the universe, climate and biodiversity research, seismology, neuroscience, human behavior, and many other areas. Saul Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics [00:26:30] and Nobel laureate will be the director of the campuses. New Institute. David Culler, chair of UC Berkeley is the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science and one of the co-principal investigators. The data science grant said computing is not just a tool. It has become an integral part of the scientific process. Josh Greenberg, who directs the Sloan Foundation's digital information technology program said this joint project will work to create examples [00:27:00] at the three universities that demonstrate how an institution wide commitment to data scientists can deliver dramatic gains in scientific productivity. Speaker 3: NASA's newest Mars bound mission maven blasted off while faculty, students and staff assembled at the space sciences laboratory to watch their handiwork head to the red planet. More than half of the instruments of board the spacecraft were built at UC Berkeley. After a 10 month trip, it will settle into Mars orbit in September, 2014 where it will study the remains [00:27:30] of the Martian atmosphere. Maven was designed to find out why Mars lost its atmosphere and water. Scientists believe that Mars once had an atmosphere, oceans and rivers, very similar to Earth. From its Martian orbit. The spacecraft will collect evidence to support or refute the reigning theory that the loss of its magnetic field allowed solar, wind, and solar storms to scour the atmosphere way of operating any water not frozen under the surface. The answer to this question will give planetary scientists a hint of [00:28:00] what the future may bring for other planets, including earth. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 8: [00:28:30] the music heard during the show was written by Alex Simon. Speaker 1: [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same time. Speaker 9: [00:29:30] [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Bea worked with the US Army Corps of Engineers, and Royal Dutch Shell around the world. His research and teaching have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is co-founder of Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UCB.TranscriptSpeaker 1: Spectrum's next. Speaker 2: Mm [inaudible]. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. Speaker 3: Good afternoon and welcome to spectrum. My name is Chase Jakubowski and I'll be the host of today's show. Today we present part two of our two interviews with Robert B professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley. [00:01:00] Dr B served as an engineer for the U S Army Corps of Engineers, Shell oil, shell development and Royal Dutch Shell. His work has taken them to more than 60 locations around the world. Has Engineering work, has focused on marine environments, is research and teaching, have focused on risk assessment and management of engineered systems. He is cofounder of the Center for catastrophic risk management at UC Berkeley in part two. Brett swift asks professor B about the California Delta balancing development and environmental conservation and shoreline retreat. [00:01:30] Is civil engineering misunderstood Speaker 4: or do people simply have a love hate relationship with the built environment? I think a mixture of civil engineering has been changing, so people's preconceived views in many cases are out of date and it's also low of, hey, when the built in art man bite you, it hurts and [00:02:00] hurt, encourages. Hey, there is a big reliance on it though at the same time as well. Yes. Airports, bridges, tunnels, water supply system, sewage supply, large ill NGS. That's our game. We're out of Egypt and Rome. That's where we got our start. And now the new term is infrastructure. Yes. To sort of put all that together into one idea. Yes. [00:02:30] Are there landscapes scale projects out there that people should be aware of and cognizant of? Yeah, that are underway or have recently completed? Yes. One we've been watching carefully is location than the other lunch and it's what's called the water works and the reason we zoom in closely is it's an excellent laboratory test bed for a comparable [00:03:00] problem we face here in California with aren't California Delta infrastructure systems. Speaker 4: Now the Lens, much more comeback, but it deals with an unforgiving test that's the North Sea. And so they've been learning actually over a period of 3000 years. How would it work in a constructive collaborative way with water? We face the same problem here at home. [00:03:30] Often the attention associated with civil engineering projects is due to the tension between environmental degradation and economic gain. Is it possible to have balance when you're doing something on this kind of scale? Answer is yes and it's a term bounce. Nature itself can be extremely destructive to itself. Watch an intense [00:04:00] storm attack, a sensitive reef area in the ocean. The tension and it can be constructive if it's properly managed, is we need to develop these systems, some of which need to make money and at the same time we need to ensure that what is being achieved there is not being degraded, destroyed by unintended consequences [00:04:30] to the environment. Speaker 4: One of the very good things that happened to civil engineering here at Berkeley is we changed our name. We're known as civil and environmental and that's to bring explicit this tension between built works, the natural works, and for God's sakes, remember we have a planet that we've got to live on for a long time. As engineers, we are still [00:05:00] learning how to deal with that tension and particularly when something's on a really large scale, best of intentions going forward, body of knowledge at the time you do the project, how do you know what the environmental impacts are going to be? Those unintended impacts reveal themselves. How do you walk these things back? How do you backtrack from having installed something on a landscape level? That clunky question. [00:05:30] That's one of the reasons for my fascination with the Netherlands, but the way I've worked there for a year, complements of previous employer [inaudible] is Royal Dutch Shell, so I was there learning all the dodge had confronted flooding from the North Sea and essentially the approach was built a big dam wall between you and at [00:06:00] water, you're on the dry site and it's on wet side. They promptly learned that was not good. The in fact heavily polluted areas that they were attempting to occupy and suddenly a new thing started to show in their thinking called give water room so that today they have actually sacrificed areas back to the open ocean [00:06:30] to get water. The room needs to do what it needs today and in the end the entire system has been improved. We've been trying to take some of those hard won lessons back to our California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 6: You were [00:07:00] listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. Brad swift is interviewing Bob Bobby, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talk about the California Delta Speaker 5: [inaudible].Speaker 7: We've talked about the delta a bit. Do you want to expand on the challenges of the Delta and [00:07:30] the downside? Speaker 4: Well, I'll start with the downside. One of the things I used to say in class when I was still teaching here is terror is a fine instructor. Okay. So the downside would be if we had what we call the ultimate catastrophe and it's foreseeable and in fact predictable [00:08:00] in our delta, we would be without an extremely important infrastructure system. For a period of more than five years. That includes fresh supply for small cities like Los Angeles and San Diego and small enterprises like the Central Valley Agricultural Enterprise. So the picture makes Katrina New Orleans look like a place [00:08:30] story. This is big time serious. You'd say hooky bomb. That's a pretty dismal picture. Why? And the answer is back to this risk crepe. The delta infrastructure systems started back in the gold rush days and we want to add some agricultural plans that we built, piles of dirt that I've called disrespectfully [inaudible]. And then we put in transportation [00:09:00] roadways, power supply, electrical power, and then we come up with a bright idea of transporting water from the north side of the delta to the South side of the Gel so we can export orders. Speaker 4: Southern California. Those people need water too. Well, it's all defend it by those same piles or hurt built back in the 1850s it's got art, gas storage under some of those islands and our telecommunications goes through there. [00:09:30] Our railroads go through air, so if you lose critical parts, those piles there, you got big problems. We can foresee it, we can in fact analyze, predict it. We've in fact quantified the risk. They are clearly unacceptable. We've talked to the people who have political insight and power. They are interested to the point of understanding [00:10:00] it and then they turn and ask, well, how do you solve the problem? Well, at this point we say we don't know yet, but we do know it's gonna take a long time to solve perhaps much like the Netherlands, 50 a hundred years. And you can see a Lee blank because there's a two to four year time window. What's this? 50 to a hundred years. Oh, can you tell me about tomorrow's problem? And tomorrow solutions [00:10:30] answer, no, this one's not that. So we've run into her stone wall. Speaker 7: So does it then become something that gets tacked on to all the other things that they want to do with the water? Because there's always a new peripheral canal being proposed. Right? Right. And the north south issue on water's not going away. So for some 50 years solution to happen in California politics, you'd have to have a pretty serious [00:11:00] consensus north and south to the shared interests there. Correct. And there's no dialogue about that really? No. Within the state, no. How about within the civil engineering community? Within the state? No. So everyone wants to ignore the obvious threat to the, so the California economy because basically you're talking about have you applied a cost to the a catastrophic event of the Delta failing? Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we thought that. Or Action Katrina, who Orleans [00:11:30] ultimately has caused the United States in excess of a hundred bill young as ours. Paul that by five or 10 because just the time extent. The population influence though we're talking about hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars. So the economic consequences of doing nothing or horrible and then you'd say, [00:12:00] well, is it possible to fix it? Answer is yes. Well, do you know exactly how? No, we don't. That's going to take time to work through. It also takes key word. You mentioned collaboration. Different interests are involved and we need to learn how to constructively and knowledgeably liberate the signings to say, here's a solution that makes sense to the environmental conscience [00:12:30] in the environment. Here's a sense or a solution makes sense to the social commercial, industrial complex. Hey, we might have a solution here. Let's start experimenting it. We don't have the basis for that lot and consequently it slips back into our busy backgrounds. Much like the San Pedro LPG tanks that are still sitting air. It's in the background and the clock is ticking Speaker 7: and the Dutch model [00:13:00] doesn't help them see how it could evolve. Speaker 4: It doesn't seem to, they sort of have distanced the experience from the Netherlands and saying, well, we could never come to an agreement like that. Of course, as soon as you say that, that's the death coming to an agreement like that. Speaker 7: Well maybe they don't see the impending danger as existential as the Dutch do. Speaker 4: I think that's very true. The Dutch can just walk [00:13:30] outside of their homes. Many of them walk up one of those levees and on the other side they see what's happening. The North Sea is big and mean and ever present and they've got one common enemy, so to speak, and that set ocean and they got to stop the flooding, but yet they can't damage the environment. So they've had to come to grips one with themselves. One more the environment and the long term view. We could do it. We haven't. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 6: [00:14:00] Spectrum is a public affairs show on k a l Ex Brooklyn. Brett swift is with our guests, Professor Robert B of UC Berkeley. In the next segment they talked about Shortline retreat and regulation of oil and gas extraction Speaker 5: [inaudible]Speaker 7: [00:14:30] with the sea level rise and with storms becoming more volatile and surges from the oceans becoming real factors on shorelines. How should communities and nations approach the idea retreating from the ocean? Speaker 4: Well, again, thankful to our brothers and sisters and Europe. [00:15:00] They're several decades ahead of us in asking and answering exactly that question. They've developed three strategies. They look at existing locations. They then examine each of the three strategies to see which makes longterm sense. The first strategy is fight. A good example would be United Kingdom, the tims flood [00:15:30] barrier. Yeah, you might like to move London, but to not gonna move it very quick easily. And so the answer comes back we need to defend, but you only defend what you can defend, which means you don't try and defend the entire coast of England. You defend small parts of it that can be adequately defended. That's the fight strategy. The next one is flight. I call it get [00:16:00] out of dodge city. And so they say we need to stay age, a strategic withdrawal so that we withdrawal slowly surrendering back to the environment which needs to be surrendered back to the environment and eventually we're gone. The next one is freeze. What the mean is we'll occupy it until it's destroyed and then we're gone. As we looked at the coast, New York, [00:16:30] New Jersey after Sandy, I wish we had done some of that thinking. I hope we do some of that thinking for our California Delta. Speaker 7: I was thinking about civil engineering as it's applied in different parts of the world where a nation state is in a different stage of development. And how do you see civil engineering interacting in those environments differently and taking in risk management and how it's applied? Speaker 4: Well, I guess each society [00:17:00] has to go through its own learning experiences. You can always look at other society and say, oh they weren't very smart or they certainly could have done it this way, rather they did it. So we all into the after the game quarterbacking sort of Mo seems like each of these countries societies has to go through its own learning experience. [00:17:30] As I said earlier, those risk assessment and management businesses one damn thing after another and this learning transfer of insight forward seems to be as frustrating and difficult. Speaker 7: So offshore. Let's Speaker 4: talk about the challenges inherent in that. What do you think about the debate about the risk? How should that debate be framed? [00:18:00] The risks are higher, which means that likelihoods failure that you engineer into the system, it would be much lower, have to have backups in defense and depth and people who actually know they're doing the question is, will we in fact do it before we have a disaster? Don't tell me you think it's safe. Show me and demonstrate to me is that demand has not happened here in the u s yet. [00:18:30] I'm very concerned. For us, I think the government changed some of the permitting process. Is that window dressing? What does it have some real impact on how people behave in the field? It depends on geographically where you're ant Alaska has been very demanding at the Alaskan state level relative to oil and gas operations and when you see a signature [00:19:00] go home or permit, you can pretty well bet that there's sufficient documentation demonstration to justify that signature. Speaker 4: Other parts of the u s are less diligent and so it depends geographically where you're at and what you're dealing. Well, it's not actually reasonable to expect to be able to appropriately regulate, govern and industry [00:19:30] as powerful as the oil and gas industry was spotting governance. Governance needs to be consistent and when the signature goes on to a form that says, yes, I have the ability to immediately abate the source of a blow out. You have the ability the fire engine is built, it's in this station with trained people. Let's ring the bell and see if that fire engine can run. That hasn't happened yet. I [00:20:00] remain personally very concerned for these Oltra high risk operations we're considering in the United States wars. Does the same spottiness occur with fracking in terms of the application of best practices, everything up and able to learn is, yes. Speaker 4: By the way, franking has been underway for many decades. Industry actually hit this kind of work underway intensely in the 1970s [00:20:30] it says spottiness we're back to. That becomes crucial if the regulation governance and that's both internal governance within the industry and external governance on behalf of the public. If it is demanding, insightful and capable, we're okay, but if it's not, we're not. Okay. The systems that you have to have an interesting ability to slip to the lowest common denominator. [00:21:00] By this point, my career, I've worked in 73 different countries. I've lived in 11 different countries, I've seen a company I have a lot of respect for at Shell, operate internationally, some areas, gold standard, Norwegian sector, North Sea, and then I go to work with them in Angola. It's not a very good standard at all and [00:21:30] that's because the regulatory environment with local and national Franco relative to oil and gas is very poor, so the system seems to adopt the lowest sort of common denominator. Can. Strong industry requires strong governance to this man at the end of that experience. Bobby, thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Very much pleasure for that integration. Speaker 2: [00:22:00] Mm Mm Speaker 9: [inaudible].Speaker 3: If you are interested in a center for catastrophic risk management, visit their website at cc r m. Dot. berkeley.edu Speaker 10: [00:22:30] spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a simple link for you. The link is tiny url.com/ [inaudible] spectrum. Now a few science and technology events happening locally over the next two weeks. Speaker 7: Brad swift joints me to present the calendar. Have you ever been interested in learning Mat lab? If so, [00:23:00] this event is for you. Next Wednesday, December 4th math works is sponsoring a technical seminar. Some of the highlights include exploring the fundamentals of the language writing programs to automate your workflow and leveraging tools for efficient program development. This event will take place Wednesday December 4th from nine to 11:00 AM in 100 Lewis Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Make sure to register online@mathworks.com click on [00:23:30] events. Speaker 3: Research on mobile micro robots has been ongoing for the last 20 years, but no micro robots have ever matched the 40 body lengths per second speed of the common ants on our picnic tables and front lawns. Next University of Maryland Speaker 7: Mechanical Engineering Professor Sarah Berg Brighter will discuss the challenges behind micro robotic mobility as well as mechanisms and motors they have designed to enable robot mobility at the insect sized scale. The colloquium is [00:24:00] open to all audiences and will take place on December 4th at 4:00 PM in three Oh six soda hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Every Thursday night, a new adventure unfolds at the California Academy of Sciences. December 5th Cal Academy of Sciences presents its holiday themed. Tis the season nightlife featuring class acts such as slide girls and DJ set by Nathan Blazer of geographer. Whether you're dancing underneath snow flurries in the piazza, or [00:24:30] enjoying the screening of back to the moon for good in the planetarium, this nightlife will be one to remember. Tis the season will take place. Thursday, December 5th from six to 10:00 