Our Story

How Carnegie Robotics became industry leaders developing and producing automated, high-quality stereo cameras & sensors

CMUS National Robotics

Feb 1994

CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center Founded
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) forms National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC). Originally funded with a NASA grant, NREC’s objective was to advance field robotics for industrial, military, and agriculture. CMU is recognized as the top robotics research institute on the planet.
John bares appointed as director of NREC

Jun 1997

John Bares Appointed As Director Of NREC
John Bares appointed Director of NREC. The organization quickly evolves into a global powerhouse in field robotics.
NREC wins The DARPA Urban Challenge

May 2007

CMU Wins The DARPA Urban Challenge
Joint teams from CMU, NREC, and General Motors win the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge – in many ways, the beginning of the autonomous vehicle industry!
Carnegie Robotics logo small

Jan 2010

Carnegie Robotics LLC Is Born
Carnegie Robotics (CRL) is founded with the goal of elevating autonomy development and
commercialization of rugged products for military and commercial OEM clients.

Jun 2011

National Robotics Initiative
US President Barack Obama meets with CRL Founder John Bares, and announces the new National Robotics Initiative.

Feb 2014

Carnegie Robotics’ New HQ
CRL secures its new HQ!  Situated on a five (5) acre site, CRL fully retrofits a 100+ year old former steel mill into a modern engineering space.

Sep 2014

STANDOFF ROBOTIC EXPLOSIVE HAZARD DETECTION (SREHD)
Carnegie Robotics chosen by the U.S. Army to develop mine-hunting sensor payloads for ground robots.

Feb 2015

Uber ATG Is Born
CRL and Uber launch self-driving car development in Pittsburgh!  John Bares becomes the Founding Director of Uber ATG (Advanced Technology Group), and quickly scales the company to 400+ people and 1M+ miles of on-road autonomy! Uber ATG acquired by Aurora Innovation in 2020.

Jan 2015

ISO 9001
Carnegie Robotics LLC is awarded the ISO 9001 certification.
DURO Global Navigation Satellite System

May 2017

Duro Global Navigation System
CRL partners with Swift Navigation to develop and launch the Duro Inertial RTK system.

Aug 2020

Thoro.Ai Is Launched
Thoro.ai was spun-out of Carnegie Robotics, establishing a new key global player for indoor warehouse and industrial autonomy.

Dec 2020

DARPA RACER Program
CRL selected as the Government-furnished provider of robotic platforms, sensors, infrastructure, and compute.
calibration room
Since 2010, Carnegie Robotics (CRL) has been a leading provider of advanced robotics solutions and autonomy software for several different platforms in industries such as defense, maritime, agriculture, mining, and infrastructure. Based in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, and situated on a five-acre campus, the company has completely retrofitted a 100+ year old former steel mill into a modern engineering and manufacturing space.

Certified to ISO 9001-2015, Carnegie Robotics prides itself on being a fully integrated operation, whereby all design, engineering, manufacturing and quality processes are completed in-house – enabling tighter controls over chain of custody, and an intense focus on high-quality output.