Robotics Research Lab Willow Garage Shutting Down? 23
New submitter moglito writes "Willow Garage is/was acknowledge by many to be one of the best places for robotics research these days. Besides developing the PR2 it made itself a name for creating the open-source Robot Operating System ROS. But now it seems to be shutting down. [From a posting on the Willow Garage site:] 'Scott Hassan, founder of both Willow Garage and Suitable Technologies, said, 'I am excited to bring together the teams of Willow Garage and Suitable Technologies to provide the most advanced remote presence technology to people around the world.' Willow Garage will continue to support customers of its PR2 personal robotics platform and sell its remaining stock of PR2 systems. Interest in PR2 systems or support should continue to be directed to Willow Garage through its portal at www.willowgarage.com.'"
seems the pivot didn't work (Score:4, Informative)
Back in February, IEEE Spectrum reported [ieee.org] that Willow Garage was shutting down, which led to a rebuttal from WG in which they said that they were changing [willowgarage.com], not shutting down. I guess the change wasn't profitable enough.
manufacturing problem, not software problem (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with robotics and its failure to catch on widely I think is largely related to the fact that robots are still expensive to manufacture. Willow Garage doesn't seem to have made much progress with that. If you could put the hardware for an arm or a human-height telepresence robot in people's hands for less than $1000, the software would take care of itself. Working on 'robot operating systems" and similar software right now probably remains wasted effort; by the time the costs for the hardware has come down, all that work will likely be obsolete anyway.