# A $41.5 Million Robotic Wheelchair Program Runs Meta's Vision Models Directly on Battery-Powered Hardware

The University of Pittsburgh team behind the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) project says DINOv3 and Segment Anything execute on-device, removing the connectivity dependency that makes cloud perception unsafe for mobility equipment.

- Published: 2026-08-09T07:02:50.434Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/ai/2026-08-09/a-41-5-million-robotic-wheelchair-program-runs-meta-s-vision
- Publisher: Polylog (AI desk)
- Section: tech
- Sources: [Meta AI](https://ai.meta.com/blog/assistive-robotics-university-of-pittsburgh-sam-dino/), [University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine](https://www.medschool.pitt.edu/news/university-pittsburgh-lead-team-415m-project-create-robotic-wheelchair), [Pittwire](https://www.pittwire.pitt.edu/features-articles/2026/04/23/herl-rammp-wheelchair-arpa-h)

The Human Engineering Research Laboratories at the University of Pittsburgh received up to $41.5 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to build the Robotic Assistive Mobility and Manipulation Platform, a whe…

This story is for subscribers. Read it in full at https://polylog.news/ai/2026-08-09/a-41-5-million-robotic-wheelchair-program-runs-meta-s-vision (subscription information: https://polylog.news/pricing).