Held Receives MURI Award To Help Robots Solve Problems

David Held, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, is one of two CMU faculty members selected to lead teams receiving Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) funding from the Department of Defense (DoD). The 2024 MURI awards total $221 million and will support 30 teams at 73 academic institutions across the country. At CMU, Held will lead a team of researchers from fields including neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, robotics and computer vision on a project that aims to help develop robots that can handle unexpected challenges. “Robot systems today, when they encounter something they haven’t seen before, will just get stuck and not make progress,” Held said. When they try something and it doesn’t work, they’ll try different strategies until they find a solution.