PM at the California Academy of Sciences located in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Remember for this event, you must be 21 years or older, so make sure to bring your ids for alcohol enriched fun. Speaker 7: For more information, go to cal academy.org is the future deterministic [00:25:00] and unalterable or can we shape our future? Marina Corbis suggests the latter. Wednesday, December 12th citrus at UC Berkeley is hosting a talk by executive director of the Institute of the future Marina Corbis. Marina Corpus's research focuses on how social production is changing the face of major industries. In this talk, she will discuss her research along with her insight to our society's future. The talk will take place Wednesday, December 11th [00:25:30] from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM is the target Dye Hall Beneteau Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus and now Brad swift joints. Me for the news. UC Berkeley News Center reports the funding of a new institute to help scholars harness big data, the Berkeley Institute for data science to be housed in the campuses. Central Library building is made possible by grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, which together pledged 37.8 [00:26:00] million over five years to three universities, UC Berkeley, the University of Washington and New York University to foster collaboration in the area of data science. Speaker 7: The goal is to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery with implications for our understanding of the universe, climate and biodiversity research, seismology, neuroscience, human behavior, and many other areas. Saul Perlmutter, UC Berkeley professor of physics [00:26:30] and Nobel laureate will be the director of the campuses. New Institute. David Culler, chair of UC Berkeley is the Department of Electrical Engineering and computer science and one of the co-principal investigators. The data science grant said computing is not just a tool. It has become an integral part of the scientific process. Josh Greenberg, who directs the Sloan Foundation's digital information technology program said this joint project will work to create examples [00:27:00] at the three universities that demonstrate how an institution wide commitment to data scientists can deliver dramatic gains in scientific productivity. Speaker 3: NASA's newest Mars bound mission maven blasted off while faculty, students and staff assembled at the space sciences laboratory to watch their handiwork head to the red planet. More than half of the instruments of board the spacecraft were built at UC Berkeley. After a 10 month trip, it will settle into Mars orbit in September, 2014 where it will study the remains [00:27:30] of the Martian atmosphere. Maven was designed to find out why Mars lost its atmosphere and water. Scientists believe that Mars once had an atmosphere, oceans and rivers, very similar to Earth. From its Martian orbit. The spacecraft will collect evidence to support or refute the reigning theory that the loss of its magnetic field allowed solar, wind, and solar storms to scour the atmosphere way of operating any water not frozen under the surface. The answer to this question will give planetary scientists a hint of [00:28:00] what the future may bring for other planets, including earth. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 8: [00:28:30] the music heard during the show was written by Alex Simon. Speaker 1: [00:29:00] Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same time. Speaker 9: [00:29:30] [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Paul Birkmeyer, EECS at UC Berkeley, talks about his work in the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab designing and building robots. The Lab seeks to harness features of locomotion, actuation, mechanics, and control strategies to improve millirobot capabilities.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum Speaker 2: the science and technology show [00:00:30] on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is with Paul Burke Meyer, a phd candidate in the electrical engineering and computer science department known as Ekes. He is working with Professor Ron fearing in his biomimetic millis systems lab building six legged crawling and climbing robots. [00:01:00] The goal of the biomimetic Miller systems lab is to harness features of animal manipulations, locomotion, sensing actuation, mechanics, dynamics and control strategies to radically improve Miller robot capabilities. Miller robots are small robots. For instance, the robot Paul Burke Meyer has built named dash is 10 centimeters long, five centimeters wide and weighs 15 grams. This interview [00:01:30] is prerecorded and edited. Welcome to spectrum Paul Burke. Myer, thanks for coming. Speaker 3: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Where are you situated at cal? What's your current status there? I am pursuing my phd here. I'm entering into my fifth year actually. Uh, and I'm studying Ekes specifically electrical engineering and I'm working on robotics in the w department. So Speaker 2: are you in a specific group with any x or is [00:02:00] it just a general study thing? No, it's gotta be something more specific for a Ph d Speaker 3: it is. So, uh, I've been working with Professor Ron fearing since I arrived and he runs the biomimetic Milly systems lab. And within that he has a few different projects, but specifically I'm working on a sort of six legged crawling and climbing robots. Describe for us the robots you're building that my goal for my phd when I first came and still true is to make [00:02:30] a robot that can dynamically climb up a any sort of surface that it's presented with. So the contribution I'm trying to make is how do you make a robot that's minimally actuated? So class uses only a single actuator right now, single motor to drive all the legs. How do you create something that is passively stable? So the structure itself makes it stable when it's climbing. So you don't actually have to spend extra computation and have extra motors on there to keep you from either [00:03:00] falling off the wall or turning and things like that. Speaker 3: Um, how can you climb dynamically, not this sort of slow plodding climbing. How can you climb dynamically, rapidly up a surface and do it stable and do it with very little effort. And what does the foot look like that allows you to make a robot like that. So what does your foot need to do in order to be able to engage and disengage rapidly and without any actuation? So that's [00:03:30] sort of what my phd will say in the end, hopefully. And maybe a year and a half or two years. How did you go about building that kind of a robot? Speaker 3: So the design was long and hard. Um, so when I first came to the biomimetic Mullin systems lab, they were already using what they're calling the smart composite manufacturing process, if you want to describe it. Yeah. So the original process was taking [00:04:00] two pieces of carbon fiber and cutting mirrored slits in both. You cut a bunch of slits on the one piece and you mere it across to the other, and then you take a piece of thin Palmer thin plastic sheet and then you take those two mirrored pieces and put them together and make a sandwich structure. And so you have carbon fiber with one pattern polymer, and then the other piece of carbon fiber with the same pattern that now aligns with the other one, it [00:04:30] bends. Now it's flexible at those polymer hinges at those where those slits were originally. So if each slit is a joint, it doesn't cost you anything to cut more joints out. Speaker 3: Whereas if you're making sort of traditional machined robot out of say aluminum and ball-bearings and things, each new joint does a new bearing, which has some costs, has extra weight. So you can add many, many joints. For example, Dash I think has 75 or more joints in [00:05:00] the robot. Um, many of them are fixed, so they're used just to fold up the final structure and then you glue them in place. Each hip has six moving joints. So each hip has six moving joints. They're six hips. So Justin, the hips alone, they're already 36 moving joints. Um, whereas if you were to do this with ball-bearings, you quickly get something very big and very heavy. So this actually started off as a prototyping process. [00:05:30] Before they would use the carbon fiber process to make their robots. At the time they were making very small robotic flies and you have to assemble these flies under microscopes and it's very tedious. Speaker 3: And if you, if you mess up, so in your design process, you didn't account for something or something doesn't quite align. You've lost a couple of days just working under a microscope, your back hurts, your eyes are tired and it's very frustrating. They realize, hey, this is just a geometric [00:06:00] pattern. So if we make it very small, little fold up the exact same way as if we make it very big, the pattern is the same, the folds are the same. So they take cardboard and make the pattern just bigger and then assemble it by hand without a microscope within a few hours. And exactly, they can tell it's gonna move in the way I want. So this started off as a prototyping process designed by, uh, Aaron Hoover, who's now a professor at Olin and he just graduated. So I actually took this process and started to make [00:06:30] robot designs and realized, Hey, these are actually very functional. Speaker 3: They don't have to be prototypes necessarily. They're actually functional robots at the end. And uh, the cardboard was used, it's cheap cuts very quickly on a laser and you can go through designs very quickly. So instead of having one design that takes two days to build, you can build one in an hour or two. And so you can sort of explore that design space very quickly. So coming into the lab, they were using this manufacturing process where you design everything flat and you cut it out with the laser and you have to fold [00:07:00] it up into something that is functional and moves in the way that you want. And at the time, and still true, we don't have any good way of mapping what a 2d pattern is in the laser cutter, what that map looks like. And what you'll get out when you fold it up into