2023 NSF FRR-NRI PI Meeting
The major goal of the eighth NSF National Robotics Initiative - Foundational Robotics Research (NRI-FRR) Virtual PI Meeting project, again held virtually over three days from Tuesday, April 19, 2022 through Thursday, April 21, 2022, was to organize the end-to-end logistical organization of the meeting.
The goal of this meeting was to bring together the community of researchers, industry representatives, and Government program managers who are actively engaged in the National Robotics Program that was launched during 2011 to achieve the following objectives:
- foster awareness and communication between NRI-FRR teams, many of whom employ complementary or competing approaches to related problems
- offer a forum for demonstrating and sharing best practices in education, technology transfer, and general outreach
- provide concentrated opportunities to share NRI-FRR successes with the media and other government agencies
- establish a centralized and lasting repository representing and illustrating the research ideas explored by and milestones achieved by NRI-FRR projects over the past year
The 2020 NRI PI Meeting brought together 249 stakeholders comprising academia, industry, non-profits, and government who are actively engaged in the NRI program.
The program of the meeting included invited keynotes, PI research projects long and shorter fast forward talks, PI research project poster and demonstration sessions, panel discussions about NRI research-related projects funded by NSF and other Federal agencies, and breakout sessions. The program was organized by a program committee comprising NRI community experts identified by NSF and relevant staff from the the VU-ISIS CPS VO project team.
The National Science Foundation established the NRI program to accelerate the development and use of robots in the United States that work beside or cooperatively with humans ubiquitously in every aspect of life. The focus is on the entire lifecycle from fundamental research and development to manufacturing and deployment. NRI research is supported by multiple agencies of the federal government including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
