PITTSBURGH-Citing the critical importance of the continued growth of robotics to U.S. competitiveness, 11 universities are taking the lead in developing an integrated national strategy for robotics research. The United States is the only nation engaged in advanced robotics research that does not have such a research roadmap.

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), a program of the National Science Foundation, is providing support for developing the roadmap, which will be a unified research agenda for robotics across federal agencies, industry and the universities.

The effort began last year and includes representatives from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University and the universities of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California- Berkeley, Southern California, Utah and Illinois, as well as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Henrik I. Christensen, the KUKA Chair of Robotics at Georgia Tech and a principal investigator for the CCC, is leading the group effort to develop the roadmap with the involvement of industry. This spring, a series of workshops are being organized and this fall a National Robotics Senior Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., will take place. The conference will review the preliminary results from the workshops and take steps toward an integrated national research agenda. The roadmap will then be reported to the year-old Congressional Robotics Caucus, headed by U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.).

"It is essential that the United States begins to solidly outline a leadership position in robotics," said Carnegie Mellon President Jared L. Cohon. "Robotics already is having a transformative impact on the workplace, from the factory floor to hospital operating rooms. In the decades ahead, this impact can be extended to our homes and our highways to increase our ability to live independently and to save lives."

"The planning process now getting under way is a historic opportunity to build upon broad-based collaboration among industry and academic leaders in the field of robotics," said Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough. "We want to create a plan that will keep this nation competitive in a technology that is rapidly advancing."

The failure of the robotics community to previously speak with one voice has resulted in inconsistent funding and missed opportunities, said Matthew T. Mason, director of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. "The technology is finding wider application, but its full potential is not fully appreciated by policy makers," he explained. "We need to develop a common vision so that we can work effectively with the Congressional Robotics Caucus and with funding agencies."

Christensen noted that all of the planning events are designed to focus on the research needs that are vital to the development of a growing robotics industry.

"Several key competencies are not available today," Christensen said. "Through a community effort that includes end-users, industry and academia, the key challenges and opportunities will be identified. The workshops and conferences will allow us to develop a mature plan."

"The key to the workshops will be the collaborative discussions between representatives from both academia and industry," stated John Reid, Director, Product Technology and Innovation at John Deere's Moline Technology Innovation Center. "We need to proceed in a market-driven fashion to envision key future robotics-enabled capabilities and then map these capabilities to the required robotics technologies that we need to be researching and developing today."

Doyle and Wamp of the Congressional Robotics Caucus expressed enthusiasm for the effort.

"We applaud the researchers at some of our nation's top universities for this effort to craft a national agenda for robotics research," they said in a statement released by the caucus. "We especially want to commend the presidents of Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech for their initiative in organizing this conference. The Congressional Robotics Caucus looks forward to reviewing the results of this important work so that we can more fully understand the impact that robotics is likely to have on the future security and prosperity of our nation."

More information about the Community Computing Consortium can be found at:www.cra.org/ccc/.

The roadmapping effort is detailed at www.us-robotics.us.

About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs in engineering, computer science, robotics, business, public policy, fine arts and the humanities. More than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovation. A small student-to-faculty ratio provides an opportunity for close interaction between students and professors. While technology is pervasive on its 144-acre Pittsburgh campus, Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive among leading research universities for the world-renowned programs in its College of Fine Arts. A global university, Carnegie Mellon has campuses in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia and Europe. For more, see www.cmu.edu.

About Georgia Tech: The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation's premiere research universities. Ranked seventh among U.S. News & World Report's top public universities, Georgia Tech's more than 18,000 students are enrolled in its Colleges of Architecture, Computing, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Management and Sciences. Tech is among the nation's top producers of women and African-American engineers. The Institute offers research opportunities to both undergraduate and graduate students and is home to more than 100 interdisciplinary units plus the Georgia Tech Research Institute. More information can be found at www.gatech.edu.