Last Friday, UC Berkeley hosted the first ever Stanford-Berkeley Robotics Symposium (SBRS ’13). A number of OSRF employees were in attendance, and Steven Peters presented on one of our latest projects combining the use of iPython Notebook with gzweb, a Gazebo WebGL client. His presentation included an inspiring video of a stack of simulated dumpsters falling on a Stonehenge-like arrangement of many giant dual-link robot arms, in front of a typical neighborhood gas station. You had to be there.

Steven was one of approximately 36 presenters, each of whom were allotted 10 minutes to speak. Talks ranged from academic to industry-focused, and covered a broad spectrum of robotics topics from mass-producing robots and robotics consulting, to computer vision and modeling human decision making. Following is just a small sampling of the many great talks from SBRS 2013.

Mark Palatucci of Anki spoke about Anki Drive (available soon in Apple retail locations), and the company’s goal of “combining the emotion of physical products with the magic of video games.” The Anki Drive project tackles a variety of issues including multi-robot coordination, user interface design, wireless communication, and mass production of robots.

Steve Cousins of Savioke discussed his new company’s goal to make robots that help people in human environments. Savioke aims to continue work in the spirit of the Robots for Humanity project begun at Willow Garage. Steve also touched on the power of open source software as a “lubricant” that moves the robotics field forward.

Allison Okamura of Stanford’s CHARM Lab presented on her work with patients with cerebellar trauma. Using an exoskeleton robot that tracks movement, Allison and her team are looking at ways to alter limb inertia and correct dysmetria in these patients. The ultimate goal of this and related research is to improve health and quality of life.

Thanks to Oussama Khatib, Pieter Abbeel, Sachin Patil and the other volunteers for putting on such a great event. We look forward to SBRS 2014!