The nonprofit focuses on research and collaboration.
Founder Mark Parsons wants to inspire New Bedford’s future.
In the future, drivers turning onto Pleasant Street from Route 18 will be able to get an up-close look at the former Glaser Glass building and see robots at work inside the renovated building behind new bay doors. New Bedford Research & Robotics will begin the first phase of this major renovation project at its new location at 1265 Purchase St. later this year.
Founder and Executive Director Mark Parsons opened the doors to the community Thursday with city and state officials to celebrate the new location and talk about the company’s cutting-edge work in robotics manufacturing.
“We’ve been able to bring the local community on board and really have conversations about ideas of scaling, education and workforce development on both ends of that,” he said. “At the same time, on the other end, we’re working with aerospace companies, Ford in Detroit and companies in Australia on additive manufacturing for the architecture and engineering community.”
Parsons returned to his hometown of New Bedford in 2022 to found a non-profit research and technology-based organization focused on marine technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, clean energy, gaming and data science.
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Robot cuts ribbon at ceremony
Summer intern Yashiba Patil, a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Hamilton College computer science student Jack Kercher guided the NBRR robot through a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning and explained its purpose.
Patil said the collaborative robot, meant to work alongside humans, is equipped with safety features and has proximity sensors to detect human presence so that people can touch and manipulate it and ultimately avoid collisions. He said the robot is fitted with a camera and uses machine learning/AI to perform certain tasks.
“One use is to remove parasites from fish,” she said. “You take a large dataset of images into the camera, some of which contain parasites and some of which don’t. When the camera is presented with new images it has never seen before, it can automatically detect fish that have parasites and remove them or pick them up and place them where a person can manually remove the parasites.”
Karcher said the fish-sorting application uses similar technology to that found in ChatGPT, using machine learning to detect patterns and specific parts of fish for other applications.
“This is a small-scale test, and then we can scale it up to real-world applications,” he said. “This is an incremental study, and that’s what we’re doing here: building it from the ground up.”
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Interns work with robots
NBRR interns Avery Brasdale of Miami University, Noah Rivett of Union College, and Shivanand Nadar of the University of Kansas were given the task of creating a large object that would showcase the capabilities of NBRR’s large robots. They ultimately settled on an octagonal design.
She said their goal is to highlight the design’s performance, so people can walk around it as part of an art show and eventually as a centerpiece of the new renovation. They’ve been working on the project since June, making tweaks along the way.
“The robot traces this path using the coding language Grasshopper, and it takes about 4.8 hours to make the entire sheet,” she says. “Once it’s formed, it combines it with other sheets to create the units that make the structure.”
Celebrating Technology and Innovation in New Bedford
New Bedford Public Schools Superintendent Andrew O’Leary praised NBRR’s efforts to involve New Bedford students in the project, such as Paddy Dong, who will attend Stony Brook University and work with Rhino 3D advanced modeling software.
“They work directly with our students and they’re not asking for applause,” he said.
Mayor John Mitchell said there’s a notion that research and innovation only happens in big cities, but Parsons demonstrates that it can happen in New Bedford.
The group received $2.25 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding.
MassDevelopment, a state development finance institution that works with businesses, nonprofits, banks and communities, awarded Parsons a $900,000 grant through its Underutilized Real Estate Program.
The program aims to target underutilized, abandoned and vacant properties for redevelopment and fund renovations, including upgrades to roofs, windows, floors, plumbing and electrical systems, to attract investment, according to Dan O’Connell, MassDevelopment’s acting president and CEO.
“I’m excited to see this redeveloped building, see firsthand the innovative activity currently underway and learn more about future plans for advanced economic activity in New Bedford through the technology and resources offered here,” he said.
City Council President Naomi Carney and Ward 4 City Councilman Derek Baptiste were both excited about the opportunity opening up to younger generations to experience the world of robotics.
Baptiste said he welcomes the addition of a vibrant business to the neighborhood and looks forward to working with young people interested in robotics as a MassHire employee and helping them advance their careers.
“As the councilman for the Fourth Ward, I’m excited to see this place develop off Route 18,” he said. “This is what we need going forward.”
Standard-Times staff writer Katherine Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@gannett.com.
