From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Nothing boosts a city’s high-tech profile like a $250 million, government-backed investment in robotics research. The Department of Defense announced Friday that it is awarding a robotics research institute to American Robotics, a nonprofit affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, an institution already renowned for its robotics work.
The new Advanced Robotics Manufacturing Institute will receive $80 million from the Defense Department, with another $173 million coming from the 200 or so organizations that are CMU’s partners in American Robotics. The purpose is to spread robotics to a greater swath of the economy — to smaller companies that traditionally have been unable to afford the technology, for example — while increasing the number of uses for robotics technology by industry and the military.
The research will have special implications for advanced manufacturing, an area in which Pittsburgh continues to distinguish itself, and the award follows a $10 million grant that the law firm K&L Gates announced last fall for CMU to study ethical issues in robotics.