three dimensions. Speaker 3: Keeping in mind that these joints can't spin 360 degrees like a ball bearing. They're limited to at most 180 [00:07:30] degrees before they hit the link on the other side. So you have to in your in your head or on paper draw these structures. Say I started with hips, how can I get a nice leg motion out? And so I designed the hips and then like extrapolated that to six hips and sort of as you go you have to sort of mentally unfold these hips and figure out what that pattern looks like and then you put six hips and then you have to make sure that it can all fit on a flat piece and that when you unfolded [00:08:00] they don't have pieces that are unfolded on top of each other. As you go. Say you'll make a pattern and the first one you make, you fold it up and you realize that some part has to go through another part because the way you designed it actually you didn't realize this part was going to fold into the other cause you have to go back and redesign it. Speaker 3: A lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error and it took more than 50, maybe, maybe less than a hundred different design iterations for the dash that is [00:08:30] published now from where I started. And even then there were some designs I did with just a single hip just to see what a good hip design was. And it took a lot of time just to get familiar with this folding and unfolding process and laying out parts in two dimensions. And that took me six months just to get familiar with that when I first came. So, so dash is made out of this paper composite. Um, but I've made Balsa wood versions, [00:09:00] I've made fiberglass versions. I actually have not made carbon fiber just because our laser that we use to cut carbon fiber, the bed is not quite big enough so you can't cut pieces quite big enough to make dash. But now we have actually a new laser that I, I will probably pursue carbon fiber if only for the novelty. Um, so it was a, it was a long process. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum [00:09:30] line a l x Berkeley. You're talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling and climbing robots. Speaker 2: The robot that you've built and published a paper about is called Dash. What does that stand for? Dash stands for the dynamic autonomous sprawled hexapod. Once you'd spent a lot of time with Dash, you then wanted [00:10:00] to create an x generation. What was it out of dash that you wanted to explore with clash? Speaker 3: So the things I liked about dash were the fact that it was still fairly small, 10 centimeters long, only 15 grams and very powerful. So if I kept it attached to a wall so it couldn't fall backwards off the wall, it had a lot of power. Could accelerate to full speed within a few hundred milliseconds. I mean it was very, very powerful. So that was nice. But its failure [00:10:30] was in the fact that in order to run it has these two plates basically that move up and down and forward and back relative to each other to drive the legs. That's basically the body is the transmission and it's true, the transmission is moving up and down. And so that's actually the problem is that it's pushing itself off the wall and it does this. So that was the, the main thing I wanted to address, but I liked the way the legs moved. Speaker 3: They call it alternating tripod gait where you have three legs in contact of any one time, so you have this [00:11:00] sort of tripod of support. So I knew what I had generally that worked and I knew sort of what didn't work. And so with clash it was how do I get rid of this up and down motion? And I'd spent enough years doing this smart composite manufacturing that the transition from dash to an entirely new design was only a couple iterations before I got something that actually climbed rather than multiple 50 or so iterations. So that was a lot smoother. The hips are essentially the same, but though the way that they're driven is a little bit different. [00:11:30] And now instead of moving up and down, it's sort of moving side to side and forward and back. So it's not pushing itself off the wall. Speaker 2: Can you describe the control systems you use for your robots? So the, the Speaker 3: interesting thing with the robots that we're making in our lab is that we're trying to reduce the amount of controls necessary as much as possible. Traditional robots, heavy computational power, um, so that they can control each limb and very precisely so in, in, or wants, they don't fall over. [00:12:00] Basically the biggest problem is not falling over for, for legged robots and maintaining stability at least traditionally. So what we're trying to do is to minimize the amount of overhead you have to have, just to be functional. So we've worked with biologists here at Berkeley. They've sort of found these really interesting properties and cockroaches where if they're running over smooth terrain, if you measure their, uh, leg muscle activity, it follows some very repeatable pattern [00:12:30] over smooth terrain, meaning that they're, they're activating the legs the same and then they give them this very rough, varied terrain with bumps, maybe two or three times the height of the cockroach. Speaker 3: They're very significant and they measure the leg activity and it looks almost exactly the same as when it's running on flat terrain. So what that that said to them was the roach is basically saying run and it doesn't care what the terrain is. They've decided that there's this [00:13:00] mechanical complexity and compliance. So the legs basically act as shock absorbers. They're just running and the legs sort of compensate for any roughness in the terrain. What we're trying to do is basically have a robot that does that where you just tell the robot to run and it doesn't care what it hits or what it's running over. It just basically runs and the legs are soft enough and bend enough to sort of compensate forever variation. There isn't the terrain. So the first design of dash that actually [00:13:30] put a motor in the motor actually came from a radio shack toy and I just took the electronics from that toy because it was remote controlled. Speaker 3: Since then, the electronics have been swapped for custom electronics. A couple other students in our lab have designed really small lightweight electronics with an accelerometer and a gyroscope, even a port for uh, integrating a cell phone camera and there students who are using that cell phone camera to sort of [00:14:00] guide the robot from my end. I'm basically doing the robot design and I put these electronics on and I have two commands, three really run. And I tell it how fast and turn left or turn right. And that's it. The nice thing is you don't have to do anything more than that because it, it, it runs well and it can go over a different terrain. It can climb obstacles and dash climb obstacles as tall as itself and it doesn't really care. And so that was what that lets you do is get really [00:14:30] small CPS, really small computers that basically you put on these robots and they take very little power. But now for control, all of all they have to say is go or turn when they can use the rest of their computational time to say, read information from the camera and decide which way do I want to go? What's my objective? So from a stability controls point, it's couldn't be easier. Um, and now we're using these whatever extra [00:15:00] CPU cycles in our small board to do sort of more complicated behavior, but that's sort of another person's project. Speaker 2: What sort of applications do you see this robot having? I know that you would want to use it as a vehicle, right? To have payloads on it. Right? And it also then goes into these strange places or if it can climb walls that's astounding. Right. On its own. Right. And then how do you then utilize it? Speaker 3: The original goal was to have a robot that you could deploy [00:15:30] in search and rescue operations. So, um, say in an earthquake where you have claps buildings or claps minds, um, you can send in very small robots, uh, through the cracks, through the crevices down to find survivors. And you can have thousands of these really cheap and small robots and you don't care if 99% of the robots fail to find anyone or fail to even make it down as long as some small fraction finds a survivor, then you have, [00:16:00] technically you've succeeded. So the goal is to make lots of these small, inexpensive robots that can climb through the cracks, have sensors on them that can detect if someone's alive and then little radios to communicate with each other and communicate with the outside world to say, this is where someone is. Even if it's with some high probability that there's someone here, you know, it's worth spending your time digging in this exact location rather than having to uncover the entire building. Speaker 2: I would imagine there are lots of uses in that realm of, of sensing [00:16:30] environments just in general, whether it's a collapse, building, a search and rescue, but you're just a hazardous place to monitor. And to have these things patrolling. So there's the, the whole idea is numbers and inexpensive, right? Manufacturer, Speaker 3: right. So, so there are also proposals for environmental sensing. So deploying these robots, especially these nice mobile robots and say agricultural areas where you want to track how a crop dusters pesticides [00:17:00] travel across the countryside. You could have robots that sort of move and they can respond to say changing winds so that it can sort of get into the line of you know, the the path of these plumes of pesticides and sort of track how they're progressing across the country if they're affecting, you know, downwind communities. Also we have visions of putting these on bridges to do, checking for signs of stress on bridges and or say the nuclear power plants [00:17:30] in Japan. You could deploy these and have them run around and find you know, leaks or just have a nice mesh sort of deployed sensor network and sort of get readings from lots of different spaces and sort of try to understand how the radiation is moving. Oh Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum line k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling [00:18:00] and climbing robots. Speaker 2: So Paul, how did you become interested in engineering? Speaker 3: For me it was pretty clear from the beginning. So when I was younger, um, I was really interested in, well like most people in engineering right now. I built a lot of things out of Legos and connects and things and was really interested in electronics. I actually had [00:18:30] an elderly neighbor next door to me who I would go over and visit and uh, he would give me all of his popular mechanics magazines and popular science magazines when he was done reading them. And I think that was really the hook that got me because I was reading these magazines, seeing all these cool things and thinking like, how can I end up in this magazine? What can I do to be in this magazine because these are all really, really neat things. I think that was the, the original hook. Then, uh, it sort of blossomed [00:19:00] in high school. Speaker 3: We had, uh, an advanced physics class. It was the first time it was offered and it was really sort of undefined. The curriculum wasn't really well formed and uh, as a result we had some freedom that you might not normally have in a high school course to do different projects that we wanted. Uh, the teacher at the time approached me maybe two thirds of the way into the year and said, hey, I have this, uh, this little programming board that they use at MIT for basic robotics things and I just have one of them and [00:19:30] you're doing well in the class. You want to see if you can maybe make a something and we can try to define a project for you using this board. The project ended up being making a robot that could drive through a maze and pop a balloon at the end. And he actually let me pick a partner to work with me. And I actually chose my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife. Um, and so we worked on this project for a long time and had a lot of fun. We made the whole, like the car system programmed the robot [00:20:00] and it was a spectacular failure, but it really was a lot of fun. And I think that was sort of what really cemented engineering for me. Speaker 2: So you mentioned in, in talking about getting started in robotics and engineering, the the aspect of having a lot of fun with it and are you able to maintain that sense of fun and play in your work? For me Speaker 3: this is, it's all fun. It's, I feel like I'm making toys all day [00:20:30] and I don't have to work at it to keep it fun because I love making these things and I think it's really exciting to come up with new structures and sort of understand why things aren't working, what you can do to change them. So for me it's, I mean adjust the, the project itself is so I think, I think it can be fun for other people when you have a like I can make this project fun for other people by actually making something that works and [00:21:00] sharing it with people and having this cool little robot that they can play with that can run up walls and things like that. But I think, I think it's true for lots of people in their careers. I think if you find the one you like, it's fun no matter what you do as long as, as long as you get to do it. So Speaker 2: well thanks very much Paul for coming in and talking. Speaker 3: Came with us was great. You're welcome. There was a lot of fun. Speaker 4: The [00:21:30] video of dash on Youtube, search for dash resilient, high speed 16 gram x and pedal robot regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [inaudible]. Speaker 2: The Science at Cau lecture series for July will be presented by professor Romanian Kezar Rooney [00:22:00] and will be entitled Exoskeleton Systems for medical applications. Dr Casa Rooney is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Robotics and human engineering laboratory is one of the world's leading experts in robotic human augmentation. The date of the lecture is Saturday, July 16th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 which is on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. [00:22:30] The East Bay Science cafe is held the first Wednesday of every month that the cafe of Valparaiso at La Pena Cultural Center, 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM the cost of admittance is the purchase of a beverage or food item of your choice. Wednesday, July 6th our crystal Cha graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of integrative biology at UC Berkeley will present. [00:23:00] Her topic is titled Spiders, Crustaceans, and sells omi. A story of how animals use cells to put themselves together. Speaker 2: UC Berkeley. Professor Gordon. Frankie will present a discussion on native bee populations in the bay area at the Peralta community garden. This event is free and open to the public. It will be held Saturday, July 9th at noon in the Peralta community garden. The garden address is 1400 Peralta [00:23:30] AV in Berkeley. Since today's show is at the beginning of the month, let me remind you of the free admittance days for some of the local institutions that normally charge admission. The exploratorium in San Francisco is the first Wednesday of each month. The UC botanical garden in Strawberry Canyon. Berkeley is the first Thursday of each month. The Tech Museum in San Jose is the second Sunday of each month. The Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco is the third Wednesday of each month. [00:24:00] Now several news stories from the UC Berkeley News Center. The story about a new public website providing access to extensive climate change research being conducted at California universities and research centers. Speaker 2: The website. cal-adapt.org has a variety of features tailored for different types of users, including members of the general public, concerned about their neighborhood or region decision-makers such as city planners and resource managers [00:24:30] and experts who want to examine data. The information on the website comes from peer reviewed climate change research funded by the California Energy Commission's public interest energy research program. The site displays the research data in a variety of climate change related scenarios and in map format modeling various projections such as changes in snowpack, wildfire, danger and temperature throughout the end of the century. The cal dash adapt website was developed by the [00:25:00] geospatial innovation facility at UC Berkeley's College of natural resources. Speaker 2: The journal Science gives out a monthly prize called spore. Spore stands for science prize for online resources in education. The June award was given to the molecular work bench software developed by the Concord consortium. The molecular workbench is a free open source software tool that helps learners overcome challenges and understanding the science of atoms [00:25:30] and molecules. This software simulates atomic scale phenomenon, permits users to interact with them. It can model electrons, atoms, and molecules, which makes it exceptable across physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Students from grades five through college can use the software to experiment with atomic scale systems. The software includes an author ing tool that enables educators to create complete learning activities with simulations, [00:26:00] text, images, graphs, navigation links and embedded assessments. Hundreds of these activities have been created and tested in classrooms. Educators are free to download and use completed activities or simulations or create their own. Speaker 2: The website is mw.concorde.org/modeler/in an earlier show, we carried a story [00:26:30] about research into toxic flame retardant chemicals in clothing and furniture which pose health hazards for babies and young children. A companion study on the efficacy of the flame retardants was released in June in a peer study presented at the 10th annual symposium on fire safety science at the University of Maryland on June 21st scientists found that California's furniture flammability standard technical bulletin one one seven does not provide measurable fire safety [00:27:00] benefits. The standard has led to the unnecessary use of flame retardant chemicals at high levels and baby products and furniture, widespread human and animal exposure, and the potential to harm human health and the environment. While there are no proven fire safety benefits to technical bulletin one one seven the chemicals used to meet it leak from furniture into house dust, which is ingested by people in pets. Speaker 2: Humans studies have shown associations [00:27:30] between increased flame retardant body levels and reduced IQ in children reduced fertility and to Krinn and thyroid disruption changes in male hormone levels, adverse birth outcomes and impaired development. Flame retardants have been found in the bodies of nearly all north Americans tested with the highest human levels in young children and Californians. Dogs have retardant [00:28:00] levels up to 10 times higher than humans and cats because of their grooming behavior have levels up to 100 times higher. The California standard established by technical bulletin one one seven has become a de facto national standard legislation to allow an alternative fabric flammability standard that would provide equal or greater fire safety without the use of chemical flame retardants failed last month with strong opposition [00:28:30] from lobbyists for Kim Torah, Alber Marley and Israeli chemicals limited. For more information and the complete study, go to the website, green science policy.org Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 4: The abuse occurred during the show is by Listonic Donna David from his album folk and acoustic made [00:29:00] available by a creative Commons attribution only licensed 3.0 editing assistance was provided by Judith White Marceline and Gretchen Sanders. