The Robotics Institute (RI) is a division of the School of Computer Science at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. A June 2014 article in ''Robotics Business Review'' magazine calls it "the world's best robotics research facility" and a "pacesetter in robotics research and education." The Robotics Institute focuses on bringing robotics into everyday activities. Its faculty members and graduate students examine a variety of fields, including space robotics, medical robotics, industrial systems, computer vision and artificial intelligence, and they develop a broad array of robotics systems and capabilities. Established in 1979 by

Raj Reddy Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy (born 13 June 1937) is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mello ...

, the RI was the first robotics department at any U.S. university.Robotics Institute: About the Robotics Institute
In 1988, CMU became the first university in the world offering a Ph.D. in Robotics. In 2012, the faculty, staff, students and postdocs numbered over 500, and the RI annual budget exceeded $65M, making the RI one of the largest robotics research organizations in the world. The RI occupies facilities on the Carnegie Mellon main campus as well as in the Lawrenceville and Hazelwood neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, totaling almost 200,000 sq. ft of indoor space and 40 acres of outdoor test facilities.

Major centers

The

National Robotics Engineering Center The National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) is an operating unit within the Robotics Institute (RI) of Carnegie Mellon University. NREC works closely with government and industry clients to apply robotic technologies to real-world processes ...

(NREC) was established in 1996 as the commercial arm of the RI, with the intention of applying robotic technology to commercial and defense applications. It has partnered with more than 300 companies such as General Motors, GE Ventures,

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

and

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, as well as with the

U.S. military The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is th ...

. In September 2015, the NREC secured a $5.5 million gift from the car transport company,

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery ( Uber Eats and Postmates), pack ...

, to support three robotics fellowships and research directed at developing safe, self-driving cars. This donation was made roughly seven months after Uber poached 40 NREC scientists, including its director, Tony Stenz, and other key program leaders, while the two organizations closely collaborated on driverless technologies. The Field Robotics Center (FRC) has developed a number of significant robots, including

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and

H1ghlander H1ghlander is an autonomous vehicle. Created by Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team, it is a heavily modified 1999 HUMMER H1. It competed in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. The sensors used by H1ghlander include LIDAR laser-ranging units, on ...

, which finished second and third in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and

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, which won the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge.

Media coverage and awards

In his book ''Almost Human: Making Robots Think'', Lee Gutkind* describes the development of robots at the Robotics Institute, particularly focusing on the developers and describing field testing in remote locations. The robot HERB was featured in the "Oreo Separator" video series.Knife-wielding robot HERB separates Oreo cookies
/ref> RI robots and researchers have been featured in the

Scientific American Frontiers ''Scientific American Frontiers'' was an American science television program aired by PBS from 1990 to 2005. The show was a companion program to the ''Scientific American'' magazine, and primarily covered new technology and discoveries in science ...

episode "Natural Born Robots" and in multiple NPR radio segments.Robot Receptionist Dishes Directions and Attitude
/ref>Robo-cup
/ref>A Hall of Fame for Robots
/ref>Robot Road Test
/ref>
/ref> The Advanced Robotic Laser Coating Removal System (ARLCRS) won a 2013

Edison Award The Edison Award is an annual Dutch music prize awarded for outstanding achievements in the music industry. It is comparable to the American Grammy Award. The Edison award itself is a bronze replica of a statuette of Thomas Edison, designed by ...

gold award in the category of materials science processes.2013 Edison Award Winners
/ref>

Notable faculty (current and past)

Chris Atkeson Christopher Granger Atkeson (born 1959) is an American roboticist and a professor at the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Atkeson is known for his work in humanoid robots, soft robot ...

* Howie Choset *

Takeo Kanade is a Japanese computer scientist and one of the world's foremost researchers in computer vision. He is U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He has approximately 300 peer-reviewed academic publications and holds aroun ...

Pradeep Khosla Pradeep Kumar Khosla (born March 13, 1957) is an Indian-American computer scientist and university administrator. Khosla was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 for contributions to design and sensor-based control in r ...

* Matt Mason *

Hans Moravec Hans Peter Moravec (born November 30, 1948, Kautzen, Austria) is an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings ...

Katia Sycara Ekaterini Panagiotou Sycara ( el, Κάτια Συκαρά) is a Greek computer scientist. She is an Edward Fredkin Research Professor of Robotics in the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University internationally ...

Sebastian Thrun Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist. He is CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a Google VP and Fellow, a Professor of Com ...

David Touretzky David S. Touretzky is a research professor in the Computer Science Department and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a BA in Computer Science at Rutgers University in 1978, and earned a master's ...

* Manuela Veloso *

Red Whittaker Red Whittaker (born 1948) is a roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He led Tartan Racing to its first-place victory in the DARPA Grand Challenge (2007) Urban Challenge and brought Carnegie Mellon Universit ...

Jessica Hodgins Jessica K. Hodgins is an American roboticist and researcher who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute and School of Computer Science. Hodgins is currently also Research Director at the Facebook AI Research lab in Pittsburgh next ...

Patents

Field Robotics Center patentsNREC patents

References

External links

Robotics NewsRobotics Institute Official WebsiteTravel Channel showcase of the RIFRC Website
{{Authority control Schools and departments of Carnegie Mellon Robotics organizations 1979 in robotics Organizations established in 1979