Project Grant 1914170

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $300,664 to Lehigh University to conduct research aimed at advancing the capabilities of aerial robots in manipulating and transporting flexible objects such as cables, rods, hoses, and plastic sheets. The research project, titled "CAREER: Bending and Manipulating Objects in Midair Using Cooperative Robots," will develop a novel control framework that integrates adaptive...

The National Science Foundation awarded a $1,199,999 cooperative agreement to Rotoye LLC of Atlanta, GA under the NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) for the period of September 15, 2021 through August 31, 2023. The award will support Rotoye's SBIR Phase II project to develop a Mobile Manipulation Platform for Rebar Tying. The NSF Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program seeks to advance science and engineering research and innovation leading to...

This SBIR Phase I award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) provides $304,952 to Sol Robotics, Inc. to develop a novel robotic arm technology. The goal is to create an affordable, high-performance robotic arm architecture with enhanced reach and payload capacity to enable automation of physically demanding and hazardous tasks in industries such as agriculture, construction, and warehousing. The project will...

This EAGER (Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research) project grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation under CFDA Program 47.041 (Engineering), will provide $300,000 to the University of Illinois to conduct research on enabling quadrotor robots to safely interact with and assist humans through customized, user-taught functionalities. The research effort aims to develop a framework that allows anyone to safely...

Bird's Eye Robotics, Inc. received a $175,000 Project Grant award from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture to develop autonomous dead-bird retrieval technology for the poultry industry. Funded under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, the award period runs from July 1, 2022 to February 28, 2023. The company will develop forward-facing computer vision and image recognition software, as well as mechanical grapple hardware, to...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded a $649,816 Project Grant to Pitch Aeronautics Inc., a veteran-owned small business, under the agency's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The grant is funding the development of a drone system to install bird diverters on power lines, which can reduce bird collisions and casualties by over 70%. The Phase II effort will integrate an electromagnetic state estimation system on the drone to...

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 National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $421,935 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop an insect-scale quadrupedal robot with advanced climbing and grasping capabilities. The key objectives of this 3-year project, starting January 1, 2025, are to: (1) develop analytical models of adhesion and lubrication principles to enable inverted and vertical climbing with feedback control; and (2) demonstrate...

This $275,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program aims to develop a suite of software that automatically routes building services systems through 3D obstructed space to achieve near-optimal, clash-free solutions. The project involves developing a highly efficient 3D modeling environment using "low-resolution surface tessellation" to minimize data storage and...

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...