The completion of the new Lowell Advanced Robotics Initiative Laboratory at Southwick Hall and the start of the Durgin Concert Hall renovation highlighted a busy summer of work around campus for Facilities Management.

Two researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering – Asst. Profs. Yan Gu and Marianna Maiaru – were recognized by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Air Force, respectively, with faculty early career development grants totaling $1,015,000. The funding will help advance research on robot walking and the process modeling of composite materials.

U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan learned about the latest technology used in parachutes and other battlefield innovations while touring the HEROES lab on Feb. 20.

Manning School of Business faculty Scott Latham and Beth Humberd examined four ways that jobs will respond to automation in a research article published in MIT Sloan Management Review.

The Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science departments have moved to a remodeled (and renamed) Dandeneau Hall – one of Facilities Management’s several major renovation projects this summer.

Robotics experts from UMass Lowell, Carnegie Mellon University, Brigham Young University and Tufts University are working together to give humanoid robots and other autonomous systems the ability to assess themselves in terms of how well they can perform a given task.

UMass Lowell, home to one of the most advanced robotics-testing centers in the nation, will be a partner in a $250 million robotics institute -- with the goal of producing new technologies and opportunities for workers in advanced manufacturing.

Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy, a team of robotics experts is studying ways in which a humanoid robot can help clean up America’s decommissioned nuclear production facilities.

Three teams of UMass Lowell researchers — led by Prof. Holly Yanco and Assoc. Prof. Yu Cao, both from the Department of Computer Science, and Asst. Prof. Seongkyu Yoon from Chemical Engineering — are among the recipients of $834,000 in grants from this year’s UMass President Science & Technology Initiatives Fund.

Val — short for Valkyrie — is a 6-foot, 2-inch, 300-pound mass of metal, wires and plastic that was delivered to UMass Lowell, along with a squad of NASA engineers, who put together the robot piece by piece.

A state-of-the-art NASA robot prototype will soon be taking up residence at the university’s robotics testing lab to study how this human-like machine can assist astronauts in future space exploration.