[DC LoCo] Open Source Robots: Willow Garage

[Kevin Cole]

Just a bit of random news...

Taken from http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-us
<http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-us>
Willow Garage develops hardware </pages/robots> and open source
software</pages/software> for
personal robotics applications.
Vision

We see personal robots as the next paradigm-shifting personal productivity
tool.  By investing in open source and open platform adoption models, we aim
to lay the groundwork for the use of personal robotics applications in
everyday life.
Who We Are

Willow Garage is a team of experts in robot design, control, perception, and
machine learning, with both a strong theoretical background and a
demonstrated drive to produce practical systems.

Approximately one third of our team is made up of robotics
researchers</pages/research/people> whose
specialties include: grasping/manipulation, human-robot interaction, motion
planning, perception, and task planning. Researchers provide an
institutional expertise to ensure that Willow Garage stays at the
technological forefront of the many depth expertise areas represented in
robotic technologies.
**
Focus on Impact

We invest time and resources in the areas that we believe will most
effectively promote the efficiency of the personal robotics research and
development community. We are constantly looking for opportunities to help
you become more efficient - if you have suggestions, please let us know.
**
Open Source

We are committed to open source robotics software and the furtherance of the
open source personal robotics community. We helped found, and continue to
contribute heavily to, the robot operating system, ROS <http://ros.org>.
The ROS software we contribute is BSD-licensed, making it completely free
for anyone to use and change, and free for other companies to commercialize
on. We see this open-source approach enabling robotics innovation, and
helping to ensure that the adoption of robotic technologies is a transparent
process with positive societal impact.
External Collaboration

Willow Garage is only one part of the open-source robotics community. We try
to focus our efforts in ways that will make the entire community more
productive. Willow Garage actively engages research labs and companies as
partners, collaborators, customers and advisors in the development of both
our hardware platform and open source software. Willow Garage also supports
researchers who would not otherwise have the bandwidth or funding to open
source their work.

Willow Garage is giving out eleven PR2 Beta robots at no
cost</blog/2010/05/04/pr2-beta-program-recipients> to
leading research institutions in robotics:

   - Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
   - Bosch
   - Georgia Institute of Technology
   - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
   - MIT CSAIL
   - Stanford University
   - Technische Universität München
   - University of California, Berkeley
   - University of Pennsylvania, GRASP Lab
   - University of Southern California
   - University of Tokyo, JSK Robotics Laboratory

Spin-outs

Willow Garage is organized to encourage spin-out companies. We intend for
spin-outs to participate in the industry, enabled by projects developed at
Willow Garage. These spin-out projects should have broad applications that
deliver significant contributions to the robotics community and beyond.
-- 
Ubuntu Linux DC LoCo
Washington, DC
http://dc.ubuntu-us.org/
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