A drone with camera hovers on the campus of St. Cloud State University.
St. Cloud State University will work alongside Northland Technical & Community College and four other partner agencies on a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in the amount of $7 million. The grant funds the National Center for Autonomous Technologies (NCAT) and will be primarily housed with the aerospace program at Northland.
The NCAT will focus on air, land, and sea autonomous technologies: unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), connected automated vehicles (CAV), and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV).
A first of its kind in regards to NSF funding, UAS, CAV and UUV are being combined under one grant. Adding a geospatial component to all three of them will advance the technical workforce.
The NCAT has four core areas of engagement; to educate the educators, to promote student involvement, engage the workforce and community, and to act as an education hub for autonomous technology across the country. Funding from the National Science Foundation will support research and programming for five years.
Programming at St. Cloud State will include expanding support for DroneTECH Educator Workshops. The hands-on workshop invites secondary and post-secondary instructors who teach in STEM-related disciplines to learn about unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and the geospatial technologies, taking that information back to the classrooms.
The College of Science and Engineering and Visualization Lab will provide leadership on the development of a national web presence in autonomous technologies and the School of Public Affairs Research Institute (SOPARI) will provide forecasting analysis including labor supply and demand conditions for autonomous technology industries.
Mark Gill, coordinator of the ISELF Visualization Lab, will serve as a co-principal investigator for the NCAT along with Geography & Planning professor Ben Richason.
St. Cloud State has been at the forefront of geospatial technologies including geographic information systems (GIS) for over 25 years.
“Accurate geospatial locations and GIS Routing and Networking technologies form a core component to Autonomous Technologies,” explains Professor Richason. Additionally, St. Cloud State’s partnership with NCAT will further strengthen its abilities to prepare students and graduates to meet rapidly changing industry needs as they enter the workforce.
A formal signing and celebration of the NCAT will take place this fall at Northland Community & Technical College in Thief River Falls.
