The Robotics Institute

Dr. John Bares is currently on leave from Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute and is President and CEO of Carnegie Robotics LLC (CRL), a partner organization the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC). Dr. Bares was the Director of the NREC from 1997 to 2010. While NREC Director, Dr. Bares managed the organization’s ten-fold revenue growth and grew the staff to 120. During this time he also led the organization’s largest DoD unmanned vehicle design programs in which he established program management and development processes necessary to deliver TRL 6 and 7 systems on time and on budget.

Carnegie Robotics LLC was formed in May 2010 to address the issue of product transition from research and development to production. The mission of CRL is to build exceptionally reliable robotics components, sub-assemblies and complete systems in the target markets of agriculture, mining, oil & gas production and defense. CRL heavily leverages the intellectual property and application knowledge of NREC personnel by having in place a broad licensing agreement with Carnegie Mellon. The company is co-located within the NREC to efficiently facilitate technology transfer through direct access to NREC inventors, licensing of intellectual property, and engineering project deliverables to the standards required for a production environment.