National Robotics Initiative 2.0: Ubiquitous Collaborative Robots | 19 536

Opportunity Information: Apply for 19 536

The National Robotics Initiative 2.0: Ubiquitous Collaborative Robots (NRI-2.0) is a federal research grant opportunity led by the National Science Foundation that funds fundamental robotics research in the United States aimed at speeding up the development and real-world use of collaborative robots, or "co-robots." In this program, co-robots are systems designed to work beside people or cooperatively with them rather than operating in isolation. The defining theme of NRI-2.0 is "ubiquity," meaning robots should be able to integrate smoothly into everyday environments and assist humans across many aspects of life, not just in specialized lab or factory settings.

The solicitation organizes the research scope into four major thrusts intended to push collaborative robotics toward being broadly usable and widely deployed. The first thrust, scalability, focuses on what it takes for co-robots to function effectively beyond small, controlled demonstrations. This includes enabling robots to collaborate with multiple humans and/or teams of other robots; improving how robots perceive, plan, act, and learn amid uncertainty in real-world conditions; and developing distributed approaches where sensing, computation, and decision-making may be spread across devices or agents. It also emphasizes the need for safe, robust, and reliable operation at larger scales and in complex environments, reflecting the reality that ubiquitous robots must handle variability, edge cases, and long-term operation without constant expert supervision.

The second thrust, customizability, targets the practical challenge that robots often require extensive engineering to adapt to new tasks, sites, or users. NRI-2.0 encourages research that allows co-robots to adjust to specific tasks, environments, or individual people with minimal changes to hardware and software. This includes personalization of interaction, where robots learn user preferences, capabilities, and intent, and improve their support accordingly. It also includes making human-robot communication more natural, spanning both verbal communication (speech and language) and non-verbal communication (gesture, gaze, motion cues, and other social signals), since effective collaboration depends heavily on clear, intuitive coordination between people and machines.

The third thrust, lowering barriers to entry, is about making it easier for researchers to do foundational robotics work and to study integrated robotics applications. This can include developing open-source co-robot hardware and software and creating widely accessible testbeds that reduce cost, complexity, and setup time for experimentation and validation. The solicitation is explicit that outreach activities or simply using robots in educational programs are not, on their own, considered sufficient for lowering barriers to entry; the emphasis is on infrastructure, tools, platforms, and resources that directly enable more people to conduct rigorous robotics research and accelerate reproducibility and comparison across projects.

The fourth thrust, societal impact, supports research that connects ubiquitous collaborative robots to broader human and societal needs. This includes foundational work on how to establish and incorporate robotics into educational curricula, how to strengthen and diversify the robotics workforce through education pathways, and how to study and address the social, economic, ethical, and legal questions that arise as collaborative robots become more common. In practice, this thrust recognizes that technical capability alone is not enough; widespread adoption also depends on trust, accountability, fairness, safety norms, labor impacts, and responsible governance.

NRI-2.0 encourages collaboration among universities, industry, non-profits, and other organizations to better link fundamental science and engineering advances with technology development, deployment, and practical use. The program is multi-agency, supported by NSF along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Energy (DOE), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DOD), reflecting the broad relevance of collaborative robotics across civilian, industrial, agricultural, energy, aerospace, and defense contexts. Applicants are expected to align proposed work with the interests of the participating agencies, and project-specific fit questions are directed to the relevant agency points of contact listed in the solicitation.

From the funding details provided, this opportunity is a discretionary grant program (Funding Opportunity Number 19-536) in the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category. The opportunity was created on November 21, 2018, with an original closing date of February 19, 2019. The expected number of awards is 60, with an award ceiling of $1,500,000. Eligibility is listed as "Others" with additional clarification referenced in the full solicitation text, indicating that prospective applicants need to consult the eligibility section for specifics. Overall, NRI-2.0 is designed to move collaborative robotics from promising prototypes to broadly deployable partners that can reliably and naturally assist people at scale, adapt to diverse settings and users, be easier for researchers to develop and test, and be integrated responsibly into society.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "National Robotics Initiative 2.0: Ubiquitous Collaborative Robots" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.310, 12.800, 43.001, 47.041, 47.070, 47.075, 47.076, 81.049, 81.104.
• This funding opportunity was created on Nov 21, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Feb 19, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $1,500,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 60 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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