Meta’s vision models are running on the edge inside a wheelchair-mounted assistive robot

Meta published on 27 July 2026 how the University of Pittsburgh’s RAMMP platform — robotic assistive mobility and manipulation, backed by up to $41.5 million of ARPA-H funding — runs DINOv3 and SAM 3.1 on edge devices so a robot arm can find automatic door buttons, cups and curbs while the user works through voice and touch. The consortium includes Kinova Robotics, LUCI Mobility, ATDev, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Northeastern and Purdue, and targets an estimated 5.5 million wheelchair users in the United States against more than 100,000 wheelchair-related injuries treated in US emergency departments a year. Meta says the perception work is already being integrated by the RAMMP team into their first prototype — research-stage with real-world testing, not a shipped product.

What it means A concrete answer to "what are open vision models actually for" — general-purpose perception, on-device, inside somebody’s daily mobility.