Greek researcher has role in new $250M Robotics manufacturing Institute
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Greek researcher has role in new $250M Robotics manufacturing Institute

A new robotics manufacturing institute will be created in Pittsburgh with total funds of 253 million dollars. Rice University is one of 40 academic partners and its team will be led by a Greek researcher.

The Institute will be funded with $80 million from the US Department of Defense (DoD) and $173 million in matching funds from more than 200 participating partners, including companies, local governments, academic and nonprofit organizations.

Lydia Kavraki, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and a professor of bioengineering, will lead the institute’s Rice component.

The Defense Department awarded the contract for the Advanced Robotics Manufacturing ( ARM ) Innovation Hub to a consortium called American Robotics Inc., a nonprofit venture led by Carnegie Mellon University. The institute is the 14th – the eighth led by DoD – in the federal government’s wide-ranging Manufacturing USA program .

DoD said ARM will “organize the current fragmented domestic capabilities in manufacturing robotics technology and better position the United States, relative to global competition.” ARM said it will promote the use of robotics in small and medium enterprises and in critical manufacturing sectors like aerospace, automotive, electronics and textiles. The institute’s 10-year goals include increasing worker productivity by 30% and creating 510,000 new U.S. manufacturing jobs.

“We will participate as a core university member,” said Lydia Kavraki. “One of the main areas where we will lend expertise is in robot motion planning, which cuts across all the main themes of the proposal, including collaborative robotics and rapid deployment of flexible robotic manufacturing. A main advantage for Rice is the opportunity to work together with world-class robotics innovators and industrial partners in projects that tap our strengths in motion planning, artificial intelligence, formal methods, verification and model checking, and also sensing, haptics and controls, and are beyond the scope of a small team,” she said.

“This is also an opportunity for us to contribute to the mission of the institute, to provide leadership in advanced manufacturing and empower American workers and small companies,” she said. “The ARM institute will place significant effort in workforce training for the benefit of society.”

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Lydia Kavraki: Making robots work

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