09 58 w 37.45224167 n 122.16618889 w 37.45224167 ; 122.16618889 willow garage industry robotics founded 2006 headquarters menlo park california key people scott hassan founder steve cousins ceo eric berger co director personal robotics program keenan wyrobek co director personal robotics program brian gerkey director open source development 1 website www.willowgarage.com willow garage was a robotics research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications . 2 the company was probably best known for its open source software suite ros robot operating system which has been rapidly and widely becoming a common standard tool among robotics researchers and industry since its initial release in 2007 . it was started in late 2006 by scott hassan who had worked with larry page and sergey brin to develop the technology that was the predecessor to the google search engine . 3 steve cousins was the president and ceo . willow garage was located in menlo park california . 4 willow garage shut down in early 2014 . most employees were retained by suitable technologies inc while the support and services responsibilities were transferred to clearpath robotics . 5 6 contents 1 history 2 open source software 3 robots 4 references 5 external links history edit willow garage s first projects were an suv entrant into the darpa grand challenge and an autonomous solar powered boat for deploying scientific payloads in open oceans . 7 in the fall of 2006 eric berger and keenan wyrobek were recruited from stanford to start the willow garage personal robotics program . 8 they founded the stanford personal robotics program 9 to build prototypes for the platform technologies that would enable the personal robotics industry . at willow garage they continued to execute on that mission with ros 10 an open source robot operating system and the pr2 11 robotics development platform . the teams from the darpa car program and the autonomous boat program were eventually rolled into the personal robotics program which by the end of 2008 became the focus of willow garage . in the summer of 2009 willow garage achieved the second of their milestones enabling pr2 to autonomously open doors locate power outlets and plug itself in 12 13 14 a video of this is available on youtube 15 . in january 2010 willow garage achieved the third major milestone in the personal robotics program releasing ros at 1.0 16 and having pr2 ready for beta production . 17 at the end of 2010 with pr2 for sale 18 and the ros community on its way to 100 repositories worldwide 19 keenan wyrobek and eric berger left willow garage to pursue their next venture . willow garage currently has eight spin offs hidof inc. 20 a software consulting company . industrial perception inc. acquired by google in august 2013 ipi had as its broader mission eyes and brains for industrial robots focused on new robotic applications in logistics such as autonomous truck unloading . opencv an open source computer vision and machine learning software library built to provide a common infrastructure for computer vision applications and to accelerate the use of machine perception in the commercial products . open perception foundation their mission is to advance the development and adoption of open source software for 2d 3d processing of sensory data for the benefit of the industrial and research communities . open source robotics foundation osrf is an independent non profit formed to support the development distribution and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research education and product development . redwood robotics a joint venture between meka robotics willow garage and sri . suitable technologies creating texai a remote presence robotic product . unbounded robotics low cost mobile manipulation platform . in 2012 the company entered into a joint venture with meka robotics and sri international to found redwood robotics a company specializing in robotic arms . 21 22 23 24 in august 2013 suitable technologies inc. retained a majority of employees from willow garage to increase and enhance the development of suitable technologies beam remote presence system . willow garage will continue to support customers of its pr2 personal robotics platform and sell its remaining stock of pr2 systems . 25 in addition to spinoffs former employees have created several other companies savioke led by steve cousins former ceo of willow garage producing a service robot for the hotel industry . 26 fetch robotics led by melonee wise former mechanical engineer at willow garage producing an autonomous cart for factories . 27 fyusion led by radu rusu former researcher at willow garage producing a 2.5 d image capture viewer . 28 open source software edit willow garage was maintaining ros robot operating system 29 30 the opencv computer vision library 31 and pcl point cloud library . 