(This post has been updated; please scroll down below for the latest.) The first round of awards for next-generation robotics R&D through the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) are being announced today, according to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) deputy director for policy Tom Kalil: Today, four federal agencies announced $40 million in grants to university researchers across the country to advance the National Robotics Initiative, unveiled by President Obama at Carnegie Mellon University on June 24, 2011.   The initiative, led by the National Science Foundation, is also supported by NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the United States Department of Agriculture.  These agencies have also issued a new joint […]

Every week for the last several years, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has showcased an interesting computing (or related) research project as a “Highlight of the Week.” Today, in an effort to build upon the success of the Highlight feature, we are announcing an expanded version of this series called “Computing Research in Action.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF), together with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), yesterday issued a new solicitation for the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), seeking small (one or more investigators, funded at a rate of up to $250,000 in direct costs per year for up to five years) and large (multi-disciplinary teams, up to $1 million in direct costs per year for three to five years) proposals that support fundamental research enabling “the realization of co-robots acting in direct support of individuals and groups.” Up to $50 million in funds are available in the coming year. Small proposals are due Dec. 11th; large proposals by Jan. […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced an organizational realignment last week, including plans to integrate the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) beginning Oct. 1. This afternoon, CISE Assistant Director Farnam Jahanian and OCI Office Director Alan Blatecky issued a letter to the science and engineering community describing the realignment (following the link):

With the start of the 2012-13 school year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) yesterday released the first issue of the second volume of CS Bits & Bytes, focusing on biomimetic robotics, relating optimal control to the 2012 Summer Olympics. The issue highlights the work of Emanuel Todorov’s Movement Control Laboratory at the University of Washington, includes links to related videos, and contains a culminating activity that asks students to define performance metrics for sports, helping them realize all that must go into optimal control and performance. CS Bits & Bytes is a biweekly newsletter developed to make computer science more accessible to educators and learners around the world. Each issue of CS […]

Technology writer Steve Lohr had a great piece about the future of computing — and other fields — in The New York Times yesterday: TECHNOLOGY tends to cascade into the marketplace in waves. Think of personal computers in the 1980s, the Internet in the 1990s and smartphones in the last five years.   Computing may be on the cusp of another such wave. This one, many researchers and entrepreneurs say, will be based on smarter machines and software that will automate more tasks and help people make better decisions in business, science and government. And the technological building blocks, both hardware and software, are falling into place, stirring optimism [more following the link…]. […]