Launched in 2020, is the only robotics research center in Kentucky. The institute is a collaboration of researchers and students working to provide solutions for manufacturing, health care and logistics challenges.

“LARRI is moving from a virtual institute to a physical institute facility,” said Dan Popa, director of LARRI and professor of electrical and computer engineering in UofL’s . “This facility will provide space for collaborative ventures among students, faculty and community and industry partners and will help our faculty take advantage of nationally competitive funding opportunities and new cross-disciplinary educational programs.”

LARRI’s 12 dedicated faculty members, postdoctoral staff, affiliated faculty and more than 50 student researchers are investigating human-robot interaction, automation and robotics for industry, networked robots and autonomous vehicles, planning and control for mechatronic systems and other areas.

“In a state with so many innovative manufacturing businesses and in a city that is a leader in health care innovation, LARRI is a vitally important collaborative and research resource,” said UofL President Neeli Bendapudi. “And for our students, LARRI provides an opportunity to learn and practice with the emerging technologies that will allow them be leaders in engineering innovation.”

“LARRI was formed to conduct state-of-the-art research in robotics and automation and help meet regional and national workforce needs in these technology areas,” said Speed School Dean Emmanuel Collins. “This new facility enables LARRI to expand its research footprint and provides more collaborative space for its researchers. This center already is excelling and we expect its progress to accelerate with the addition of this new space.”

Several key research projects at LARRI focus on health care, including interactive robots to help individuals on the autism spectrum, a specialized chair to improve function in children with spinal cord injuries and an automated nursing assistant.

“The theme is not robots replacing humans. It is humans and robots working together,” Popa said. “Humans do certain things; robots do other things. ARNA, the nursing assistant robot, will not replace nursing staff, but perform helpful basic tasks to alleviate overwork and stress and improve patient care.”

LARRI’s new space, made possible by the estate of Shih-Chung Chen, is located in the J.B. Speed School Innovation Center on Arthur Street, next to the Engineering Garage, a creative makerspace and workshop where students can explore, build and test their ideas, and around the corner from General Electric’s FirstBuild, a similar makerspace.

LARRI already has during the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency competition in the new space. The JPL team used the space as a base of operations for testing and preparation for the competition and demonstrated their robots for LARRI faculty, students and staff.

The program provides training and $50,000 in funding that helps university researchers translate the ideas they develop in the lab into new, technology-backed startups. Participating teams complete an intense, two-month bootcamp learning about commercialization, engaging with industry and talking to potential customers.

Two projects from UofL were chosen to participate in recent bootcamp cohorts:

• BioCaRGOS, short for Capture and Release Gels for Optimized Storage (bioCaRGOS), uses a novel water-based stabilizer to enable storage of sensitive biospecimens like RNA, DNA or proteins at low temperatures for long periods of time, including during transport to remote locations. The project team includes: co-inventors Gautam Gupta and��Rajat Chauhan, both in the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, and business mentor Jeff Cummins, who also is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with the UofL Office of Research and Innovation.

• ARNA, short for , an artificially intelligent health care robot created to provide round-the-clock patient monitoring and allow nurses to focus more on direct patient care by taking on some of their time-consuming tasks. The project team includes: co-inventors Dan Popa and Sumit Kumar Das, of engineering, and business mentor Mary Tapolsky, of the UofL Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship.

Chauhan, of the BioCaRGOS team, said the experience helped his team find an industry commercialization partner. They currently are seeking partners for an upcoming application NSF Partnerships for Innovation program, which allows NSF-backed projects like his to work with industry on research and development and accelerate the technology’s path to market.

“Vaccine stability (especially for COVID-19) remains a critical challenge and is the critical bottleneck for effective distribution of the state-of-art MRNA based vaccines to current population,” said Chauhan, BioCaRGOS entrepreneurial lead and a postdoctoral research scientist. “Our technology has the potential to advance the delivery of vaccines at room temperature, a feat that cannot be achieved currently.”

Teams must be nominated for the national I-Corps bootcamp, and must first complete a regional . Both the BioCARGOS and ARNA teams completed UofL’s I-Corps site program — part of UofL’s suite of��, that also includes the UofL , NIH and NSF programs. I-Corps at UofL requires successful participation and completion of , UofL’s own 10-week entrepreneurial bootcamp.

“These programs support commercialization of the work being done by our researchers here at UofL,” said Jessica Sharon, UofL’s director of innovation programs. “We’re proud of the ARNA and BioCARGOS teams, and their work to accelerate product development of their innovations to address unmet needs in the market.”��