OSRF is pleased to welcome Isaac Saito! Isaac Saito is a software engineering intern with the ROS Team, working in particular on the RQT GUI framework. Before coming to the US from Japan to get his M.sc in Systems Engineering at Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX), he worked on a web search system for Keio University (30K+ affiliates organization) working closely with IBM Tokyo Research utilizing information retrieval, and also built pedestrian navigation prototypes for mega-sized train stations with East Japan Railway.

ROS experts Dirk, William, and Tully recently joined OSRF and are settling in to the ROS Cave to continue their work on the software. To celebrate, we took a field trip to K1 Speed for a friendly but competitive go karting grand prix. Highlights from our outing included: a minor crash, one driver’s inspiring journey from last to third place, two emotional awards ceremonies, and the realization that Kazuto, our intern from JSK, looks great in a yellow headsock. While some egos were bruised, it was great to get out of the building and unwind in tiny cars.

Registration for ROSCon 2013 is now open. Early registration ends March 31st. We’re looking forward to seeing many of you in Germany in May!

From ros-users@:

The Robonaut team has launched a TopCoder challenge to create a controller for our ISS taskboard simulation that improves the behavior of the switches, etc. and publishes the states to rostopics. If you’d like to help out (and potentially make up to $1500), check out the challenge here.

From the challenge description:

Robonaut 2 is the first humanoid robot in space and was sent to the space station with the intention of taking over tasks too dangerous or too mundane for astronauts.
But Robonaut 2 needs to learn how to interact with the types of input devices the astronauts use on the space station. To do that, we have built several Taskboards for Robonaut to play with.
In future challenges, you will control Robonaut and teach him how to interact with the Taskboard. But first, the simulation for the ISS Taskboard needs to be fixed.

For full requirements, please check here.

Recently Willow Garage, maker of the PR2 service robot and developer/custodian of the ROS core, announced that their funding model was about to change. This has precipitated speculation about the future of ROS and, by extension, ROS-Industrial. What has not been widely communicated is that the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), an independent nonprofit company founded last summer with support from Willow Garage, was chartered in-part to become the long-term home for ROS core development, ROS wiki hosting, and ROS answers support. OSRF recently announced that key ROS developers from Willow Garage soon will move to OSRF. We have been in communication with both Willow Garage and OSRF and know that the ROS core is in the capable hands of the same developers who are credited with its widespread adoption over the past five years. Furthermore, we note that OSRF is participating in the ROS-Industrial Consortium kick off meeting March 6-7^th (agenda). We look forward to continuing collaboration with both Willow Garage and OSRF as open source robotics continues to accelerate the growth and capabilities of robotic systems.

A Press Release from Clearpath Robotics

Kitchener, ON, Canada – February, 2013

We have received many inquiries about the future of ROS since the announcement of a change in Willow Garage’s business plan. To our many valued clients, you may rest assured that we will continue to support and build upon ROS and open-source robotics software for our products.

We are proud to say that we were one of the first companies to support and use ROS, and we are humbled to see how much it has advanced the robotics industry. We believe that the strength of the global ROS community is at critical mass and we are confident it will continue to thrive and grow.

The transition of ROS stewardship from Willow Garage to the Open Source Robotics Foundation has been under way for many months and Clearpath will do everything in it’s power to assist with this transition. Our position as a partner to both academic and industrial research has given us a unique perspective on commercializing robotics from the lab to the real world, and the ROS ecosystem is making this happen faster than we had ever hoped.

The first 5 years of ROS has changed our industry forever. We can’t wait to see what the next 5 years of ROS will bring.

The ROS-Industrial team was at the Automate trade show a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a great video showing the ROS-Industrial capabilities that they demonstrated:

As we mentioned on Monday, here at OSRF we’re starting to play a more prominent role in the ROS community. As a major step in that direction, we’re pleased to announce that, in the next few weeks, Tully Foote, Dirk Thomas, and William Woodall will be joining OSRF!

You probably already know each of them from ros-users@ and ROS Answers, not to mention GitHub. And if you’ve used ROS, you’ve used their code, as they work on many of the core ROS libraries and tools.

We’re excited to have Tully, Dirk and William on the team and are looking forward to being a part of their future contributions to ROS.

First of all, we’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Scott and Steve and the entire Willow Garage team who have, over the last five years, made an unprecedented contribution to the robotics community. Willow Garage set out to have impact, and there can be no doubt that ROS has had a worldwide impact, on a scale greater than we ever hoped. Thank you!

As you may have heard, there are some changes underway at Willow Garage.

Given the recent news, we’re working with our friends at Willow Garage to accelerate the transition of ROS stewardship to OSRF. One of the goals in establishing OSRF was to provide a long-term home for ROS, and that’s where we’re headed with this transition. Through generous support from the National Robotics Initiative, we’re assembling a team at OSRF to continue to guide the development of ROS. We don’t expect ROS development to slow down, nor do we expect any interruption to the online resources that we’ve all come to rely on (e.g., the ROS wiki and ROS answers).

At OSRF, we look forward to taking a more prominent role in the ROS ecosystem. We’ll be seeking increased community involvement in ROS development, decision-making, maintenance, and support. Open source software works best when everyone is invested and involved, and we will work closely with the ROS community, including product development groups, research teams, students at all levels, hobbyists, and interested groups everywhere.

Here’s to ROS’s next five years!

OSRF is pleased to welcome Kazuto Murase! Kazuto studies Mechano-Infomatics at the University of Tokyo in the JSK Lab. He has been developing a robot with arm and eye, integrating recognition and action to perform tasks.

At OSRF, he will apply his experience developing rosjava/Android applications to improve the suite of apps available for use with robots, including new tools for managing deployment and launching of apps. He is excited to learn about America and have a true California experience during his time at OSRF.