Important open robotics US funding opportunity (LOI due Nov. 20, 2010)

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Paul D. Fernhout

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Sep 20, 2010, 9:37:38 PM9/20/10
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A chain of links:
"Won't You (Cheaply) Help DARPA Gear Up for the Coming Robopocalypse?"

http://www.fastcompany.com/1689620/got-a-robotic-idea-better-than-darpas-the-government-can-fund-you
"RTD2: Research for Robotics"
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/09/15/rtd2-research-robotics
"Robotics Technology Development and Deployment [RTD2] (R43) "
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-10-279.html

From the last:
"""
Tremendous progress in robotics technology development over the past five to
ten years has unleashed new opportunities for automating tasks and enriching
the lives of humans. Robotics technology markets have grown rapidly and now
span many diverse industries including military, medicine, healthcare,
manufacturing, logistics, and consumer products.
Robotics has emerged as a priority area because:
* It can address a broad range of national needs such as homeland
security, defense, medicine, health/healthcare, space exploration,
environmental monitoring and remediation, transportation, advanced
manufacturing, logistics, services, and agriculture, as well as consumer
products;
* Robotics technology is reaching a �tipping point� and is poised for
explosive growth because of improvements in core technologies such as
microprocessors, sensors, and algorithms;
* Robotics technology has the potential to make a tremendous
contribution to the lives of the elderly and disabled;
* Robotics science and technology has the potential to play a very
important role in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
education as a unique, integrative discipline that brings together basic
science, applied engineering and creative thinking; and
* Members of the research community and program managers in key science
agencies have identified a shared vision and technical agenda for developing
�co-robots� � a next generation of robotic systems that can safely co-exist
in close proximity to or in physical contact with humans in the pursuit of
mundane, dangerous, precise or expensive tasks.
Small businesses are playing an important role in the development of
robotic technology and applications. As such, five SBIR agencies have
collaborated to help launch this joint-agency robotics FOA.
"""

Up to $100,000 SBIR phase One for US small businesses.
Letter of intent due by: November 20, 2010

Very significant because of the involvement of all these US agencies (NIH,
DOD, NSF, USDA, DHS).

Example from the USDA, to get rid of illegal employment opportunities on
farms: :-) "Dexterous end-effectors that can harvest fruits, vegetables, or
plants or that can handle small live animals, with appropriate force and
motion for proper extraction and to minimize/avoid damage."

Also, there is a lot of interest in medical-related robotics.

And it's all ironic, given the high unemployment. :-) But, that's the
problem of our age, irony. :-) Solutions are here collected by me for a
happy roboticized world: :-)
"Beyond a Jobless Recovery: A heterodox perspective on 21st century
economics"
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

Maybe I'll dust this email off and send it in again, a decade later: :-)
"DARPA Progam Manager Position on Self-Replicating technology"
http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/64c7c2fb922a4bcf?hl=en
"I am writing to express my interest in pursuing a position under section
1101 of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal
Year 1999 as a DARPA Program Manager with the mission to support efforts to
create decentralized self-replicating and self-repairing systems and related
technology and infrastructure (including knowledgebases and analysis tools).
The most similar current work at DARPA is probably the Agile Manufacturing
Initiative of the Defense Sciences Office. ...
Specifically, to ensure survival and defend against the potential
consequences of modern warfare and terrorism, we need to:
* create a knowledgebase of manufacturing techniques, assembly
instructions, failure probabilities, and related information,
* create software tools which can use that knowledgebase to adapt
technology for terrain-specific needs -- including an arbitrary degree
of closure and self-reliance,
* create collaborative processes and licenses whereby many researchers
and other interested individuals can contribute to the creation of this
technology,
* explore manufacturing issues using the knowledgebase and tools to be
able to identify key missing or bottleneck processes,
* create new and more versatile manufacturing and materials processing
techniques (like MEMS and nanotechnology) to address critical needs for
increasing the ability of systems to self-replicate and to self-repair,
* create robust control systems for such processes,
* create a (miniature) factory system or tool set that can be used with
that knowledgebase, to be capable of a high degree of self-replication
using locally available materials and power sources,
* test and refine such actual factories and tool sets,
* train people in the operation of these systems, and
* deploy these systems in a wide variety of environments (desert, ocean,
underground, urban, rural, arctic, air, space)."

