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Catalyzing the computing research community and enabling the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research.

Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

National Robotics Initiative 3.0

February 9th, 2021 / in Announcements, CCC, NSF, podcast, research horizons, Research News, resources, robotics, workshop reports / by Helen Wright

Contributions to this post were provided by CCC Council member Holly Yanco (University of Massachusetts, Lowell).

In 2009, the CCC published a report, A Roadmap for US Robotics, From Internet to Robotics (a.k.a. the Robotics Roadmap), which explored the capacity of robotics to act as a key economic enabler, specifically in the areas of manufacturing, healthcare, and the service industry, 5, 10, and 15 years into the future.

An updated version of the Robotics Roadmap was released in March 2013, November 2016, and now most recently in September 2020. See the CCC blog about the 2020 version here.

The original Robotics Roadmap was the basis for the 2011 National Robotics Initiative (NRI), which was designed to support fundamental research to accelerate the development and use of robotics technologies in the US, focusing on technologies that work cooperatively with people.

In November 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released the National Robotics Initiative 2.0: Ubiquitous Collaborative Robots (NRI-2.0) program solicitation and now, most recently, the NSF has released the National Robotics Initiative 3.0: Innovations in Integration of Robotics (NRI-3.0).

The National Robotics Initiative 3.0: Innovations in Integration of Robotics (NRI-3.0) program builds upon the preceding National Robotics Initiative (NRI) programs to support fundamental research in the United States that will advance the science of robot integration. The program supports research that promotes integration of robots to the benefit of humans including human safety and human independence.

Similar to the NRI-2.0, the NRI-3.0 program is supported by multiple agencies of the federal government including the NSF, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

See the full solicitation here. The upcoming submission window (due by 5 p.m. submitter’s local time) is April 19, 2021 – May 03, 2021.