A New Research Facility for Robotics and Alloy Discovery in Texas

Researchers have received a $24.9 million grant to develop an NSF Materials Innovation Platform where universities, national laboratories and industry members can run alloy-discovery campaigns using robotic systems and artificial intelligence.

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

A six-year, $24.9 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will establish the Autonomous Robotic Metallurgist Materials Innovation Platform (ARM-MIP) at Texas A&M University - a national user facility where robots and artificial intelligence take on the repetitive labor of alloy discovery, freeing scientists to focus on discovery itself.

ARM-MIP will be sited at The Texas A&M University System RELLIS Campus in Bryan, a dedicated research campus that also hosts the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station and the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command's central testing hub at the George H.W. Bush Combat Development Complex. The platform is designed to reach more than 200 users a year and 50 alloys per month in its first year, scaling to more than 200 alloys per month by year six.