Welcome!

Welcome to the official 2023 Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) - National Robotics Initiative (NRI) Principal Investigators' (PI) Meeting website. 

The 2023 FRR-NRI PI Meeting was held in person over three days from Monday, May 1 (arrival night) through Tuesday, May 2nd and Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 (meeting days). The PI Meeting was fully in-person at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City at Reagan National Airport Hotel located at 2799 Richmond Highway in the Crystal City Community of Arlington, Virginia, 22202.

The goal of the PI meeting was to assemble the community of researchers, industry representatives, non-governmental and non-profit organizations, and Government program managers who are actively engaged in the Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) and the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) programs to review the progress, challenges, and future directions of FRR and NRI research and to provide an environment for PIs to showcase their research and to network.

With the sunset of the NSF NRI program in May 2022, which was designed to accelerate the development and use of collaborative robots in the United States that worked beside or cooperatively with humans ubiquitously in every aspect of life, NSF-sponsored robotics research will continue via the flagship NSF FRR program that is jointly managed by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). The FRR program provides a single home for foundational research in robotics across NSF. The FRR program covers a broad spectrum of foundational research in robotics, including the topics of collaborative robotics and integration in robotics that were previously supported by NRI. 

Spaghetti Gumdrop Challenge Winners: 

Cutest Companion award goes to Leo: 

Registration

Accommodations

Participant Guidance

Workshops

N S F   F R R - N R I   A D s

K E Y N O T E    S P E A K E R S

N S F  / C I S E / F R R  P R O G R A M  L E A D  P D s

N S F  / C I S E / F R R  P R O G R A M   P D s

C O L L A B O R A T I N G  R O B O T I C S  A G E N C Y  P D s
 

U.S. Department of Transportation
•  Mr. David Kuehn

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
•   Dr. Terry Fong

National Institutes of Health
•    Dr. Moria Bittmann
•    Dr. Lyndon Joseph
•    Dr. Danilo Tagle
•    Dr. Cheri Wiggs
•    Dr. Kristopher Bough

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
•    Jacob Carr
•    Dawn Castillio
•    Dr. Sharon Chiou

United States Department of Agriculture
•    Dr. Steven Thomson
 

O R G A N I Z E R S  Frankie King (Vanderbilt University) Amy Karns (Vanderbilt University) Regan Williams (Vanderbilt University) Jason Gigax (Vanderbilt University)	N R I   S P O N S O R  A G E N C I E S
		National Science Foundation (NSF)
		Federal Highway Administration (FHWA-DOT)
		National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
		National Institutes of Health (NIH)
		The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
		National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA-USDA)