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The Amazon Research Awards Robotics Call for Proposals for Spring 2026 funds academic research advancing robotics technology for capable, safe and intelligent robots operating alongside people in complex real-world environments.
Each award provides up to 50,000 US dollars on average in unrestricted funds plus up to 50,000 dollars on average in AWS promotional credits, together with AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists. The submission window ran 25 March to 13 May 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific, with decision letters issued in August 2026. Four research areas are prioritised.
AI for Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction covers multi-modal perception of complex 3D scenes, multi-modal task grounding from human instructions spanning language, vision, gestures and references to priors, the effect of robot personality on user trust, and legibility of autonomous decision-making.
Autonomous Navigation covers geometry-aware navigation, multi-modal perception integration, reinforcement learning for object interaction and scalable data generation. Manipulation covers cluttered and unstructured environments, physical reasoning, world models and data synthesis. Safety-Critical Control covers safe manipulation, compliant body control, verification of reinforcement learning policies and robust human detection.
Proposals follow a template and are limited to three pages excluding appendices, which makes this one of the lowest-effort competitive applications available to a robotics PI. Awardees span more than 49 universities in 11 countries. This robotics call is a separate competition from the Amazon Research Awards Agentic AI call that runs on the same seasonal cycle, and a PI may target whichever is the better fit.
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Or search similar grants →According to the current listing, eligibility includes: Eligible applicants are Principal Investigators at academic institutions, with awardees to date spanning more than 49 universities across 11 countries, so the programme is open internationally rather than restricted to US institutions. Proposals must comply with the Amazon Research Awards programme rules published on the programme's eligibility page, including institutional affiliation requirements and compliance with export control regulations where applicable. Submissions use the provided proposal template and are limited to three pages excluding appendices, submitted through Amazon's standard grants portal. Awards comprise up to 50,000 US dollars on average in unrestricted funds and up to 50,000 dollars on average in AWS promotional credits, with the final amount determined by the selection panel, plus access to AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists. Proposals should address at least one of the four priority areas: AI for Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction, Autonomous Navigation, Manipulation in cluttered and unstructured environments, or Safety-Critical Control. Recipients must acknowledge ARA support in resulting publications and must inform the programme of research outputs including papers, presentations, code releases and speaking engagements, so PIs should confirm their institution accepts these reporting terms. The Spring 2026 window ran 25 March to 13 May 2026 with decisions in August 2026; Amazon runs these calls on a recurring seasonal basis, so applicants who missed the window should watch amazon.science/research-awards for the next robotics cycle. Confirm the full requirements in the official notice before applying.
The current listing shows each award provides up to 50,000 US dollars on average in unrestricted cash funds plus up to 50,000 dollars on average in AWS promotional credits, so amount_min is 50,000 for the cash component alone and amount_max is 100,000 for the combined cash-plus-credits package. The word average matters: Amazon states the final award amount is determined by the selection panel, so these are typical rather than guaranteed figures and a PI should not budget as though 100,000 dollars is assured. The cash is unrestricted, which makes it materially more useful per dollar than restricted federal funding for things like student support and travel, but 50,000 dollars is a supplement to an existing research programme rather than a means of starting one. The credits component is only valuable to groups that will actually train on AWS; a lab committed to on-premise clusters should treat the effective award as the cash alone. Awardees also receive AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists. Verify award ceilings, matching requirements, and allowable costs in the official notice.
The published deadline was May 14, 2026, which has passed. Check the official notice for any future application windows before investing time in a proposal.
Amazon Research Awards Robotics Call for Proposals Spring 2026 for AI-Enabled Perception, Navigation, Manipulation and Safe Robot Control is funded by Amazon Research Awards (ARA), Amazon Science. Verify program details on the funder's official page before applying.
Start from the official opportunity page linked in this listing — it carries the sponsor's submission instructions.
