So, depending on who you ask, Willow Garage is shutting down, pursuing commercial interests, or changing direction. But things are not as dire as some may think: ROS is fine (the OSRF will support it) and there are many options for Willow Garage to explore. Personally I’m hoping it will be snatched up by Stanford or another academic institution and become a research institute. But given the number of robots they have out (and their price tags!), a commercial path into the future seems even more likely. In any case, I doubt that Willow Garage will disappear just like that.

What caused the changes is that Willow’s founder and funder, Scott Hassan, has decided that it’s time to wean Willow Garage from his private financial support.

I’ve never met Scott, but first and foremost I think we – roboticists and robot enthusiasts around the globe – all owe him a huge THANK YOU! I think it’s fair to say that if it had not been for Scott, we would not have universities around the world sharing a common robot operating system. And, looking at the amazing contributions on the Willow Garage blog, it seems clear that the past five years in robotics would have been a lot less exciting without ROS and Willow Garage’s robots.

Scott brought the model of impact first, monetize later to robotics. Together with Steve Cousins he assembled an amazing team of people and established a network of external collaboration far and beyond anything ever seen in robotics. Did it get us a household robot that can serve us a cup of tea? No. But WOW, did it ever fast-forward us towards that goal.

So thank you Scott, for your vision, incredibly generous financial contributions, and for leading with actions. Willow Garage has already had a huge impact, and I’m sure there’s much more to come. I’m greatly looking forward to the next steps of Suitable Technologies. We all have much to look forward to from Willow Garage’s other already existing spinoffs (convenience links below) – and, who knows, from Willow Garage itself in one form or another.

Change and innovation are usually good friends, at least in my book. In spite of all the negativity out there I, for one, think the future of robotics has never been brighter.

Official info:

• Willow Garage’s official statement: Willow Garage is changing
• The Open Source Robotics Foundation’s statement: ROS @ OSRF

Willow Garage’s spin offs (to date):

• Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF)
• Suitable Technologies
• Industrial Perception Inc. (IPI)
• hiDOF Inc.
• Redwood Robotics
• OpenCV
• Open Perception Foundation

• ROS (Robot Operating System) and ROS-enabled software packages and libraries can be found in most universities and research labs.
• The 50 PR2 research robots and development platforms around the world and at Willow Garage’s offices in Menlo Park have enabled countless roboticists and research labs to spend their time innovating instead of having to re-invent.
• The spin-offs abound as well: TurtleBot, OpenCV, Galapagos, ROS and ROS-Industrial, Suitable Technologies’ Beam Remote Presence System, HiDOF consulting, the detection and perception leading to the establishment of Industrial Perception, are all indicators of WG’s policy of spinning out entities with a sustaining business plan.
• Joint ventures like Redwood Robotics and Industrial Perception.

The PR2s around the world will continue to be supported and the recent establishment of non-profit organizations will continue the open source platform and libraries.

One of the most iconic and influential robotics companies has just let staff know that Willow Garage will be making big changes in the next few months:

Willow Garage has decided to enter the world of commercial opportunities with an eye to becoming a self-sustaining company. This is an important change to our funding model.

On the surface this is sad news, and I hope that we see a lot of attention given to the huge contribution that Willow Garage has made to robotics over their short but significant history.

Scott Hassan founded Willow Garage in late 2006 to accelerate the development of non-military robotics and advance open source robotics software. Named as an homage to the garages that spawned the computer industry, he envisioned an innovative research lab infused with the engineering expertise of a product development company. The goal was simple: to push the frontiers of robotics, both scientifically and commercially. Scott put together a funding package with the unique goals of impact first, return on capital second, with the strong belief that success in the first goal (impact) would provide plenty of opportunities to excel at the second (return on capital).

Willow Garage’s PR2 program has seen consolidation of high level robotics research across universities, a direction continued by the ROS open source initiative and the low cost Turtlebot research platform. Along the way, Willow Garage have also started Open CV and the Point Cloud Library.

In fact, Willow have successfully spun off 7 or 8 other companies or foundations, including Suitable Technologies, hiDOF, IPI, & Redwood Robotics, not to mention the momentum given to many individual careers and startups. They have generated a lot of business, and we’re seeing the down side of that right now. There is too much activity at the edge and not enough in the center.

Perhaps there doesn’t need to be. I see this really as a vindication of Willow’s goals, to push the frontiers of robotics forward and return on investment. They have succeeded, they have spun off and Willow as it was, is no longer necessary. Think of the incredible opportunities to start robotics companies in Silicon Valley right now. Maybe the future is rosier than it seems.