Open-source Robotics Program Goes after the Elusive General-purpose Robot

Who among us hasn’t looked forward to the day when in-home robots take care of the dishes, laundry and cleaning? Sure, it’s still a long way off, but one company is hoping to move beyond today’s single-purpose robots and into the general-purpose field. Willow Garage, a group that develops robotic hardware and open-source software, envisions robots becoming an integral part of our lives, just like the personal computer is today.

To that end, Willow Garage is loaning out 11 PR2 Beta robots to institutes around the world, including universities in Japan and the U.S., as well as researchers at Bosch. The group also will include the free, open-source Robot Operating System framework that controls the PR2 so the researchers can tinker with its perception, navigation and manipulation.

“The goal of PR2 and ROS is to provide a common platform that people can build on top of and extend, and also share the results a lot more effectively,” said Keenan Wyrobek, the co-director of Willow Garage’s personal robotics program. “Getting PR2s out to the community is all about enabling code-sharing [and] enabling all of us to more easily build on each other’s results.”

My fingers are crossed that the marketplace of ideas will solve the riddle of the general-purpose robot. The Roomba just isn't cutting it anymore.