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 […]

In 2009, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) published 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.  With the support of the CCC (and others on the cover), three community workshops took place 11-12 September 2019 in Chicago, IL, 17-18 October 2019 in Los Angeles, CA, and 15-16 November 2019 in Lowell, MA. […]

The following is a guest blog post from Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member Maja J. Matarić from the University of Southern California and past CCC Chair Greg Hager from Johns Hopkins University.  The New York Times released How to Make America’s Robots Great Again, an article that focused on overlooked realities of manufacturing and robotics. American factories hit a manufacturing record in 2016; 85 percent more goods were made than 30 years ago, but this success is due to automation, resulting in one third fewer jobs. At the same time, China is aggressively automating its manufacturing, with massive infrastructure investments in robotics and no public dialog about job loss. […]

The following is a guest blog by Greg Hager, Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Chair and Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.  I recently had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussing the National Robotics Initiative (NRI). The NRI is in its 5th year, so we were asked to describe “the return on investment” of the program. Various panel members pointed out how focused and energized robotics is on high-value, relevant applications, and how it has created new startups, a new cohort of students who will power the next wave of R&D innovation, and, of course, a host of new research results. But what does this really […]

In celebration of the fifth anniversary of the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), the Congressional Robotics Caucus Advisory Committee including IEEE-USA, Computing Research Association, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgia Tech with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) held a Congressional Briefing with demonstrations and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) released it’s report called Next Generation Robotics. The NRI was a direct result of a CCC roadmapping effort led by Henrik Christensen of Georgia Tech. It is based on a definitive report, A Roadmap for US Robotics — From Internet to Robotics, developed by more than 100 robotics experts from industry and academia who in 2008 attended four CCC workshops, one in each four topic areas of robotics: manufacturing and logistics, healthcare and medical robotics, service robotics, and emerging technologies. The goal of the NRI is to “accelerate […]

Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Agriculture and NASA announced $31.5 million in new awards to spur the development and use of robots that work cooperatively with people (known as co-robots). The awards mark the third round of funding made through the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), a multi-agency program launched in September 2012 as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Initiative, with NSF as the lead federal agency. The 52 new research awards, ranging from $300,000 to $1.8 million over one to four years, advance fundamental understanding of robotic sensing, motion, computer vision, machine learning and human-computer interaction. The awards […]