Willow Garage sent 11 PR2 robots to Institutions for research on Personal Robotics

Remember the California based start up, Willow Garage, which has been working on open-source robotics. We even saw some of their ongoing work on PR2(personal robot) robots. A few days back they conducted a graduation party to kick off a two years opensource project. As part of this project, they will provide 11 PR2 robots to different research institutions around the world who will work on different ways to involve these robots into daily human life.

These machines run on the free and opensource Robot operating system, ROS. This operating system is an initiative of Willow garage to come up with a software development platform for Robots. This whole project has a collective worth of over $4 million.  Now, some common questions would be "really? $4 million on robots?", "how are they ever going to get it back?".

Well, this is all answerable from the opensource development model they have chosen. They are not really providing products to institutions in the form of PR2 robots but software development platforms. So, this way, in this whole two year tenure, researchers won't have to bust out their brains in developing a robot but to write software for it. And since this is an opensource deal, all these institutions will share code with each other and rest of the world, giving rise to a new era of opensource robotics.

Each institution involved will work on different ways to integrate robots in daily life. Georgia tech will work with PR2 to understand how they can help senior citizens with their daily life. University of California, Berkley, will work on teaching the robot to perform factory manufacturing and assembly tasks. Bosch, a german based company, wants to give PR2 robot a virtual skin which will help him feel the physical environment.

Willow Garage definitely have some far sighted plans in mind. And with the confidence they have shown in taking such risky steps, I am pretty sure the next couple of years will witness some great development in Personal Robotics, thanks to their efforts.

Anyway, back to the graduation party, the PR2 robots presented some good show there. Check out the video to see it for yourself.