Founder of the Robotics Lab Holly Yanco was recently awarded $135,000 from this year's UMass President's Science and Technology Initiatives Fund to establish a new robotics testing center on campus. The New England Robotics Validation and Experimentation, or NERVE, Center will facilitate the improved development of robotic systems by both academic researchers and corporations. It will allow robotics companies and universities that conduct robotics research to test robot systems under development without needing to travel out of state. The center will house replicas of NIST's Standard Test Methods for Robots (currently available for use in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and San Antonio, Texas) and the Army's Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV) test course (currently available for use in Aberdeen, Maryland, at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds).

For more information on the NERVE Center, check out http://nerve.uml.edu/

To read more about the award, and about fellow UML research recipient Prof. Robert Giles: http://www.uml.edu/News/stories/2011-12/Science-faculty-awards.aspx