Willow Garage shutting down

#1

Post by mjtokelly » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 8:08 PM UTC

Willow Garage shutting down
willowgarage.com

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#2

Post by TheLegace » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 8:48 PM UTC

I owe a lot to the Willow Garage guys, they started something truly game changing in the robotics industry and for free.

I have used the ROS system extensively, developing my rover for the NASA Lunabotics competition. One thing everyone should know about robots, they are freaking complicated.

They have programs on every level of abstraction from low-level embedded code to high-level executive task manager to create pre-defined behaviours.

ROS has gone through quite a few changes, and still has some huge architecture changes coming to fix some of the short comings of the ROS protocol especially for integration of embedded devices which robotics heavily rely on.

Unfortunately I'm not going to be doing much robotics anytime soon. NASA has cancelled the competition for any International teams(I'm Canadian and we came 8th last year). And I'm not to keen on developing systems for DARPA.

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#3

Post by spiritplumber » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 8:55 PM UTC

I'm sorry to hear that. I take no pride in the fact that my business survives while theirs shuts down; they were doing good work and they were doing better work than me in quite a few ways. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#4

Post by fatjokes » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:13 PM UTC

What will happen to OpenCV?

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#5

Post by colincsl » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:39 PM UTC

fatjokes wrote: post #4

What will happen to OpenCV?

OpenCV is currently supported by Itseez so it shouldn't be effected

http://itseez.com/

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#6

Post by kelsers » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:46 PM UTC

fatjokes wrote: post #4

What will happen to OpenCV?

I used OpenCV in a bunch of college projects and had no idea it was the same guys who did ROS (used for my senior research project). Best of luck with your next venture!

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#7

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 9:50 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#8

Post by gerberduffy » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 10:35 PM UTC

What does this mean for ROS then?

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#9

Post by ngvrnd » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

They're not shutting down, they're merging with a sister startup. AFAICT, this means: they won't be making any more PR2's. ROS is open source, seems like lots of grad students are using it. Probably it will continue to be developed and improved. Maybe it will become the "unix and C" of robotics.

Re: Willow Garage shutting down

#10

Post by mturmon » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 11:20 PM UTC

ngvrnd wrote: post #9

They're not shutting down, they're merging with a sister startup. AFAICT, this means: they won't be making any more PR2's. ROS is open source, seems like lots of grad students are using it. Probably it will continue to be developed and improved. Maybe it will become the "unix and C" of robotics.

ROS has really influenced the way robotics research is done at the lab where I work. A cohort of recent grads came in and replaced a lot of ad-hoc formats with ROS bags. It's also being used to exchange data and standardize interfaces in some DoD-funded work (i.e., not just student projects).