National Robotics Initiative 2.0: Ubiquitous Collaborative Robots | 20 522

Opportunity Information: Apply for 20 522

The National Robotics Initiative 2.0: Ubiquitous Collaborative Robots (NRI-2.0) is a federal research grant program led by the National Science Foundation that funds fundamental U.S.-based robotics research aimed at speeding up the development and real-world adoption of collaborative robots, or "co-robots." In this program, a co-robot is defined as a robot designed primarily to work with people and/or other robots to achieve shared goals. The vision goes beyond robots that can only perform pre-scripted interactions; instead, NRI-2.0 emphasizes robots that can function as adaptable teammates, maintaining or improving overall team performance even as tasks, roles, partners, environments, and objectives change.

A central idea in NRI-2.0 is "ubiquity," meaning co-robots should integrate seamlessly into everyday life and assist humans across a wide range of settings. To push the field toward that future, the program highlights four core research themes: scalability, customizability, lowering barriers to entry, and societal impact (including human safety). These themes are meant to capture both the technical breakthroughs needed for widespread co-robot deployment and the broader human and institutional factors that influence whether collaborative robotics can be adopted safely and responsibly.

Under the scalability theme, NRI-2.0 seeks advances that allow robots to collaborate with far more people or other robots than current systems can handle. This includes research on perception, planning, action, and learning in uncertain, real-world conditions, especially when robots must operate in distributed systems rather than relying on a single centralized controller. It also includes work that improves large-scale operation in complex environments, with an emphasis on safety, robustness, and reliability so that co-robots can function effectively outside controlled lab conditions and across diverse real-world scenarios.

The customizability theme focuses on making co-robots easy to adapt for different tasks, settings, and users without extensive redesign of hardware or major rewrites of software. This area includes personalization, where robots learn or adjust to individual preferences, capabilities, or needs, and also includes more natural human-robot communication. The solicitation explicitly calls out both verbal and non-verbal interaction, reflecting the expectation that future co-robots should collaborate through intuitive, human-friendly cues such as speech, gesture, timing, and shared attention.

Lowering barriers to entry is framed as a research enabler: the program wants to reduce the practical obstacles that prevent researchers from doing fundamental robotics work or developing integrated robotics applications. Examples include creating open-source co-robot hardware and software platforms and building broadly accessible testbeds that more teams can use to validate and compare ideas. At the same time, the program draws a clear boundary by noting that outreach activities or simply using robots in education programs do not automatically count as lowering barriers to entry unless they directly expand access to research-capable tools, platforms, or infrastructure.

The societal impact theme recognizes that ubiquitous collaborative robots will affect far more than technical performance. NRI-2.0 supports foundational research that can help integrate robotics into educational curricula, strengthen the robotics workforce through education pathways, and examine the social, economic, ethical, security, and legal implications of widespread co-robot use. Human safety is explicitly included here, signaling that safe interaction and deployment is not an add-on, but a core research concern tied to trust, regulation, and responsible adoption.

The opportunity is structured as a discretionary grant program (Funding Opportunity Number 20-522) with an award ceiling of $1,500,000 and an anticipated total of about 60 awards. It is supported by multiple federal partners beyond NSF, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Because these agencies have different missions and application contexts, applicants are encouraged to align project aims with the appropriate agency and to consult the relevant point of contact listed in the solicitation for fit and relevance. The original posting date was December 3, 2019, and the original closing date for submission was February 26, 2020.

• 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, 43.001, 47.041, 47.070, 47.075, 47.076, 93.262.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 03, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Feb 26, 2020. (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).

Apply for 20 522

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