The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and NASA, announced new investments totaling approximately $38 million for the development and use of robots that cooperatively work with people to enhance individual human capabilities, performance and safety.

Funded projects target the creation of next-generation collaborative robots, or co-robots, for advanced manufacturing; civil and environmental infrastructure; health care and rehabilitation; military and homeland security; space and undersea exploration; food production, processing and distribution; independence and quality of life improvement and driver safety.

Among the 30 projects funded nationally are included:

• A helper robot that is sensitive to people with Parkinson’s Disease, despite their commonly reduced ability to display emotion
• A cloud platform that will allow anyone to teach robots domestic tasks over the internet

For more information: National Science Foundation Website and GigaOM post.