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have any comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks [00:29:30] at the same time. Speaker 5: [inaudible]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Birkmeyer, EECS at UC Berkeley, talks about his work in the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab designing and building robots. The Lab seeks to harness features of locomotion, actuation, mechanics, and control strategies to improve millirobot capabilities.TranscriptSpeaker 1: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum Speaker 2: the science and technology show [00:00:30] on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is with Paul Burke Meyer, a phd candidate in the electrical engineering and computer science department known as Ekes. He is working with Professor Ron fearing in his biomimetic millis systems lab building six legged crawling and climbing robots. [00:01:00] The goal of the biomimetic Miller systems lab is to harness features of animal manipulations, locomotion, sensing actuation, mechanics, dynamics and control strategies to radically improve Miller robot capabilities. Miller robots are small robots. For instance, the robot Paul Burke Meyer has built named dash is 10 centimeters long, five centimeters wide and weighs 15 grams. This interview [00:01:30] is prerecorded and edited. Welcome to spectrum Paul Burke. Myer, thanks for coming. Speaker 3: Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Where are you situated at cal? What's your current status there? I am pursuing my phd here. I'm entering into my fifth year actually. Uh, and I'm studying Ekes specifically electrical engineering and I'm working on robotics in the w department. So Speaker 2: are you in a specific group with any x or is [00:02:00] it just a general study thing? No, it's gotta be something more specific for a Ph d Speaker 3: it is. So, uh, I've been working with Professor Ron fearing since I arrived and he runs the biomimetic Milly systems lab. And within that he has a few different projects, but specifically I'm working on a sort of six legged crawling and climbing robots. Describe for us the robots you're building that my goal for my phd when I first came and still true is to make [00:02:30] a robot that can dynamically climb up a any sort of surface that it's presented with. So the contribution I'm trying to make is how do you make a robot that's minimally actuated? So class uses only a single actuator right now, single motor to drive all the legs. How do you create something that is passively stable? So the structure itself makes it stable when it's climbing. So you don't actually have to spend extra computation and have extra motors on there to keep you from either [00:03:00] falling off the wall or turning and things like that. Speaker 3: Um, how can you climb dynamically, not this sort of slow plodding climbing. How can you climb dynamically, rapidly up a surface and do it stable and do it with very little effort. And what does the foot look like that allows you to make a robot like that. So what does your foot need to do in order to be able to engage and disengage rapidly and without any actuation? So that's [00:03:30] sort of what my phd will say in the end, hopefully. And maybe a year and a half or two years. How did you go about building that kind of a robot? Speaker 3: So the design was long and hard. Um, so when I first came to the biomimetic Mullin systems lab, they were already using what they're calling the smart composite manufacturing process, if you want to describe it. Yeah. So the original process was taking [00:04:00] two pieces of carbon fiber and cutting mirrored slits in both. You cut a bunch of slits on the one piece and you mere it across to the other, and then you take a piece of thin Palmer thin plastic sheet and then you take those two mirrored pieces and put them together and make a sandwich structure. And so you have carbon fiber with one pattern polymer, and then the other piece of carbon fiber with the same pattern that now aligns with the other one, it [00:04:30] bends. Now it's flexible at those polymer hinges at those where those slits were originally. So if each slit is a joint, it doesn't cost you anything to cut more joints out. Speaker 3: Whereas if you're making sort of traditional machined robot out of say aluminum and ball-bearings and things, each new joint does a new bearing, which has some costs, has extra weight. So you can add many, many joints. For example, Dash I think has 75 or more joints in [00:05:00] the robot. Um, many of them are fixed, so they're used just to fold up the final structure and then you glue them in place. Each hip has six moving joints. So each hip has six moving joints. They're six hips. So Justin, the hips alone, they're already 36 moving joints. Um, whereas if you were to do this with ball-bearings, you quickly get something very big and very heavy. So this actually started off as a prototyping process. [00:05:30] Before they would use the carbon fiber process to make their robots. At the time they were making very small robotic flies and you have to assemble these flies under microscopes and it's very tedious. Speaker 3: And if you, if you mess up, so in your design process, you didn't account for something or something doesn't quite align. You've lost a couple of days just working under a microscope, your back hurts, your eyes are tired and it's very frustrating. They realize, hey, this is just a geometric [00:06:00] pattern. So if we make it very small, little fold up the exact same way as if we make it very big, the pattern is the same, the folds are the same. So they take cardboard and make the pattern just bigger and then assemble it by hand without a microscope within a few hours. And exactly, they can tell it's gonna move in the way I want. So this started off as a prototyping process designed by, uh, Aaron Hoover, who's now a professor at Olin and he just graduated. So I actually took this process and started to make [00:06:30] robot designs and realized, Hey, these are actually very functional. Speaker 3: They don't have to be prototypes necessarily. They're actually functional robots at the end. And uh, the cardboard was used, it's cheap cuts very quickly on a laser and you can go through designs very quickly. So instead of having one design that takes two days to build, you can build one in an hour or two. And so you can sort of explore that design space very quickly. So coming into the lab, they were using this manufacturing process where you design everything flat and you cut it out with the laser and you have to fold [00:07:00] it up into something that is functional and moves in the way that you want. And at the time, and still true, we don't have any good way of mapping what a 2d pattern is in the laser cutter, what that map looks like. And what you'll get out when you fold it up into three dimensions. Speaker 3: Keeping in mind that these joints can't spin 360 degrees like a ball bearing. They're limited to at most 180 [00:07:30] degrees before they hit the link on the other side. So you have to in your in your head or on paper draw these structures. Say I started with hips, how can I get a nice leg motion out? And so I designed the hips and then like extrapolated that to six hips and sort of as you go you have to sort of mentally unfold these hips and figure out what that pattern looks like and then you put six hips and then you have to make sure that it can all fit on a flat piece and that when you unfolded [00:08:00] they don't have pieces that are unfolded on top of each other. As you go. Say you'll make a pattern and the first one you make, you fold it up and you realize that some part has to go through another part because the way you designed it actually you didn't realize this part was going to fold into the other cause you have to go back and redesign it. Speaker 3: A lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error and it took more than 50, maybe, maybe less than a hundred different design iterations for the dash that is [00:08:30] published now from where I started. And even then there were some designs I did with just a single hip just to see what a good hip design was. And it took a lot of time just to get familiar with this folding and unfolding process and laying out parts in two dimensions. And that took me six months just to get familiar with that when I first came. So, so dash is made out of this paper composite. Um, but I've made Balsa wood versions, [00:09:00] I've made fiberglass versions. I actually have not made carbon fiber just because our laser that we use to cut carbon fiber, the bed is not quite big enough so you can't cut pieces quite big enough to make dash. But now we have actually a new laser that I, I will probably pursue carbon fiber if only for the novelty. Um, so it was a, it was a long process. Speaker 4: [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum [00:09:30] line a l x Berkeley. You're talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling and climbing robots. Speaker 2: The robot that you've built and published a paper about is called Dash. What does that stand for? Dash stands for the dynamic autonomous sprawled hexapod. Once you'd spent a lot of time with Dash, you then wanted [00:10:00] to create an x generation. What was it out of dash that you wanted to explore with clash? Speaker 3: So the things I liked about dash were the fact that it was still fairly small, 10 centimeters long, only 15 grams and very powerful. So if I kept it attached to a wall so it couldn't fall backwards off the wall, it had a lot of power. Could accelerate to full speed within a few hundred milliseconds. I mean it was very, very powerful. So that was nice. But its failure [00:10:30] was in the fact that in order to run it has these two plates basically that move up and down and forward and back relative to each other to drive the legs. That's basically the body is the transmission and it's true, the transmission is moving up and down. And so that's actually the problem is that it's pushing itself off the wall and it does this. So that was the, the main thing I wanted to address, but I liked the way the legs moved. Speaker 3: They call it alternating tripod gait where you have three legs in contact of any one time, so you have this [00:11:00] sort of tripod of support. So I knew what I had generally that worked and I knew sort of what didn't work. And so with clash it was how do I get rid of this up and down motion? And I'd spent enough years doing this smart composite manufacturing that the transition from dash to an entirely new design was only a couple iterations before