The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $323,345 Project Grant under its Integrative Activities (CFDA 47.083) program to the University of New Haven. The grant supports the acquisition of a legged robotic platform to conduct research and education on risk-aware automated exploration of unknown hazardous environments, with applications for automated search and rescue operations. The research will explore techniques such as real-time object dynamics estimation, natural language...
This Project Grant award, totaling $650,866, was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through its Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to the University of Massachusetts (UMass). The award supports research seeking to advance the fundamental understanding of how people learn to walk more efficiently with wearable robotic exoskeletons. The key objectives of this 5-year award are to: (1) develop new metrics to assess user proficiency in operating gait-assistive exoskeletons, (2)...
This $349,000 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at Rice University to develop new robotics capabilities under uncertainty. The NSF Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation is funding this three-year award through its Engineering program (CFDA 47.041). Specifically, the researchers will establish generic frameworks for robot manipulation systems to self-identify using exploratory motions while maintaining stability. By changing the traditional...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Program (CFDA 47.041) Project Grant award of $240,000 supports research at Trustees of Boston University to develop autonomous artificial intelligence systems for safe human-robot interaction with soft robotic manipulators. The project aims to address key challenges in soft robot control, including meeting safety constraints, balancing compliance and strictness in control strategies, and enabling safe task transitions during contact with humans....
This federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CFDA 47.070) program provides $375,000 to the University of Massachusetts to conduct research on aligning the norms of autonomous robots with human values. The key activities include: Developing inverse reinforcement learning algorithms to learn reward functions from demonstrations constrained by deontic logic. Systematically exploring the trained agent's...
This $140,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to revolutionize teleoperation technology for dexterous in-hand manipulation in human-robot collaboration. The primary research objectives are to: 1) develop a learning-based robot control policy to interpret human commands using end-effect-based task features, 2) create a safety-aware, multi-modal perception system to optimize sensory inputs for intuitive and safe operation, and...
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...
The University of Illinois was awarded a $736,877 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation to develop remote control of humanoid robot locomotion using human whole-body movement and mutual adaptation from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2026. Under the grant, the University will research controlling humanoid robots through full-body human motions and interactions. The research aims to enable robots to adapt their movements based on human control inputs in real time. The work supports the...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Program (CFDA 47.041) supports research at Purdue University to develop methods for heterogeneous teams of robots to physically interact and cooperate in performing search and rescue tasks in collapsed building environments. The $348,915 award from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2026 will enable the researchers to create symbiotic capabilities between different types of robots, such as small mobile microrobots...
This Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will support $361,090 in research to expand the understanding of how robots can make safe decisions in real-world environments. The goal is to develop new methods that enable robots to better assess and respond to nuanced safety challenges, such as avoiding areas marked with caution tape, slowing down when transporting hot liquids, and seeking clarification when uncertain about a task....