The National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) -- an innovative model for academic-industry collaboration founded 25 years ago to catalyze robotics research, development and commercialization -- has dramatically transformed the Pittsburgh region, its economy and the robotics industry, says a report released by Carnegie Mellon University. "The impact of Carnegie Mellon's NREC has been game-changing, not just for igniting a thriving technology industry in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania but also for revolutionizing robotics and catalyzing its impact across the globe," said CMU President Farnam Jahanian. "As NREC marks its first 25 years and plans for the future, the report's findings reinforce what insiders have always known: NREC's innovations have transformed entire industries and are helping to solve some of humanity's greatest challenges." CMU collaborated with NASA, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the City of Pittsburgh, local foundations and other partners to create NREC. The center began with an initial investment of less than $10 million and has raised more than $500 million in total direct funding to date -- a remarkable 50 times the original investment.

If you thought rocket science was hard, try training a computer to safely change lanes while behind the wheel of a full-size SUV in heavy drivetime traffic. Autonomous vehicle developers have faced myriad similar challenged over the past three decades but nothing, it seems, turns the wheels of innovation quite like a bit of good, old-fashioned competition -- one which DARPA was only more than happy to provide. In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, Insider senior editor and former Wired Transportation editor, Alex Davies takes the reader on an immersive tour of DARPA's "Grand Challenges" -- the agency's autonomous vehicle trials which drew top talents from across academia and the private sector in effort to spur on the state of autonomous vehicle technology -- as well as profiles many of the elite engineers that took place in the competitions. In the excerpt below however Davies recalls how, back in 2014, then-CEO Travis Kalanick steered Uber into the murky waters of autonomous vehicle technology, setting off a flurry of acquihires, buyouts, furious R&D efforts, and one fatal accident -- only to end up selling off the division this past December. Excerpt from Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car by Alex Davies.

Motivated by the concept of network motifs we construct certain clustering methods (functors) which are parametrized by a given collection of motifs (or representers).

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. We already posted about the unveiling of Sony's new Aibo, but here's a bit of extra video from the event showing the little robotic dog in live action: In this video we show a compilation of our research for the last 4 years on autonomous navigation of bipedal robots. It is part of the DFG-founded project "Versatile and Robust Walking in Uneven Terrain" (German Research Foundation) and includes development in environment perception and modeling, motion planning and stability control.

Outside a large warehouse in Pittsburgh, in an area along the Allegheny River that was once home to dozens of factories and foundries but now has shops and restaurants, I'm waiting for a different kind of technological revolution to arrive. I check my phone, look up, and notice it's already here. A white Ford Fusion, its roof bedazzled with futuristic--looking sensors, is idling nearby. Two people sit up front--one monitoring a computer, the other behind the wheel--but the car is in control. I hop in, press a button on a touch screen, and sit back as the self-driving Uber takes me for a ride.

Outside a large warehouse in Pittsburgh, in an area along the Allegheny River that was once home to dozens of factories and foundries but now has shops and restaurants, I'm waiting for a different kind of technological revolution to arrive. I check my phone, look up, and notice it's already here. A white Ford Fusion, its roof bedazzled with futuristic--looking sensors, is idling nearby. Two people sit up front--one monitoring a computer, the other behind the wheel--but the car is in control. I hop in, press a button on a touch screen, and sit back as the self-driving Uber takes me for a ride. As we zip out onto the road toward downtown, the car stays neatly in its lane, threading deftly between an oncoming car and parked trucks that stick out into the street.