Kristofer S. J. Pister

• Professor at University of California, Berkeley

We present progress on the Single-Chip Micro Mote V (SCμM-V), a crystal-free system-on-chip (SoC) for internet-of-things (IoT) and microrobotic applications. The SoC includes a 32-bit RISC-V “Rocket” processor generated using the Rocket Chip generator and the Chipyard framework, a custom crystal-free 2.4 GHz transceiver that was designed to be stan...

Leveraging advancements in micro-scale technology, we propose a fleet of autonomous, low-cost, small solar sails for interplanetary exploration. The Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail (BLISS) project aims to utilize small-scale technologies to create a fleet of tiny interplanetary femto-spacecraft for rapid, low-cost exploration of the inn...

Accurately predicting the consequences of agents' actions is a key prerequisite for planning in robotic control. Model-based reinforcement learning (MBRL) is one paradigm which relies on the iterative learning and prediction of state-action transitions to solve a task. Deep MBRL has become a popular candidate, using a neural network to learn a dyna...

We present a nonlinear dynamics model for lateral electrostatic gap closing actuators (GCAs) operated in air and underwater. We factor in finger bending and the release phase’s initial velocity over prior work, and we systematically study the effect on GCA pull-in and release time by varying both the finger length and the release spring constant. S...

Nonholonomic control is a candidate to control nonlinear systems with path-dependant states. We investigate an underactuated flying micro-aerial-vehicle, the ionocraft, that requires nonholonomic control in the yaw-direction for complete attitude control. Deploying an analytical control law involves substantial engineering design and is sensitive t...

Accurately predicting the dynamics of robotic systems is crucial for model-based control and reinforcement learning. The most common way to estimate dynamics is by fitting a one-step ahead prediction model and using it to recursively propagate the predicted state distribution over long horizons. Unfortunately, this approach is known to compound eve...

A battery design and fabrication process is demonstrated to make Lithium-ion (Li-ion) microbatteries with high capacity to power IoT devices. The battery consists of printed anode and cathode layers based on graphite and lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) respectively. The active area of the electrodes is scaled down to 1 mm² and the resulting electrochemi...

We present a system for centimeter-precision 3 dimensional localization of a 2 x 3 x 0.3 mm³,, 5 mg, wireless system-on-chip by utilizing a temporally-structured infrared illumination scheme generated by a set of base stations. This 3D localization system builds on previous work by adding a second lighthouse station to enable 3D localization and us...

Some robotic localization methods, such as ultra wideband localization and lighthouse localization, require external localization infrastructure in order to operate. However, there are situations where this localization infrastructure does not exist in the field, such as robotic exploration tasks. Deploying low power wireless sensor networks (WSNs)...

Building intelligent autonomous systems at any scale is challenging. The sensing and computation constraints of a microrobot platform make the problems harder. We present improvements to learning-based methods for on-board learning of locomotion, classification, and navigation of microrobots. We show how simulated locomotion can be achieved with mo...

We have demonstrated an embedded microrobot control chip suitable for sub-cm robot platforms. The 2 × 3 × 0.3 mm 3 65 nm CMOS chip weighing 4 mg includes a 32 bit Cortex-M0 processor for control, standards-compatible 2.4 GHz RF communication, contact-free optical programming, and sub-cm accurate 3D localization using lighthouse beacons. The chip re...

The single chip integration of a wireless sensor node would allow for cheap, low-power, dust-size devices. The key to realizing this vision is to eliminate bulky off-chip frequency references such as crystal oscillators or resonators, and their associated power-hungry circuitry. The immediate challenge of removing off-chip references is that there...

Designing effective low-level robot controllers often entail platform-specific implementations that require manual heuristic parameter tuning, significant system knowledge, or long design times. With the rising number of robotic and mechatronic systems deployed across areas ranging from industrial automation to intelligent toys, the need for a gene...

