MRI: Acquisition of a Multimodal Collaborative Robot System (MCROS) to Support Cross-Disciplinary Human-Centered Research and Education at Montclair State University

This proposal addresses the current need for collaborative robots in hazardous environments (e.g., hazardous chemical experiments), as well as transmission of the latest studies in smart manufacturing (where their absence limit knowledge discovery). Claiming that the role of robots has changed from 'robots in a cage model' to the 'human interaction model in a shared environment,' the investigators aim to acquire a robotic system (MCROS) to support human-centered science and engineering interdisciplinary research and education.

Utilizing two collaborative manipulators, an omnidirectional mobile base, a control and computing unit, and multimodal human-robot interfaces (including 3D vision, 3D Lidar, GPS, and F/T sensing), the investigators expect to make the most efficient use of the MCROS, advancing a wide range of transformative and diverse research distributed across four colleges and 12 academic units (departments/institute centering at the institute MCROS). They cover 5 focus areas:

- Intelligence systems and advanced computing,

- Ecology and chemistry science,

- Smart urban agriculture and food science,

- Human factors engineering and social sciences, and

- Interactive learning.

The MCROS are expected to:

- Provide a State-of-the-art robot platform to accelerate a wide-range of research projects.

- Expand innovative collaborative research across diverse departments and foster potential funding opportunities to exploit and create new cross-disciplinary knowledge.

- Enable fundamental research in multiple science and engineering areas utilizing high productivity approaches enabled by the robot collaboration.

- Establish cost-effective and high-quality solutions, enabled by the developments in smart manufacturing, interactive learning, and smart urban agriculture, that in turn is enabled by the human-robot collaboration model. The institution will offer training and prepare careers using AI and robotics, 'possibly benefitting the national economy.'

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.