I got something that actually climbed rather than multiple 50 or so iterations. So that was a lot smoother. The hips are essentially the same, but though the way that they're driven is a little bit different. [00:11:30] And now instead of moving up and down, it's sort of moving side to side and forward and back. So it's not pushing itself off the wall. Speaker 2: Can you describe the control systems you use for your robots? So the, the Speaker 3: interesting thing with the robots that we're making in our lab is that we're trying to reduce the amount of controls necessary as much as possible. Traditional robots, heavy computational power, um, so that they can control each limb and very precisely so in, in, or wants, they don't fall over. [00:12:00] Basically the biggest problem is not falling over for, for legged robots and maintaining stability at least traditionally. So what we're trying to do is to minimize the amount of overhead you have to have, just to be functional. So we've worked with biologists here at Berkeley. They've sort of found these really interesting properties and cockroaches where if they're running over smooth terrain, if you measure their, uh, leg muscle activity, it follows some very repeatable pattern [00:12:30] over smooth terrain, meaning that they're, they're activating the legs the same and then they give them this very rough, varied terrain with bumps, maybe two or three times the height of the cockroach. Speaker 3: They're very significant and they measure the leg activity and it looks almost exactly the same as when it's running on flat terrain. So what that that said to them was the roach is basically saying run and it doesn't care what the terrain is. They've decided that there's this [00:13:00] mechanical complexity and compliance. So the legs basically act as shock absorbers. They're just running and the legs sort of compensate for any roughness in the terrain. What we're trying to do is basically have a robot that does that where you just tell the robot to run and it doesn't care what it hits or what it's running over. It just basically runs and the legs are soft enough and bend enough to sort of compensate forever variation. There isn't the terrain. So the first design of dash that actually [00:13:30] put a motor in the motor actually came from a radio shack toy and I just took the electronics from that toy because it was remote controlled. Speaker 3: Since then, the electronics have been swapped for custom electronics. A couple other students in our lab have designed really small lightweight electronics with an accelerometer and a gyroscope, even a port for uh, integrating a cell phone camera and there students who are using that cell phone camera to sort of [00:14:00] guide the robot from my end. I'm basically doing the robot design and I put these electronics on and I have two commands, three really run. And I tell it how fast and turn left or turn right. And that's it. The nice thing is you don't have to do anything more than that because it, it, it runs well and it can go over a different terrain. It can climb obstacles and dash climb obstacles as tall as itself and it doesn't really care. And so that was what that lets you do is get really [00:14:30] small CPS, really small computers that basically you put on these robots and they take very little power. But now for control, all of all they have to say is go or turn when they can use the rest of their computational time to say, read information from the camera and decide which way do I want to go? What's my objective? So from a stability controls point, it's couldn't be easier. Um, and now we're using these whatever extra [00:15:00] CPU cycles in our small board to do sort of more complicated behavior, but that's sort of another person's project. Speaker 2: What sort of applications do you see this robot having? I know that you would want to use it as a vehicle, right? To have payloads on it. Right? And it also then goes into these strange places or if it can climb walls that's astounding. Right. On its own. Right. And then how do you then utilize it? Speaker 3: The original goal was to have a robot that you could deploy [00:15:30] in search and rescue operations. So, um, say in an earthquake where you have claps buildings or claps minds, um, you can send in very small robots, uh, through the cracks, through the crevices down to find survivors. And you can have thousands of these really cheap and small robots and you don't care if 99% of the robots fail to find anyone or fail to even make it down as long as some small fraction finds a survivor, then you have, [00:16:00] technically you've succeeded. So the goal is to make lots of these small, inexpensive robots that can climb through the cracks, have sensors on them that can detect if someone's alive and then little radios to communicate with each other and communicate with the outside world to say, this is where someone is. Even if it's with some high probability that there's someone here, you know, it's worth spending your time digging in this exact location rather than having to uncover the entire building. Speaker 2: I would imagine there are lots of uses in that realm of, of sensing [00:16:30] environments just in general, whether it's a collapse, building, a search and rescue, but you're just a hazardous place to monitor. And to have these things patrolling. So there's the, the whole idea is numbers and inexpensive, right? Manufacturer, Speaker 3: right. So, so there are also proposals for environmental sensing. So deploying these robots, especially these nice mobile robots and say agricultural areas where you want to track how a crop dusters pesticides [00:17:00] travel across the countryside. You could have robots that sort of move and they can respond to say changing winds so that it can sort of get into the line of you know, the the path of these plumes of pesticides and sort of track how they're progressing across the country if they're affecting, you know, downwind communities. Also we have visions of putting these on bridges to do, checking for signs of stress on bridges and or say the nuclear power plants [00:17:30] in Japan. You could deploy these and have them run around and find you know, leaks or just have a nice mesh sort of deployed sensor network and sort of get readings from lots of different spaces and sort of try to understand how the radiation is moving. Oh Speaker 4: you are listening to spectrum line k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling [00:18:00] and climbing robots. Speaker 2: So Paul, how did you become interested in engineering? Speaker 3: For me it was pretty clear from the beginning. So when I was younger, um, I was really interested in, well like most people in engineering right now. I built a lot of things out of Legos and connects and things and was really interested in electronics. I actually had [00:18:30] an elderly neighbor next door to me who I would go over and visit and uh, he would give me all of his popular mechanics magazines and popular science magazines when he was done reading them. And I think that was really the hook that got me because I was reading these magazines, seeing all these cool things and thinking like, how can I end up in this magazine? What can I do to be in this magazine because these are all really, really neat things. I think that was the, the original hook. Then, uh, it sort of blossomed [00:19:00] in high school. Speaker 3: We had, uh, an advanced physics class. It was the first time it was offered and it was really sort of undefined. The curriculum wasn't really well formed and uh, as a result we had some freedom that you might not normally have in a high school course to do different projects that we wanted. Uh, the teacher at the time approached me maybe two thirds of the way into the year and said, hey, I have this, uh, this little programming board that they use at MIT for basic robotics things and I just have one of them and [00:19:30] you're doing well in the class. You want to see if you can maybe make a something and we can try to define a project for you using this board. The project ended up being making a robot that could drive through a maze and pop a balloon at the end. And he actually let me pick a partner to work with me. And I actually chose my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife. Um, and so we worked on this project for a long time and had a lot of fun. We made the whole, like the car system programmed the robot [00:20:00] and it was a spectacular failure, but it really was a lot of fun. And I think that was sort of what really cemented engineering for me. Speaker 2: So you mentioned in, in talking about getting started in robotics and engineering, the the aspect of having a lot of fun with it and are you able to maintain that sense of fun and play in your work? For me Speaker 3: this is, it's all fun. It's, I feel like I'm making toys all day [00:20:30] and I don't have to work at it to keep it fun because I love making these things and I think it's really exciting to come up with new structures and sort of understand why things aren't working, what you can do to change them. So for me it's, I mean adjust the, the project itself is so I think, I think it can be fun for other people when you have a like I can make this project fun for other people by actually making something that works and [00:21:00] sharing it with people and having this cool little robot that they can play with that can run up walls and things like that. But I think, I think it's true for lots of people in their careers. I think if you find the one you like, it's fun no matter what you do as long as, as long as you get to do it. So Speaker 2: well thanks very much Paul for coming in and talking. Speaker 3: Came with us was great. You're welcome. There was a lot of fun. Speaker 4: The [00:21:30] video of dash on Youtube, search for dash resilient, high speed 16 gram x and pedal robot regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [inaudible]. Speaker 2: The Science at Cau lecture series for July will be presented by professor Romanian Kezar Rooney [00:22:00] and will be entitled Exoskeleton Systems for medical applications. Dr Casa Rooney is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Robotics and human