The convergence of operational and information technologies in the industry requires a new generation of IP-compliant communication protocols that can meet the industrial performance requirements while facilitating the integration with novel web-based supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. For more than a decade, the industry has...

Robot design is often a slow and difficult process requiring the iterative construction and testing of prototypes, with the goal of sequentially optimizing the design. For most robots, this process is further complicated by the need, when validating the capabilities of the hardware to solve the desired task, to already have an appropriate controlle...

The elimination of the off-chip frequency reference, typically a crystal oscillator, would bring important benefits in terms of size, price and energy efficiency to IEEE802.15.4 compliant radios and systems-on-chip. The stability of on-chip oscillators is orders of magnitude worse than that of a crystal. It is known that as the temperature changes,...

Microwire and microelectrode arrays used for cortical neural recording typically consist of tens to hundreds of recording sites, but often only a fraction of these sites are in close enough proximity to firing neurons to record singleunit activity. Recent work has demonstrated precise, depthcontrollable mechanisms for the insertion of single neural...

Generating low-level robot controllers often requires manual parameters tuning and significant system knowledge, which can result in long design times for highly specialized controllers. With the growth of automation, the need for such controllers might grow faster than the number of expert designers. To address the problem of rapidly generating lo...

Objective. Microwire and Utah-style neural recording arrays are the predominant devices used for cortical neural recording, but the implanted electrodes cause a significant adverse biological response and suffer from well-studied performance degradation. Recent work has demonstrated that carbon fiber electrodes do not elicit this same adverse respo...

Ideal microrobots are on the millimeter-scale with integrated actuators, power sources, sensors, and controllers. Numerous researchers are inspired by insects for the mechanical or electrical design of microrobots. Previously, the authors proposed and demonstrated microrobots that can replicate the tripod gait locomotion of an ant, the legs of whic...

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) promises one trillion wireless sensors in the next 10 to 15 years. To enable this scale, we present the experimental results on the time-keeping ability of crystal-free radios to lower the cost of the wireless sensors. We propose a Network Referenced Frequency Lock Loop and demonstrate a one sigma mean frequency accurac...

Robots and control systems rely upon precise timing of sensors and actuators in order to operate intelligently. We present a functioning hexapod robot that walks with a dual tripod gait; each tripod is actuated using its own local controller running on a separate wireless node. We compare and report the results of operating the robot using two diff...

Microwire and microelectrode arrays used for cortical neural recording typically consist of tens to hundreds of recording sites, but often only a fraction of these sites is in close enough proximity to firing neurons to record single-unit activity. Recent work has demonstrated precise, depth-controllable mechanisms for the insertion of single neura...

This work presents an insect-scale microrobot that flies silently and with no mechanical moving parts, using a mechanism with no analogue in the natural world: electrohydrodynamic thrust produced by ions generated via corona discharge. For the first time, attitude and acceleration data is continuously collected from takeoff and sustained flight of...

Objective: Microwire and Utah-style neural recording arrays are the predominant devices used for cortical neural recording, but the implanted electrodes cause a significant adverse biological response and suffer from well-studied performance degradation. Recent work has demonstrated that carbon fiber electrodes do not elicit this same adverse respo...

The design of gaits for robot locomotion can be a daunting process which requires significant expert knowledge and engineering. This process is even more challenging for robots that do not have an accurate physical model, such as compliant or micro-scale robots. Data-driven gait optimization provides an automated alternative to analytical gait desi...

The design of gaits for robot locomotion can be a daunting process which requires significant expert knowledge and engineering. This process is even more challenging for robots that do not have an accurate physical model, such as compliant or micro-scale robots. Data-driven gait optimization provides an automated alternative to analytical gait desi...

We describe opportunities and challenges with wireless robotic materials. Robotic materials are multi-functional composites that tightly integrate sensing, actuation, computation and communication to create smart composites that can sense their environment and change their physical properties in an arbitrary programmable manner. Computation and com...

