EXCITED FOR THE FUTURE
NERVE Center marks 10 years of robot development, testing
LOWELL >> With the advent of robots, some people fear their jobs — or the world — will be overtaken by machines and androids.
Fear not. At Umass Lowell, researchers are reimagining the relationship between humans and their robot counterparts.
Umass Lowell’s New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation Center — NERVE
Center for short — celebrated its 10th anniversary on Monday, with university faculty and partners praising the center’s achievements, remembering its early days and acknowledging the progress it’s made since its 2013 inception.
Staff and students at the NERVE Center evaluate and test robots’ capabilities for their potential future development and to better inform companies of their abilities for real-world use.
Adam Norton, associate director of the NERVE Center, walked the audience through the highlights of the last 10 years, examining how the staff has expanded from two to 16, explaining their successful work in robotics competitions and showing off the development and installation of different technologies.
Norton also shared the timeline by the numbers: 64 grants, more than $25 million in funding and six different acronyms, the last of which got plenty of chuckles. In their first year, Norton said the university’s team participated in NASA’S Roboops competition, which became a launching point to integrate humanoid robotics and collaborate with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, or DEVCOM.
“We took first place with that, with the Rover Hawks… and that was something that really showed the power of having a dedicated test facility,” Norton
said, “where they develop their system and control it from NERVE during the competition.”
Without “critical” state support and research grants, the NERVE Center would not be able to operate, said Chancellor Julie Chen, making it truly “a team effort.” The center also combines several different disciplines: physical therapy, biomedical engineering, mechanical and electrical, kinesiology and computer science.
The university is able to find solutions to modern-day inquiries by understanding human-robot interactions and partnering with companies to improve that technology,