The National Robotics Engineering Center opened in 1996 as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. A $5M seed grant from NASA helped kickstart robotics projects with commercial clients in agriculture, mining, construction, and other markets. Five years after inauguration, NREC diversified into defense projects, especially with DARPA, while continuing development of commercial projects. Having more than doubled in size, NREC worked on both on-road and off-road autonomy under DARPA funding. As NREC continued to grow, so did the maturity of its technology and the complexity of robotics systems developed. Today, NREC technology is deployed worldwide with custom robotics solutions on every continent.