

Unbounded Robotics to Shut Down Due to Willow Garage Spin-Off Agreement - botman
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/unbounded-robotics-shut-down

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iandanforth
This is sad on so many levels. The founders worked so incredibly hard. They
put together a groundbreaking, extremely complex, price shattering robot in
less time than it takes many software projects to launch. The idea that an
accomplishment of that magnitude might be lost due to a contract dispute is
heartbreaking.

The only positive thing I can think of here is that I look forward to seeing
what they do next, I'm sure it will be awesome.

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botman
About a year ago, I got to play with a UBR-1 prototype. It seemed to be very
well-designed. It was smaller and lighter and the PR2 and had some design
improvements. For example, the base was more maneuverable, and the torso and
grippers were much faster. The main appeal of the UBR-1 was its low cost --
50k for the UBR1 vs 400k for the PR2, or thereabouts.

Some of the most technically innovative robotics startups were acquired by
Google last summer. Unbounded seemed like the only company left in the realm
of mobile manipulator robots, who could continue Willow Garage's legacy of
providing technology that runs on open-source software (ROS), is open to
tinkering, and benefits robotics researchers. (And plenty more research is
required before robots are intelligent enough for the vast majority of menial
tasks.) I hope that Google will give back to the research community, but I
won't get my hopes up, since they've been extremely secretive so far.

So I'm quite sad to hear the recent news that Unbounded is shutting down, and
I'm hoping that the excellent work of Melanie et al. won't be buried due to
the legal issues they're facing. (I have no inside info about what is going
on.)

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supercouille
Well there are other companies that are making manipulators. Kinova for
example looks promising with a polished robotic arm. They don't have the
mobile base tough, which is sad.

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mikepurvis
An integrated mobile manipulator is a very different beast from a standalone
manipulator bolted to a generic mobile base.

For example, UBR-1's lift torso means that it can pick an object up off the
ground and place it on a tabletop. The placement of sensors is also key, with
having a depth cam ideally placed for both looking around and supervising a
grasp operation.

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mdda
Willow Garage somehow pulling the rug from under Unbounded Robotics is a
backwards move for this industry, which has always struggled to get decent
forward momentum (being innovative electro-mechanical hardware, looking for
early adopters, etc)

On a possibly related/speculative note, it seemed to me (when looking over the
list of robotics companies acquired by Google at the end of 2013) that Google
has been organizing a 'getting the band back together' thing. Obvious
connections included Redwood Robotics and Industrial Perception, both also
Willow Garage spin-offs. That, and one of the original founders of Willow
Garage (Scott Hassan) was ex-early-Googler himself.

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beambot
As far as I can tell, Scott was _the_ founder and sole benefactor for Willow
Garage. He's also the CEO/founder/funder of Suitable (another WG spinout) that
was alluded to in the IEEE article. If there were legal issues with
Unbounded... then they probably start and end w/ Scott.

Very weird, indeed.