The Merck Stimulating Innovative Research Grant Program 2026 includes a dedicated grant topic for artificial intelligence in cell culture media and process development, offering up to EUR 150,000 per year for up to 3 years. The program accelerates innovation through collaborative research, early engagement with industry experts, and translation of novel ideas into practical solutions. In 2026, priority areas also include in-vitro models for neuroinflammatory diseases (EUR 250,000/year for 2 years) and innovative approaches to contaminated materials remediation (EUR 150,000/year for 2 years). The two-stage application process begins with non-confidential submissions, followed by deep-dive workshops where finalists collaborate with Merck scientists and managers to jointly optimize proposals. The AI-specific grant focuses on applying machine learning and AI to optimize cell culture media formulation, bioprocess parameter optimization, and manufacturing quality control.
The Sony Research Award Program is Sony's principal channel for funding external academic research, and the Focused Research Award is its collaborative track: up to 150,000 dollars for focused joint research between a university or research institute and Sony. The 2026 research areas are unusually broad for a corporate program and cover most of the modern AI stack alongside Sony's hardware interests - AI and large language models, computer vision, machine learning, robotics, human-computer interaction, affective computing, speech and language technologies, audio technologies, RF sensing, wireless communications, cybersecurity, sports technology, digital humans, generative AI, content creation and neural rendering, plus device-level areas including MicroLED and optical metasurfaces. For AI and robotics groups this makes it one of the wider corporate calls available, though the breadth is deceptive: Sony funds work that connects to its own research agenda, and proposals are strongest when there is an identifiable Sony research counterpart for the collaboration. Eligibility is tightly drawn around the principal investigator rather than the institution. The PI must be a full-time faculty member or researcher at a recognized institution - Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor or equivalent researcher - and must be able to supervise PhD students. Co-PIs are permitted but must be from the same institution and meet the same requirements, which rules out the cross-institutional consortia common in public funding. The 2026 deadline is 15 September 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific, with a separate India-specific time given as 16 September 2026. Submission guidelines are on the Sony Research Award Program site.
The Sony Research Award Program is Sony's principal academic collaboration instrument, and the Focused Research Award track funds joint work between university faculty and Sony Research on a published list of specific problems rather than open-ended investigator-defined topics. The 2026 cycle carries ten focus areas, most of which sit squarely in modern AI: internal mechanisms of multimodal generative models for content creation, knowledge representation and reasoning for graph-based modelling, psychology-informed user modelling for content streaming, post-training of speech language models, AI-powered visual technology, digital human content creation for sports, provenance proofs for AI-generated derivative content, and long-term memory for sequential decision-making in gaming. Awards are up to 150,000 dollars per year for a one-year research period with possible renewal, paid as a single all-inclusive sum. Because the tracks are tightly specified, the decisive factor in a competitive proposal is demonstrable alignment with the named focus area and with the Sony research group that owns it - a strong proposal against an adjacent problem generally does worse than a merely good proposal against the stated one. Eligibility is restricted to full-time professors or researchers qualified to supervise PhD students; adjunct faculty and professors emeritus are excluded. The 2026 application deadline is 15 September 2026.
On August 26, 2026, NSF named the STC class of 2026: TEMPEST at Michigan State, GENIE at Northwestern, and a human-robot co-adaptation center at UT Austin. $90 million total, $6 million a year each. The 2023 class was four centers and $120 million. The award size is intact; the shelf space shrank 25 percent — and that is the number that should reshape how you plan a center proposal.
Read articleNIH published its 'what we heard' summary on the proposed cap on simultaneous Research Project Grants in August 2026. A four-RPG cap would free $1.3 billion for about 1,900 additional investigators; a two-RPG cap would free roughly $3.5 billion for about 5,200. Respondents overwhelmingly proposed alternatives. Here is what the comment record actually says, what NIH signaled about next steps, and how PIs and research offices should position before a policy notice lands.
Read articleThe White House committed more than $5 billion across 15+ federal agencies to the Genesis Mission, and DOE selected 278 first-cohort projects out of roughly 5,000 applications — the largest response to any DOE funding call ever. Phase I grants run $500,000 to $750,000 over 9 months; Phase II awards reach $6 million to $15 million over 3 years, with one $60 million flagship. Here is the full architecture, the eligibility math, and how to position for the next window.
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