After years of watching its best and brightest roboticists leave town for better access to funding and fast-track recognition; and more recently, feeling so utterly helpless this past May as big-bucks Uber plundered 40 of its best researchers and scientists, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, and probably much of western Pennsylvania, needed something special to roll into town.

Relief has arrived in the form of an early-stage accelerator program for young startups and entrepreneurs which is designed to keep CMU spinoffs local, to provide access to capital and expertise in bringing machines from lab to market with greater speed and ease.

The thinking goes that if the former two steps are accomplished then a third step–that of keeping Pittsburgh and the new Robotics Hub high on the global map for advanced robotics–will be a natural consequence.

The new Robotics Hub accelerator program plus a $20 million venture fund has been created by CMU’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) and GE Ventures, the investment arm of Conn.-based General Electric.

The Robotics Hub will be a for-profit organization with all program funding provided by the newly formed Coal Hill Ventures. Along with the funding will come access to equipment at CMU and the NREC plus a fast-track path to commercialization.

Alex Tepper, GE Ventures managing director, said “The strategy that’s most important to GE is to really get behind startups and help them scale. A lot of companies can come with the money, but what we bring is the ability to scale and the opportunity to commercialize quite quickly?”

GE’s interest, continued Tepper, is to first venture with those firms with a technology focus on software and hardware for “field services such as inspections, maintenance and repairs or collaborative, in-factory and warehouse solutions for manufacturing companies.”

In a CMU press release, the director of the school’s Robotics Institute, Martial Hebert, said about the Pittsburgh areas 30 CMU spinoff companies that the goal is to keep them local and well supplied with funds and opportunity.

“A number of robotics companies have spun out of CMU,” said Hebert, “and many of the innovations created here have been licensed by industry. We have an opportunity to substantially increase the number of startups with roots in Pittsburgh, and so we welcome the assistance that The Robotics Hub promises to provide.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported “So far, the team has used an undisclosed investment from GE to kick-start Coal Hill Ventures, a venture capital fund that is expected to grow to $20 million by the end of the year.”

On the hunt for a bunch of good startups

“If all goes well, by early next year Coal Hill will begin writing checks for anywhere between $200,000 and $2 million for 20 to 30 burgeoning robotics companies that will be part of The Robotics Hub. Ten to 15 of the companies chosen are expected to receive rounds closer to the low end while the others will see millions of dollars in funding.”

Christopher Moehle, managing director of Coal Hill Ventures (no website yet), indicated that the fragile growth stage for these young companies comes historically when moving from seed stage to early stage and that’s where the fund will put particular emphasis.

“A lot of those companies ended up giving up on the local circuit and moved outside of not only the western Pennsylvania region, but outside of the state,” Moehle said.

Tepper added that robotics investments are not new for GE, having made a drone investment with San Francisco’s Airware and another with Boston’s co-robot developer, Rethink Robotics.

The Robotics Hub and Coal Hill Ventures are open to all regardless from where the innovation hails, added Moehle.

The central emphasis overall is to reaffirm that western Pennsylvania’s long-standing reputation as a premier developer of innovative and worthy robotics that spinoff into companies of consequence stays that way–or, better still, increases its numbers and their global importance.

Especially these days, as robotics powers itself into prominence in nearly every aspect of business, commerce and society.