Project Grant 1215340

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project, awarded under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program, is developing a robotic platform for automated weed control in fruit crops. The $275,000 award to Ground Control Robotics, Inc. will fund the creation of swarms of low-cost, legged robots that can locomote under crop canopies to identify and mechanically remove weeds throughout the growing season. This is...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) provides $275,000 to Sufficiently Advanced, Inc. to advance the development of generative AI technologies for robotic automation and control. The key objectives are to enhance scientific understanding of applying generative AI to minimize the skills required to deploy new automation capabilities, and to develop solutions for controlling non-rigid...

This $275,000 SBIR Phase I project grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) aims to develop software capabilities to improve automated harvesting of strawberries. The project will implement two key components: A trajectory optimization module for a robot manipulator's camera to maximize information gain and reduce localization uncertainty for strawberries while respecting kinematic and collision...

This National Science Foundation Division of Industrial Innovation Project Grant awarded $256,000 to Grain Weevil Corporation of Aurora, Nebraska to develop a remote-controlled grain management and extraction robot. The 11-month project, which runs from March 2022 through December 2022, seeks to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a mobile robot for improving farmer safety and grain storage efficiencies. Key deliverables include classifying grain surface variables that impact robotic...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award to Variables Machines Company, under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084), aims to develop a reconfigurable additive manufacturing print bed system that can drastically reduce the cost, lead time, and material waste associated with large format 3D printing. The $274,579 award supports the design and prototyping of an array of linear actuators capable of sub-10...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $275,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project grant to Crabline Robotics LLC, a woman-owned small business, to develop a dexterous, crab-like aquatic robot platform for underwater construction and decommissioning of structures. The project seeks to create a new class of aquatic robotics capable of stabilizing around a target and precisely delivering tools, such as exothermic cutting rods, to underwater structures. This...

This $274,915 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program supports the development of a novel additive manufacturing technique for fabricating multifunctional ceramic monoliths with internal flow structures. The project aims to advance a dry powder pressing additive manufacturing process that can deposit multiple functional materials with high lateral precision, densify...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Program (CFDA 47.041) totaling $596,285 provides funding to Arizona State University to develop an integrated task planning framework for autonomous manufacturing in extreme environments. The key products and services to be delivered include: Interpreting manufacturing process information and instructions using vision-language models to derive high-level task sequences from various input sources like drawings,...

The National Science Foundation awarded Harvest Moon Automation Inc. a $250,665 Project Grant under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084). The grant funds the development of a precision weeder extraction tool that will remove weeds from agricultural fields without using herbicides or soil tillage. Advances in machine vision have enabled identification of individual crop and weed plants in a field. However, existing automated weeders still rely on herbicides or...

This $304,507 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project, awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program, focuses on developing an innovative technology for fast and precise transfer of ultra-thin semiconductor chips during manufacturing. The project aims to address the challenges of handling and transferring these fragile ultra-thin dies, which are critical building blocks for emerging mobile and...