Conversations are ongoing to try to put the expansion of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition back on track.

The institute’s president, Ken Ford, last week said he tabled plans for the $8 million expansion of the facility “until we are confident the flooding problem is addressed,” he told the Pensacola News Journal.

The epic rains of April 29-30 damaged vehicles in the Institute’s parking lot on Alcaniz Street and water came into three of the institute’s five buildings. Ford and other downtown business owners have said the flooding from 26 inches of rain in 24-hours laid bare the weaknesses of the city’s stormwater system.

The IHMC’s expansion is an important boost to Pensacola’s economy, bringing high-wage jobs built on intellectual capital to the city’s historic district.

The project is funded by a loan that Escambia County took out from SunTrust Bank for $12 million.

County attorney Alison Rogers said the county holds the money for the project. Of the $12 million, IHMC has used approximately $4 million to pay off pre-existing debt and they have taken one or possibly two draws related to design of the expansion.

The balance remaining is $8,072,000, Rogers said.

Architectural firm Quina Grundhoefer is designing the three-story expansion on Romana Street.

“How the county will proceed depends on what IHMC decides to do,” Rogers said this morning. “For now, we will continue as anticipated under the agreements in place.”

Ford said via email this weekend: “We are still actively discussing options with our architects, engineers, and the political leadership. I will be happy to chat when we have moved further along on those conversations.”

When the expansion was announced in December, officials said, “the new building will be elevated to avoid the flooding problems that affected IHMC during Hurricane Ivan in 2004.”

The first floor of the new building would consist of research labs, including an expanded Robotics Lab and a multi-sensory interfaces lab focused on sensory displays and human-machine interfaces. The second floor would feature a glass-walled observation area for public tour groups and others to observe the Robotics Lab safely and without interfering with the work. The third floor will hold additional offices, conference rooms and research space.

The expansion will consolidate IHMC staff from four rental properties scattered throughout the city and allow room for expansion.

The Institute’s popular evening lecture series is routinely drawing 280 people and sometimes people have had to be turned away from the events, said Julie Sheppard, general counsel for the institute, at the time of the announcement.

In addition to allowing room for more public space, the expansion would create much needed research space.

The Institute’s cutting edge research in robotics is drawing ever-more attention.

Atlas, the IHMC’s entry in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Robotics challenge, finished second among 16 development teams in trials in Homestead in December.

Atlas is a humanoid robot that could be used in disaster response and recovery situation that are difficult for human, such as the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan. The final phase of that competition is scheduled for spring 2015.

Researchers at IHMC also are working on “Big Hex,” the HexRunner robot that can run at speeds of 32.2 mph.

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