engineering laboratory is one of the world's leading experts in robotic human augmentation. The date of the lecture is Saturday, July 16th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 which is on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. [00:22:30] The East Bay Science cafe is held the first Wednesday of every month that the cafe of Valparaiso at La Pena Cultural Center, 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM the cost of admittance is the purchase of a beverage or food item of your choice. Wednesday, July 6th our crystal Cha graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of integrative biology at UC Berkeley will present. [00:23:00] Her topic is titled Spiders, Crustaceans, and sells omi. A story of how animals use cells to put themselves together. Speaker 2: UC Berkeley. Professor Gordon. Frankie will present a discussion on native bee populations in the bay area at the Peralta community garden. This event is free and open to the public. It will be held Saturday, July 9th at noon in the Peralta community garden. The garden address is 1400 Peralta [00:23:30] AV in Berkeley. Since today's show is at the beginning of the month, let me remind you of the free admittance days for some of the local institutions that normally charge admission. The exploratorium in San Francisco is the first Wednesday of each month. The UC botanical garden in Strawberry Canyon. Berkeley is the first Thursday of each month. The Tech Museum in San Jose is the second Sunday of each month. The Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco is the third Wednesday of each month. [00:24:00] Now several news stories from the UC Berkeley News Center. The story about a new public website providing access to extensive climate change research being conducted at California universities and research centers. Speaker 2: The website. cal-adapt.org has a variety of features tailored for different types of users, including members of the general public, concerned about their neighborhood or region decision-makers such as city planners and resource managers [00:24:30] and experts who want to examine data. The information on the website comes from peer reviewed climate change research funded by the California Energy Commission's public interest energy research program. The site displays the research data in a variety of climate change related scenarios and in map format modeling various projections such as changes in snowpack, wildfire, danger and temperature throughout the end of the century. The cal dash adapt website was developed by the [00:25:00] geospatial innovation facility at UC Berkeley's College of natural resources. Speaker 2: The journal Science gives out a monthly prize called spore. Spore stands for science prize for online resources in education. The June award was given to the molecular work bench software developed by the Concord consortium. The molecular workbench is a free open source software tool that helps learners overcome challenges and understanding the science of atoms [00:25:30] and molecules. This software simulates atomic scale phenomenon, permits users to interact with them. It can model electrons, atoms, and molecules, which makes it exceptable across physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Students from grades five through college can use the software to experiment with atomic scale systems. The software includes an author ing tool that enables educators to create complete learning activities with simulations, [00:26:00] text, images, graphs, navigation links and embedded assessments. Hundreds of these activities have been created and tested in classrooms. Educators are free to download and use completed activities or simulations or create their own. Speaker 2: The website is mw.concorde.org/modeler/in an earlier show, we carried a story [00:26:30] about research into toxic flame retardant chemicals in clothing and furniture which pose health hazards for babies and young children. A companion study on the efficacy of the flame retardants was released in June in a peer study presented at the 10th annual symposium on fire safety science at the University of Maryland on June 21st scientists found that California's furniture flammability standard technical bulletin one one seven does not provide measurable fire safety [00:27:00] benefits. The standard has led to the unnecessary use of flame retardant chemicals at high levels and baby products and furniture, widespread human and animal exposure, and the potential to harm human health and the environment. While there are no proven fire safety benefits to technical bulletin one one seven the chemicals used to meet it leak from furniture into house dust, which is ingested by people in pets. Speaker 2: Humans studies have shown associations [00:27:30] between increased flame retardant body levels and reduced IQ in children reduced fertility and to Krinn and thyroid disruption changes in male hormone levels, adverse birth outcomes and impaired development. Flame retardants have been found in the bodies of nearly all north Americans tested with the highest human levels in young children and Californians. Dogs have retardant [00:28:00] levels up to 10 times higher than humans and cats because of their grooming behavior have levels up to 100 times higher. The California standard established by technical bulletin one one seven has become a de facto national standard legislation to allow an alternative fabric flammability standard that would provide equal or greater fire safety without the use of chemical flame retardants failed last month with strong opposition [00:28:30] from lobbyists for Kim Torah, Alber Marley and Israeli chemicals limited. For more information and the complete study, go to the website, green science policy.org Speaker 5: [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 4: The abuse occurred during the show is by Listonic Donna David from his album folk and acoustic made [00:29:00] available by a creative Commons attribution only licensed 3.0 editing assistance was provided by Judith White Marceline and Gretchen Sanders. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have any comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks [00:29:30] at the same time. Speaker 5: [inaudible]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Entomologist Brian Fisher braves raging rivers, and dense tropical forests as he travels the world searching for new species of ants before they are lost to habitat destruction. Experience a slice of Fisher's life and work through video footage from his field work with ants in Madagascar.

The California Academy of Sciences has the largest collection of biological reference materials west of the Mississippi. Dating back over 100 years, the collection provides a treasure trove of biological information for scientists and researchers studying the natural world. Norman Penny, the Collections Manager of the Entomology Department, gives QUEST a small peek at The Academy’s vast butterfly collection.

The California Academy of Sciences has the largest collection of biological reference materials west of the Mississippi. Dating back over 100 years, the collection provides a treasure trove of biological information for scientists and researchers studying the natural world. Norman Penny, the Collections Manager of the Entomology Department, gives QUEST a small peek at The Academy’s vast butterfly collection.

Can fire save the endangered Mission Blue Butterfly? The Golden Gate National Recreation Area experiments with using controlled burns to improve habitat for this critically imperiled Bay Area native.

Can fire save the endangered Mission Blue Butterfly? The Golden Gate National Recreation Area experiments with using controlled burns to improve habitat for this critically imperiled Bay Area native.

The Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco are a vital home to many birds and marine mammals. While the forbidding and inhospitable nature of the Farallones may be ideal for wildlife, it also makes this a difficult place for scientists to live and work. QUEST ventures out to these jagged rocks to get a glimpse of daily life on the islands and what it’s like there for the researchers from PRBO Conservation Science.

The Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco are a vital home to many birds and marine mammals. While the forbidding and inhospitable nature of the Farallones may be ideal for wildlife, it also makes this a difficult place for scientists to live and work. QUEST ventures out to these jagged rocks to get a glimpse of daily life on the islands and what it’s like there for the researchers from PRBO Conservation Science.

In our second episode of Science on the SPOT, join us on a behind-the-scenes trip deep into the massive collection of marine mammal skulls at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. You'd be surprised how much you can learn about an animal's life– and death– by reading their bones.

In our second episode of Science on the SPOT, join us on a behind-the-scenes trip deep into the massive collection of marine mammal skulls at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. You'd be surprised how much you can learn about an animal's life– and death– by reading their bones.

The world's great museums have attractions that capture the imagination of visitors. The very best museums also design their experiences to connect with visitors in ways that may not always be readily apparent. In this episode, Lisa Dunmeyer, project manager with BBI Engineering, talks with Lunar's Gretchen Anderson and Lisa Leckie about how visitors are connecting with the newly redesigned California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. BBI Engineering of San Francisco served as primary integrator of the audiovisual design within the new Cal Academy.

A great migration is taking place as the California Academy of Sciences moves from its temporary home in downtown San Francisco to its new green building in Golden Gate Park. Join QUEST inside as Cal Academy scientists move live penguins, sharks, eels and millions of other scientific specimens. In the process, we'll see how this new building will showcase one of the greatest scientific institutions in the country.