NEW BEDFORD — Within the next two years, an employee will be studying the latest battery technology and working alongside her will be a robot designed in New Bedford for Detroit’s new E-Mobility Innovation Campus.

For New Bedford Research & Robotics founder and Executive Director Mark Parsons, there was no hesitation to accept the invitation from his mentor and advisor to design several robotics operation zones in 60,000 square feet of space on this new campus. New Lab will operate the accelerator program.

Startups that are part of the transition to an electric-based industry will be able to employ robots for manufacturing their prototypes and bringing their product to market in these zones, he said. For the Detroit project, the nonprofit organization takes on four main components.

One is developing co-robotics platforms, or certain kinds of robots that are designed to work hand-in-hand with human beings.

Another is designing material removal robotics, or milling, in a cell or dedicated room with a giant robot that will be able to shape solid objects and basically sculpt them, and the third is developing two robots that will be 3D printing using different materials including ceramics and thermal plastics.

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The fourth is development of an artificial intelligence (AI) robot with a 7-axis cell that’s on a track and goes back and forth interacting with an LED wall behind it so that human movement can be captured. The robot will respond to that human movement, and the LED wall can also respond to that movement.

“Companies will be able to dial in that interrelated condition to test and simulate and develop products,” he said.

The project has proceeded past the schematic design phase to procurement to be followed by the hiring of roboticists and the programming of the robots for the grand opening. He’s hopeful one of his employees will work on the project in Detroit.

Parsons said it’s anticipated that procurement will wrap up by the end of this year, the hiring process along with the installation and calibration of the robots with supply chain issues as they are will be the focus during early 2023, and programming the robots will follow.

“What I hope we do is extend what is a revenue-generating engagement into something that is longer term where we continue to build the network from New Bedford to Detroit and other academic and urban communities from there,” he said.

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He said it’s about building connections and an innovation economy, which translates into opportunities for the people of New Bedford to get educated about robotics and design technologies and prepare them to be the future workforce that these businesses will require to grow on the SouthCoast.

“The more we can network regionally, nationally and internationally, the more we can draw companies to New Bedford,” he said.

He has been talking with companies from Greece and Croatia about having their first robotics business foothold in New Bedford. He said working in Detroit at the same time he’s offering STEAM programs at home works both ends of the spectrum and has the societal benefit he believes in.

One full-time employee in New Bedford and a couple of part-time employees are working on the Detroit project, and he often conferences with the Detroit team online. Parsons expects to return there soon to check on the progress and anticipates returning more often during the procurement phase.

Parsons committed to New Bedford as the home base for his research laboratory in 2021 after choosing to leave the predecessor to New Bedford Research & Robotics in Brooklyn, New York. It’s special to him personally because he’s back home, and the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth graduate feels it’s the right place professionally.

Some critics cautioned him against it.

“People said ‘don’t do this in New Bedford, it will be hard,’ and ‘you’re going to have a headwind in New Bedford and in Brooklyn or Detroit you’re going to have a tailwind,’ so on a personal side it makes me feel vindicated in the belief that New Bedford and the SouthCoast are an appropriate place to be doing this kind of work,” he said.

Underscoring that belief are the emails he gets from community members, unsolicited, he said. He could choose both New Bedford and Detroit after all.

Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: New Bedford Research & Robotics is Detroit-bound