As robots and autonomous systems are poised to become part of our everyday lives, the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. opened a one-of-a-kind facility on North Campus.

U-M’s Ford Motor Company Robotics Building, a four-story, $75 million, 134,000-square-foot complex, will serve as the new hub of the U-M Robotics Institute. Its first three floors hold custom research labs for robots that fly, walk, roll and augment the human body — as well as classrooms, offices and makerspaces.

Through a unique agreement, the fourth floor houses 100 Ford researchers and engineers. It is Ford’s first robotics and mobility research lab on a university campus.

The new facility brings all parts of U-M’s robotics enterprise together for real-world results. With the new infrastructure, researchers working on two-legged disaster-response robots can test them on a 30 mph treadmill studded with obstacles, or on a stair-stepped “robot playground” designed with the help of artificial intelligence.

Biomedical engineers will have access to “earthquake platforms” with force-feedback plates to guide their development of lighter-weight, more stable prosthetic legs. And Ford engineers will explore how their upright Digit robots can work in human spaces, while taking autonomous vehicles from robotic computer simulations to on-road testing at U-M’s world-class proving ground just down the road.