WESTBOROUGH, Mass. – The Healey-Driscoll Administration, in partnership with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s (MassTech) Innovation Institute, launched the Massachusetts Robotics Digital Twin Initiative Friday.
Aimed at increasing access to robotics tools and supporting the industry’s entrepreneurial ecosystem statewide, the program intends to award up to $2 million in grants via the Mass Leads Act to Massachusetts-based robotics startups and research companies to develop robots and their digital twin counterparts. These digital versions enable testing in virtual environments, reducing costs and accelerating innovation.
The digital versions will be open-sourced and available for use by researchers and entrepreneurs.
“Like many industries, robotics evolves through experimentation. However, prototypes often cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars and can take years to develop,” said Pat Larkin, MassTech Innovation Institute director. “The Digital Twin Library will allow for low-risk collaboration without the headache and hassle of starting from scratch.”
Grants will range from $25,000 to $300,000 and can be used toward curation of high-quality datasets for robotics, training of an AI-run model and demonstration of the model against defined benchmarks, and a deployment plan among other items. Funds are intended to be utilized within two years of receipt.
For more information, please visit, https://masstech.org/robotics-digital-twin.
About the Innovation Institute at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech)
The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MassTech) is a quasi-public economic development agency that strengthens the competitiveness of the tech and innovation economy by driving strategic investments, partnerships, and insights that harness the talent of Massachusetts. The Innovation Institute is the division of MassTech created in 2003 that advances innovation and cluster growth across the state in four ways:
- Conducts research and analysis that improves the state's understandings of unmet needs and opportunities in the innovation economy
- Serves as a convener and key strategic broker within various sectors
- Manages high-value projects on behalf of the state
- Makes strategic investments in support of innovation-based economic development
For more information, visit https://innovation.masstech.org/.
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