The Department of Defense awarded the public-private Manufacturing USA institute to American Robotics, a nonprofit venture led by Carnegie Mellon, with more than 220 partners in industry, academia, government and the nonprofit sector nationwide. The institute will receive $80 million from the DOD, and an additional $173 million from the partner organizations. The Richard King Mellon Foundation played a particularly important role in catalyzing the CMU proposal.

The high-level award puts Pittsburgh and CMU at the center of a new wave of manufacturing, leveraging artificial intelligence, autonomy, 3-D printing and other emerging technologies to make industrial robotics more affordable for businesses of all sizes, adaptable for many uses, and able to achieve more.