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发帖数: 4978 | 1 每年的IROS跟ICRA它都赞助，估计以后不会了。
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/511196/willow-garage-wont-
Willow Garage Won’t Do Research Anymore, but It’ll Sell You a Robot
The lab developed key technologies that have advanced personal robotics, but
its funding wasn’t sustainable.
Willow Garage, a private laboratory that built a popular open-source
operating system for robots, as well as the PR2, a capable robot for use by
researchers, is rebooting itself. In a blog post published yesterday, CEO
Steve Cousins said it will move away from developing new research
technologies, and would “enter the world of commercial opportunities.”
Founded in 2006 by early Google engineer Scott Hassan to advance the
frontiers of robotics, the Menlo Park, California, lab has spun out several
companies and created software and hardware now in use around the world.
Because the facility was independent and under little pressure to pursue
short-term products, one of its key contributions to the field was making it
easier for robotics researchers to share and build on each other’s work.
However, its own long-term funding model—beyond Hassan’s personal backing
—was never clear (a one-armed PR2 retails for $285,000, and there are fewer
than 50 in outside research facilities today).
By last year, Hassan had become CEO of Suitable Technologies, a Willow
Garage spinout that is building telepresence robots for stay-at-home office
workers (see “Beam Yourself to Work in a Remote-Controlled Body”). Now
Willow Garage will attempt to become a self-sustaining company in its own
right. “This is an important change to our funding model,” Cousins wrote.
To some, Willow Garage’s timing is perfect if it wants to fulfill its goal
of having a wide-ranging impact on the personal robotics field, although
there would likely be near-term funding challenges to support its talented
pool of researchers and roboticists (see MIT Technology Review’s “35
Innovators Under 35”: Leila Takayama and Brian Gerkey). Autonomous robots
have advanced in laboratories to the point where the PR2 can now fold
laundry and fetch a soda, and industrial robots can work side by side to
assist human factory workers. But the costs of these advanced robots are
still relatively high, and the practicalities are clunky.
“I think Willow Garage has a lot of good technology … it’s now really the
time to do business. We are really close to the situation we were in with
personal computing, when the world switched from expensive mainframes,”
says Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics, a $25 million New York
investment fund for personal robotics companies. “If you want to make a
technology big, you need to bring it to market,” adds Grishin, the
cofounder and chairman of the Russian Internet giant Mail.Ru Group.
Willow Garage’s move away from creating open-ended R&D tools is, however, a
disappointment to the robotics researchers and companies that use its
software.
The Georgia Institute of Technology is, for example, using its PR2 to
develop software and user interfaces for robots that could assist elderly
people living at home. “They have been a key facilitator of collaborative
infrastructure for robotics,” says Henrik Christensen, Georgia Tech’s
director of robotics. “We have to figure out how this can be continued.”
Willow Garage wrote that it will “not diminish” its support for the nearly
50 PR2s in use today and was already in the process of transitioning
oversight of its Robot Operating System to the Open Source Robotics
Foundation.
How Willow Garage will become a self-sustaining business isn’t clear, nor
for how long Hassan will continue to support the endeavor. A spokesman
declined to comment on its plans beyond the information posted on its blog,
other than to emphasize it was not shutting down. Willow Garage’s spinoffs
include Suitable Technologies and a company called Industrial Perception,
which is developing robots that might autonomously load and unload pallets
and shipping containers. Its motto: “Providing robots with the skills they
’ll need to succeed in the economy of tomorrow.” |
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