Silicon Valley entrepreneur and early Google architect Scott Hassan is trying to fast-track innovation in the personal robotics world with his 50-employee company, Willow Garage.
The company’s first robot, the PR2, hit the market in September 2010. Hassan hopes the PR2 will give the robotics community what the desktop computer provided programmers in the 1970s: a standardised tool for creating all sorts of applications.
While industrial robots have thrived for decades, home and office robots have largely remained a distant science fiction dream. Personal robotics engineers typically build their own machines from scratch, sinking a ton of time and money into their robots before they can even think about programming them to do anything clever, like playing pool or making pancakes. Then, if a personal robot hits the mainstream – like Honda's popular Asim – the codes and schematics remain carefully guarded secrets.
The PR2, on the other hand, is equipped with an open-source software code, called Robot Operating System (ROS), which lets users share knowledge and build on each others' work. It also comes with heavy duty computers, wheels, arms, cameras, range finders and touch sensors.
"People can stop re-inventing the wheel, and start doing new things right away," says Keenan Wyrobek, co-director of Willow Garage's personal robotics program. "It is a huge unmet need for the industry."
Researchers have already trained PR2 robots to perform a number of new tricks, including sorting socks, fetching beer, playing pool, tidying up, flipping pancakes and playing on a keyboard and snare drum.
Last spring, Willow Garage spent $4,5 million giving away PR2 robots to researchers at 11 universities, including Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California. Another recipient was the German industrial giant, Bosch. The think-tank company has also paid stipends for dozens of robotics engineers to live nearby, for two to three months at a time, learning ROS and working on PR2 projects.
That is all on top of the tens of millions of dollars it took to design and build the PR2, which officially went on sale to researchers two months ago. Each robot's price tag is $400,000. The price drops to $280,000 for developers that have a demonstrated history of contributing to open source communities. Neither price tag allows the company to come close to turning an immediate profit.
Willow Garage is focused on the long haul, Wyrobek says. "We are an atypical company," he explains. "Our founders see plenty of opportunity in five to 10 years in the industry, if we can get it started."
For now, they have certainly got access to seed capital. Hassan, Willow Garage's founder, helped write the initial software code for Google with Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Stanford University. He later started eGroups, an e-mail list management website, which was bought in 2000 by Yahoo for stock worth $413 million.
With Hassan's personal wealth he can afford to bankroll the company on his own, but outside observers believe he has got help.
"My guess is they have a lot of investors interested," says Aaron Saenz, a blogger who writes about robotics for SingularityHub.com. He points out that some 400 Silicon Valley and Google millionaires showed up to watch Hassan unveil the PR2 beta version in May.
Setting the short-term future aside, Willow Garage wants to tap the power of crowdsourcing to grow its own R&D department exponentially. Its vision is to spur smart people around the world to work together. That puts Willow Garage at the centre of a gigantic spider web of sorts, ready for the day that Rosie the Robot could become a reality.
To find out more visit www.willowgarage.com
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