$250m funding for advanced robotics institute
The US Department of Defense has announced that an independent institute founded by Carnegie Mellon University will receive more than $250 million to launch an advanced robotics manufacturing institute in Pittsburgh. According to a statement issued by Carnegie Mellon University on Friday (13 January), the Advanced Robotics Manufacturing (ARM) Institute will receive $80 million from the DOD, and an additional $173 million from the partner organizations.
The CMU statement added: “The high-level award puts Pittsburgh and CMU at the centre 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 U.S. squarely in the lead on advanced manufacturing.”
Howie Choset, a professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, said that 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 U.S. 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 U.S. leadership in advanced manufacturing.
On its own website, ARM states that its 10-year goals include “increasing worker productivity by 30%, creating 510,000 new manufacturing jobs in the U.S., ensuring that 30% of SMEs adopt robotics technology, and providing the ecosystem where major industrial robotics manufacturers will emerge”.