32 these projects all use the bsd license an open source software license . robots edit the pr2 robot at maker faire 2011 willow garage s first major robot is called pr2 . it is of a size similar to a human . pr2 is designed as a common hardware and software platform for robot researchers . pr2 is a spinoff of pr1 a robotics platform being developed at stanford university . pr stands for personal robot . 33 34 the pr2 has two 7 dof arms with a payload of 1.8 kilograms 4.0 lb . sensors include a 5 megapixel camera a tilting laser range finder and an inertial measurement unit . the texture projector projects a pattern on the environment to create 3d information for capture by the cameras . willow garage calls this textured light but this approach is better known as structured light . 35 the head mounted laser scanner measures distance by time of flight . the two computers located in the base of the robot are 8 core servers each of which has 24 gigabytes of ram for a total of 48 gb . the battery system consists of 16 laptop batteries . 36 on may 26 2010 willow garage 37 held a graduation party in which the 11 pr2s were introduced . some pr2s danced with humans while being led by their grippers . at least one party goer attended by telepresence using the willow garage texai remote presence device . 38 39 jonathan knowles of autodesk attended an xprize cocktail party using a texai to hobnob with robin williams . 40 project texai resulted in the willow garage spin off suitable technologies . project texai become the prototype for the product announced by suitable in september 2012 the beam . citation needed in june 2010 willow garage made two year loans of a pr2 to 11 research teams . each pr2 was to include two arms a rich sensor suite a mobile base 16 cpu cores and the company s free open source robot operating system ros framework which controls the pr2 and comes with software libraries for perception navigation and manipulation . the teams were to have a chance not only to program a general purpose robot but also to contribute their work on willow garage s open source robotics platform to a wide community of researchers . 41 in august 2010 willow garage announced that the pr2 robot was available for purchase . citation needed the pr2 is being programmed to do increasingly technical and dexterous applications including opening doors and folding towels . 42 references edit willow garage leadership team . about willow garage . willow garage founder scott hassan aims to build a startup village . contact willow garage . http www.bloomberg.com bw articles 2014 02 20 robotics research lab willow garage shuts down https www.willowgarage.com blog mone gregory . a robotics startup without a timetable . popular science . retrieved 2007 10 24 . olsen stefanie . start up warms up personal robots . zdnet . retrieved 2010 10 23 . stanford personal robotics program ros pr2 willow garage pr2 robot navigates through office plugs itself into electrical outlet . new robot opens doors plugs self in . milestone 2 explained . video of milestone 2 start to finish . ros at 1.0 ackerman evan . pr2 wants you plus ros 1.0 . botjunkie . retrieved 2010 01 26 . pr2 for sale 100 repositories worldwide hidof inc. ackerman evan may 7 2012 . redwood robotics brings big names to next gen robot arms . ieee spectrum . retrieved june 6 2012 . deyle travis may 3 2012 . redwood robotics new silicon valley startup by meka robotics willow garage and sri . hizook.com . retrieved june 6 2012 . roush wade may 4 2012 . redwood robotics aims to build next generation of robot arms . xconomy.com . retrieved june 6 2012 . green tom may 6 2012 . redwood could well be the apple inc. of robotics . robotics business review . retrieved june 6 2012 . subscription required suitable technologies retains willow garage talent to further develop beam remote presence technology . august 21 2013 . retrieved october 28 2013 . savioke https www.crunchbase.com organization savioke 2 entity fetch robotics https www.crunchbase.com organization fetch robotics entity fyusion https www.crunchbase.com organization fyusion entity ros 0.9 released . ros.org . opencv wiki . pcl ros wiki . pointclouds.org . stanford personal robotics program . kenneth salisbury s home page at stanford . youtube.com willowgarage.com pr2 robots officially graduate to beta sites . youtube pr2 robots dance & play at their graduation party . youtube partying remotely in a texai robot . youtube robin williams interacts with a willow garage texai . call for proposals pr2 beta program . http www.willowgarage.com pages pr2 applications external links edit official website ashlee vance willow garage s last days bloomberg business february 20 2014 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title willow garage & oldid 738468910 categories companies established in 2006robotics companiescompanies based in menlo park californiatechnology companies based in the san francisco bay area2006 establishments in californiahidden 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