Josie Hughes wins CHF 1M grant from ARIA

Professor Josie Hughes. EPFL/Alain Herzog CC BY SA 4.0
School of Engineering professor Josie Hughes has received CHF 1 million in funding as part of the Advanced Research + Invention Agency’s Robot Dexterity program to support the generative design of robotic manipulators.
Hughes, head of the Computational Robot Design & Fabrication Lab (CREATE Lab), will use the funding to develop large language models for generating task-specific robot designs. Her grant was announced on May 29 as part of Technical Area 1 of ARIA’s Robot Dexterity program, which focuses on enabling radical breakthroughs in dexterity through innovative components and new approaches to designing and building hardware.
The CREATE Lab’s ultimate goal for their project will be to fully automate the creation of custom manipulators; an approach that will enable bespoke robotic solutions for tasks ranging from raspberry harvesting to dishwasher unloading, accelerating robotic development and deployment.
Led by Programme Director Jenny Read, the UK-based ARIA's Robot Dexterity programme is backed by £57 million and aims to aims to accelerate the development of robot hardware to unlock the full potential of developments in machine learning and AI, creating more capable and useful machines. The ARIA Creators will work across start-ups, university labs, public research organizations, and large companies to address the bottleneck of robotic dexterity, while prioritizing bioinspired design principles.