We describe opportunities and challenges with wireless robotic materials. Robotic materials are multi-functional composites that tightly integrate sensing, actuation, computation and communication to create smart composites that can sense their environment and change their physical properties in an arbitrary programmable manner. Computation and com...

Electrohydrodynamic thrust is an emerging propulsion mechanism for flying insect-scale robots. There is a need to both minimize the operating voltage and maximize the output force when designing microfabricated electrodes for use in these robots. In this work, an array of hybrid wire-needle and grid electrode geometries were fabricated and characte...

We propose a crystal-free radio receiver exploiting a free-running oscillator as a Local Oscillator (LO) while simultaneously satisfying the 1% packet error rate specification of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. This results in significant power savings for wireless communication in millimeter-scale microsystems targeting Internet of Things (IoT) applic...

The IETF IPv6 over the time synchronized channel hopping mode of IEEE 802.15.4e (6TiSCH) working group standardizes a distributed mechanism for neighbor motes to agree on a schedule to communicate, driven by a scheduling function. This letter introduces the notion of housekeeping to the schedule function, in which motes relocate cells in the schedu...

The miniaturization of integrated fluidic processors affords extensive benefits for chemical and biological fields, yet traditional, monolithic methods of microfabrication present numerous obstacles for the scaling of fluidic operators. Recently, researchers have investigated the use of additive manufacturing or “three-dimensional (3D) printing” te...

Despite recent growth in the field of wearable devices, persistent collection of data with clear biomedical relevance remains elusive. The majority of products focus on short-term personal fitness metrics instead of long-term biomedical monitoring. The ideal wearable platform for researchers would include flexibility to test different biometric sen...

This paper introduces OpenMote, the latest generation of Berkeley motes. OpenMote is a open-hardware prototyping ecosystem designed to accelerate the development of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It features the OpenMote-CC2538, a state-of-the-art computing and communication device. This device interfaces with several other accessories,...

Recent standardization efforts on industrial low-power wireless communication technologies clearly bet for the Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) medium access control (MAC) layer as it proved to achieve 99.999% reliability while ensuring deterministic behavior. Standards such as WirelessHART, ISA100.11a, and IEEE802.15.4e rooted at the TSCH MAC l...

This paper describes a highly sensitive spectrum sensing system based on a cross-correlation technique that employs low-cost software-defined radio receivers. By multiplying two data streams received by duplicated receivers and averaging the outputs, a cross-correlation system is able to suppress uncorrelated noise at the cost of measurement time....

As technology has advanced, electronic components and systems have become smaller and more powerful. A similar trend holds for space systems, and satellites are no exception. As payloads become smaller, so too can the launch ve-hicles designed to carry them into orbital trajectories. An energy analysis shows that a rocket system with as low as tens...

Thousands of industrial gas leaks occur every year, with many leading to injuries, deaths, equipment damage, and a disastrous environmental effect. There have been many attempts at solving this problem, but with limited success. This paper proposes a wireless gas leak detection and localization solution. With a monitoring network of 20 wireless dev...

The last 10 years have seen the emergence of wearable personal health tracking devices as a mainstream industry; however, they remain limited by battery lifetime, specific sensor selection, and a market motivated by a focus on short-term fitness metrics (e.g., steps/day). This hampers the development of a potentially much broader application area b...

TerraSwarm applications, or swarmlets, are characterized by their ability to dynamically recruit resources such as sensors, communication networks, computation, and information from the cloud; to aggregate and use that information to make or aid decisions; and then to dynamically recruit actuation resources. The TerraSwarm vision cannot be achieved...

Time slotted channel hopping (TSCH) is the highly reliable and ultra-low power medium access control technology at the heart of the IEEE802.15.4e-2012 amendment to the IEEE802.15.4-2011 standard. TSCH networks are deterministic in nature; the actions that occur at each time slot are well known. This paper presents an energy consumption model of the...