South Florida is building an AI robotics workforce, and Florida Atlantic University just landed federal money to speed it up.
The university’s College of Engineering and Computer Science received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The four-year project will build a shared research and training framework for AI-enabled robotics and cyber-physical systems.
Cyber-physical systems are machines that sense their surroundings and act on them. FAU points to healthcare, infrastructure and autonomous systems as the fields that depend on them.
The Problem FAU Wants to Solve
Students who want robotics experience often hit the same wall. The computing, simulation tools, datasets and physical hardware sit in separate places.
FAU’s team plans to bring those pieces together. Participants will move between digital and physical environments and run experiments others can repeat.
The framework will also offer reusable experimental workflows. A lab can adopt them instead of starting from scratch.
Hands-on laboratories and mentored research are part of the plan. The aim is to bring research-grade experimentation into engineering and computing classrooms.
The project will supply research-grade workflows, digital twin environments, datasets and executable notebooks. Students, researchers and educators can all use them.
Principal investigator Xiangnan Zhong put the gap plainly.
“Advanced robotics and AI are transforming science and engineering, but access to research-grade tools and hands-on experimentation remains limited.”
Zhong is an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science. She is also a member of FAU’s Center for Connected Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence.
Zhong said the project will open new possibilities for discovery. It will also build the expertise needed for the next generation of intelligent systems.
A Platform Already in Place
The new grant builds on what that center already runs. It operates a digital twin computing platform and a networked robotic testbed.
Connecting simulation to real hardware is the point. Participants can test an idea in simulation, then try it on physical robots.
The co-principal investigators span several fields. Erik Engeberg works in ocean, mechanical and biomedical engineering. Zhen Ni and George Sklivanitis work in electrical engineering and computer science.
Sklivanitis is also a faculty fellow with FAU’s Institute for Smarter Cities, Spaces and Health. Ni and Sklivanitis are both members of the Center, and Sklivanitis serves as its associate director. The grant plugs into an existing team, not a blank slate.
The project’s applications reach healthcare, autonomous systems and networked robots.
In those fields a mistake costs more in the physical world than on a screen. That is why simulation and real testing need to work together.
Dean Stella Batalama framed the grant as a workforce story. She said the award reflects the college’s strength. It helps FAU “develop the highly skilled workforce our nation needs.”
Future efforts will expand the framework to more application areas, institutions and research communities.
Part of a South Florida Pattern
MAIN has covered another FAU workforce grant. The university also won a $200,000 NIST agreement to train a quantum cybersecurity workforce across South Florida.
Its researchers have also been testing the claims AI systems make about themselves.
Further south, Miami’s FIU is building its own security and AI research base. FIU’s CIERTA center studies the risks of trusted AI.
Together the schools form a pipeline. Palm Beach trains robotics engineers, Miami studies AI risk, and both feed the same regional labor market.
Employers in healthcare, logistics and infrastructure need people who can work on both the screen and the shop floor. That combination is hard to hire for.
FAU says the framework is meant to outlast the grant. The long-term goal is a scalable, sustainable cyberinfrastructure that adds more institutions and application areas.
The grant is modest by federal standards. The infrastructure it funds could shape how South Florida students learn robotics for years.
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