A new tenant is finally taking over the former Barnes & Noble location in Squirrel Hill.
Only the new tenant isn’t another bookstore. Or any store, for that matter: It’s a laboratory for some of the world’s most cutting-edge robotics research.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute has leased the 16,000-square-foot location on 1723 Murray Ave., and teams of roboticists will begin moving into the space by the end of this month.
The move comes as the Robotics Institute — a global leader in robotics — is outgrowing its current home on CMU’s Oakland campus.
“We've been hiring like crazy, expanding, doing all kinds of new stuff,” said Matthew Johnson-Roberson, director of the Robotics Institute.
“This has been a really interesting time for robotics,” Mr. Johnson-Roberson said. “There's lots of new applications and lots of new students that want to study, and we're really just trying to keep up with that demand.”
Eventually, the Robotics Institute will have more room to breathe when its planned Robotics Innovation Center in Hazelwood Green is completed. Previously, the center was scheduled to open in 2024, but is currently believed to still be three or more years away.
Meanwhile, the Robotics Institute decided it couldn’t wait to expand. Its lease of the building on Murray Ave. runs through 2025, with the opportunity to extend it.
Labs inside the building will serve as research spaces for a variety of robotics projects. Jean Oh’s lab develops robots that collaborate with humans. Zac Manchester’s team is working on robots that work in space. And Sebastian Scherer’s researchers are advancing technology for drones.
These same labs were previously squeezed into CMU’s increasingly tight campus space, with teams separated across many smaller rooms. The Murray Avenue location will offer enough space for labs to exist together in single, larger rooms, something that Mr. Johnson-Roberson believes will speed up the “velocity of information travel between the different faculty.”
CMU was the first university in the world to establish a robotics department in 1979. It was also the first to offer a doctoral program in robotics in 1988.
In more recent years, everyday Pittsburghers have seen the impact of robotics in their own lives. Many of the companies on “Robotics Row,” which stretches from the Strip District to lower Lawrenceville, were founded by Robotics Institute grads. And the autonomous vehicle companies testing self-driving cars on Pittsburgh’s streets are helmed by CMU grads as well.
Mr. Johnson-Roberson hopes the institute’s expansion into new neighborhoods will increase its engagement with surrounding communities.
“Main campus here can feel a bit like an island,” he said. “It's really important for us to feel connected to Pittsburgh.”
First Published: October 7, 2022, 5:00 p.m.
Updated: October 7, 2022, 5:03 p.m.
