The department of defense awarded the public-private manufacturing US institute to American Robotics, a nonprofit venture led by Carnegie Mellon, with more than 220 partners in industry, academia, government and the nonprofit sector nationwide.
The institute will receive $80 million from the DOD, and an additional $173 million from the partner organizations. The Richard King Mellon Foundation played a particularly important role in catalysing the proposal.
The high-level award puts Pittsburgh and CMU at the center of a new wave of manufacturing, leveraging artificial intelligence, autonomy, 3-D printing and other emerging technologies to make industrial robotics more affordable for businesses of all sizes, adaptable for many uses and able to achieve more.
Government, industry and academic leaders said this new generation of robotics has the potential to create large numbers of new jobs and fuel economic growth by putting the US squarely in the lead on advanced manufacturing.
“This new institute will provide significant benefits to the region and the nation, while creating enormous opportunities for CMU scholars and researchers, and new momentum for the university. The institute, in return, will benefit from CMU's expertise in technology, as well as its strengths in policy, ethics and human interfaces that will ensure that new technologies work to benefit humankind,” said Subra Suresh, president, Carnegie Mellon.
Gary Fedder, CMU's vice provost for research, was one of several university faculty and officials who led the development and preparation of the proposal for the institute, and who will play a pivotal role in its establishment.
Howie Choset, a professor in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, said the four-pronged mission of the institute is to empower American workers to compete with low-wage workers abroad, create and sustain new jobs to secure US national prosperity, lower the technical, operational, and economic barriers for small- and medium- sized enterprises as well as large companies to adopt robotics technologies, and assert US leadership in advanced manufacturing.
Robotics are increasingly necessary for defense and other industrial manufacturing needs, but capital cost and complexity of use limit the participation of mid-size and small manufacturers. The Advanced Robotics Manufacturing Institute (ARM) will integrate the diverse collection of industry practices and institutional knowledge across many disciplines. (KD)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India