Willow Garage
Encyclopedia
Willow Garage is a robotics
research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware
and open source
software for personal robotics applications. It was started in late 2006 by Scott Hassan, an early Google
employee who helped develop Google
's technology. Steve Cousins is the president and CEO. Willow Garage is located in Menlo Park
, California
.
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. In the Fall of 2009, Eric Berger and Keenan Wyrobek were recruited from Stanford to start the Willow Garage Personal Robotics Program. They founded the Stanford Personal Robotics Program 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, an open source robot operating system, and the PR2 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 (a video of this is available on YouTube).
In January 2010 Willow Garage achieved the third major milestone in the Personal Robotics Program releasing ROS at 1.0 and having PR2 ready for beta production.
At the end of 2010 with PR2 for sale
and the ROS community on its way to 100 repositories worldwide Keenan Wyrobek and Eric Berger left Willow Garage to pursue their next venture.
(Robot Operating System), the OpenCV
computer vision
library, and PCL
(Point Cloud Library). These projects all use the BSD license, an open source
software license.
. PR stands for "personal robot".
The PR2 has two 7-DOF arms with a payload of 1.8 kg. 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
. 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 with 24 Gigabyte
s of RAM
for a total of 48 GB. The battery system consists of 16 laptop batteries.
On May 26, 2010, Willow Garage 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 robot. Jonathan Knowles of Autodesk
attended an XPrize cocktail party using a Texai to hobnob with Robin Williams
.
In June, 2010 Willow Garage made two-year loans of a PR2; having two arms, a "rich sensor suite," a mobile base, 16 CPU cores, and their free, open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) framework that controls the PR2 and that comes with software libraries for perception, navigation, and manipulation. The 11 research teams will have a chance not only to program a general-purpose robot but also to contribute the work they've done on Willow Garage's open-source robotics platform to a wide community of researchers.
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware
Hardware
Hardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....
and open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software for personal robotics applications. It was started in late 2006 by Scott Hassan, an early Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
employee who helped develop Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's technology. Steve Cousins is the president and CEO. Willow Garage is located in Menlo Park
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
.
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. In the Fall of 2009, Eric Berger and Keenan Wyrobek were recruited from Stanford to start the Willow Garage Personal Robotics Program. They founded the Stanford Personal Robotics Program 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, an open source robot operating system, and the PR2 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
Autonomous robot
Autonomous robots are robots that can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance. Many kinds of robots have some degree of autonomy. Different robots can be autonomous in different ways...
open doors, locate power outlets, and plug itself in (a video of this is available on YouTube).
In January 2010 Willow Garage achieved the third major milestone in the Personal Robotics Program releasing ROS at 1.0 and having PR2 ready for beta production.
At the end of 2010 with PR2 for sale
and the ROS community on its way to 100 repositories worldwide Keenan Wyrobek and Eric Berger left Willow Garage to pursue their next venture.
Open source software
Willow Garage is maintaining ROSROS (Robot Operating System)
Robot Operating System is a software framework for robot software development, providing operating system-like functionality on a heterogenous computer cluster. ROS was originally developed in 2007 under the name switchyard by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in support of the...
(Robot Operating System), the OpenCV
OpenCV
OpenCV is a library of programming functions mainly aimed at real time computer vision, developed by Intel and now supported by Willow Garage. It is free for use under the open source BSD license. The library is cross-platform. It focuses mainly on real-time image processing...
computer vision
Computer vision
Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...
library, and PCL
PCL (Point Cloud Library)
PCL is a standalone open-source framework for n-dimensional point clouds and 3D geometry processing. The library contains algorithms for filtering, feature estimation, surface reconstruction, registration, model fitting, and segmentation. PCL is developed by a large consortium of researchers and...
(Point Cloud Library). These projects all use the BSD license, an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software license.
Robots
Willow Garage's first major robot is called PR2. It is a two-armed wheeled robot of size similar to a human. They plan to release it to the public to be used for academic and industrial robotics research. PR2 is a spinoff of PR1, a robotics platform being developed at Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. PR stands for "personal robot".
The PR2 has two 7-DOF arms with a payload of 1.8 kg. Sensors include a 5 megapixel camera, a tilting laser range finder, and an inertial measurement unit
Inertial measurement unit
An inertial measurement unit, or IMU, is an electronic device that measures and reports on a craft's velocity, orientation, and gravitational forces, using a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes. IMUs are typically used to maneuver aircraft, including UAVs, among many others, and...
. 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
Structured light
]Structured light is the process of projecting a known pattern of pixels on to a scene. The way that these deform when striking surfaces allows vision systems to calculate the depth and surface information of the objects in the scene, as used in structured light 3D scanners.Invisible Structured...
. 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 with 24 Gigabyte
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
s of RAM
Ram
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
for a total of 48 GB. The battery system consists of 16 laptop batteries.
On May 26, 2010, Willow Garage 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
Telepresence
Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance of being present, or to have an effect, via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location....
using the Willow Garage Texai robot. Jonathan Knowles of Autodesk
Autodesk
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...
attended an XPrize cocktail party using a Texai to hobnob with Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...
.
In June, 2010 Willow Garage made two-year loans of a PR2; having two arms, a "rich sensor suite," a mobile base, 16 CPU cores, and their free, open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) framework that controls the PR2 and that comes with software libraries for perception, navigation, and manipulation. The 11 research teams will have a chance not only to program a general-purpose robot but also to contribute the work they've done on Willow Garage's open-source robotics platform to a wide community of researchers.