The Open Source Robotics Foundation came into being this morning, with the goal of driving adoption of, research for and education about open source software within the field of robotics.
“Open source,” of course, is the tech philosophy and methodology that ultimately allows for collaboration — and improved products — through the use of common, non-proprietary code.
The organization is not-for-profit and independent. The group announced an illustrious board of directors, is comprised of top names from the global robotics community.
Those include:
- Wolfram Burgard, professor, University of Freiburg. He leads the Laboratory for Autonomous Intelligent Systems with a research focus on mobile robotics, state estimation and control and artificial intelligence.
- Ryan Gariepy, co-founder and CTO, Clearpath Robotics. His company designs and manufactures unmanned vehicles for industrial R&D uses.
- Brian Gerkey, director of Open Source Development, Willow Garage. For the last four years, he’s worked on the Robot Operating System platform, or ROS.
- Helen Greiner, co-founder of iRobot and CEO of CyPhyWorks. She’s also president of the Robotics Technology Consortium, which aims to speed the creation and deployment of ground robotics technology.
- Sam Park, EVP, Yujin Robot. Known for commercializing educational, entertainment, elderly service and home cleaning robots at the South Korean firm.
The OSRF will make its first splash by participating (in what capacity, it’s unclear) in the next DARPA Robotics Challenge, to be held in October.
Photo: Clearpath Robotics; Logo: OSRF.