But probably they want to see tiny little incremental pieces? So, instead:
"I ... will ... write ... a ... word ... in ... FORTH ... that ... will ...
visually ... servo ... a ... PR2 ... gripper ... to ... pick ... up ... a
... piece ... of ... LEGO ... ." :-)

Related, a story about a much smarter guy than I because he dropped out of
PU to do technology stuff when I foolishly did not: :-)
"Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs"

http://www.theledger.com/article/20100919/ZNYT01/9193006/1001/BUSINESS?Title=Just-Manic-Enough-Seeking-Perfect-Entrepreneurs
"Scholars in organizational studies tend to divide the world into
�transformational leaders� (the group that hypomanics are bunched into, of
course) and �transactional leaders,� who are essentially even-keeled
managers, grown-ups who know how to delegate, listen and set achievable
goals. Both types of leaders need to rally employees to their cause, but
entrepreneurs must recruit and galvanize when a company is little more than
a whisper of a big idea. Shouting �To the ramparts!� with no ramparts in
sight takes a kind of irrational self-confidence, which is perfectly
acceptable, though it can also tilt into egomania, which is usually not."

And also nothing about thinking through the socio-economic impact? They just
trot out: "... increase private sector commercialization of innovations
derived from Federal R/R&D, thereby increasing competition, productivity and
economic growth" ignoring issues like in this parable I created: :-)
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment
and a basic income"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

Anyway, I can probably think about 100 robotic-ish things to propose or more
(I've got a quarter century of dreams saved up :-), and I could probably
break each down into tiny bits (1000s of projects? Even just from the DARPA
suggestion above broken down into pieces). Still, I'm mostly thinking about
content and software these days related to FOSS sensemaking tools (as
previously posted) -- maybe to use to break complex tasks down into pieces
:-) -- so I don't know what I'll send in, if anything. And I like my job as
mostly a "stay-at-home Dad who does some volunteer work on the side". :-) It
sure is exciting to think about doing some neat robotics stuff though. Just
one random fun example:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open_skutter_project/
And, as above, I know there are ways to still make our economy work with
robotics, through a basic income, democratic resource-based planning, a gift
economy, and stronger local communities capable of producing a lot for
themselves, so I'm not really that worried anymore that we could not find
solutions -- if we wanted to. (Big "if" of course.)

I can wonder if they would support a portal of open robotics stuff? Or
information management tools related to design and 3D printing of robots? Or
research on economic implications of automation and mitigating any bad effects?

It might be nice to propose stuff to do with Willow Garage's PR2, but those
cost $280,000 even with an open source discount, so a PR2 would not be
covered within phase one, but maybe purchasing one could fit into a phase
two or phase three effort, and phase one work could be done in simulation or
with a site visit to Willow Garage? On pricing:
http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/09/07/pr2-pricing-and-open-source-discount
(A post I made there did not show up yet, so maybe I'll post it here.)

Anyway, again, this is probably an important opportunity for anyone here who
wants to do open source technology that in any way could be thought of as
"robotics" related.

Certainly anyone doing ShopBot, Makerbot, RepRap, or Fab@Home stuff might
want to think about this somehow. They did not specifically say 3D printing,
but it's related I would think.

Definitely all the DIY-Bio people might be interested in the NIH side of
things, as it mentions: "Improved robotics for drug screening of library
compounds: Development of a simple small machine like those used for PCR,
for use by research laboratories. ..."

And stuff about vehicular robots would presumably be included too. Or
material handling.

Good luck to everyone. I hope many people on this list have success with
this. Of course, like everything, it's a risk of time to create
applications, and you have to weigh if that is worth it (including how good
you will look based on facilities and previous work). But, this seems like a
big push, so for anyone who wants to do open robotics, even as a single
person sole-proprietorship, I can't see the opportunity getting much better
than this any time soon as far as funding. I could not find so far the total
funds for all this, so I don't know exactly how big it is. But it sounds
big. :-) I'm assuming having a project be "open" would be a plus, but that's
not for sure, either. It's also too bad NASA isn't listed on this...

By the way, by coincidence, a couple weeks ago I update my site below to
have pictures of me from thirty years ago or so with a couple of robots I
built back when I did more tangible stuff. :-)

Hope all you budding indoor researchers are getting your vitamin D3. :-)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

(Feel free to forward.)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

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