[ExI] Willow Garage Announces Launch of Open Source Robotics Foundation

[James Clement]

   Willow Garage Announces Launch of Open Source Robotics Foundation New
Board Members to Drive Adoption, Research and Education for Open Source
Within Robotics

 MENLO PARK, Calif., May 09, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Willow Garage today
announced the formation of The Open Source Robotics Foundation, Inc. The
OSRF is an independent, non-profit organization founded by members of the
global robotics community. Their mission is to support the development,
distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics
research, education, and product development.

In conjunction with the formation of the OSRF, the Board of Directors was
also announced. The Board of Directors comprises a worldwide collection of
educators, leaders and visionaries in the field of robotics, including:

Wolfram Burgard. Dr. Burgard is a professor at the University of Freiburg
where he leads the Laboratory for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. His major
research interests lie in mobile robotics, state estimation and control, as
well as artificial intelligence. Burgard is an active member of the IEEE
Robotics and Automation Society and a lifetime member of the American
Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Dr. Burgard is a recipient
of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

Ryan Gariepy. Mr. Gariepy is the co-founder and CTO of Clearpath Robotics.
Clearpath Robotics specializes in the design and manufacture of robust and
reliable unmanned vehicle solutions for industrial R&D. Gariepy's belief in
the need for a strong global robotics community resulted in Clearpath being
the first field robotics company to fully adopt and support ROS. Mr.
Gariepy manages Clearpath's technology strategy and serves as the company's
lead system architect.

Brian Gerkey. Dr. Gerkey is Director of Open Source Development at Willow
Garage. Since 2008, Gerkey has worked on ROS, which develops and releases
one of the most widely-used robot software platforms. He is also founding
and former lead developer on the open source Player Project. For his work
on Player and ROS, Technology Review recognized Gerkey with the TR35 award
in 2011. Dr. Gerkey will be CEO of the OSRF.

Helen Greiner. Ms. Greiner is a co-founder of iRobot and currently CEO of
CyPhyWorks. She has also been honored as a Technology Review "Innovator for
the Next Century" and has been awarded the DEMO God Award and DEMO Lifetime
Achievement Award. Greiner serves as the elected President and Board Member
of the Robotics Technology Consortium (RTC), a non-profit organization
established to speed the creation and deployment of ground robotics
technology.

Sam Park. Mr. Park is the executive vice president of Yujin Robot. At Yujin
Robot he has directed the commercialization of educational and
entertainment robots, elderly service robots and home cleaning robots.
Yujin Robot is one of South Korea's first generation of service robotics
companies and also a leading voice in the Korean robotics community. Before
joining Yujin Robotics, Mr. Park was an industrial robotics engineer at
Motorola.

The first initiative of the OSRF will be participation in the DARPA
Robotics Challenge. The DARPA Robotics Challenge will launch in October
2012 and offers a $2 million prize "to whomever can help push the
state-of-the-art in robotics beyond today's capabilities in support of the
DoD's disaster recovery mission."

"It's always been the intention of Willow Garage to create an independent
body that can take our initial work in open source robotics and see it grow
beyond the confines of a single organization," according to Steve Cousins,
CEO of Willow Garage. "The reality is that the popularity of open source
robotics in general, and ROS specifically, has grown beyond our wildest
expectations. Willow Garage will enthusiastically support the goals of the
OSRF."

About The Open Source Robotics Foundation

The Open Source Robotics Foundation is an independent, non-profit
organization founded by members of the global robotics community. The
mission of the OSRF is to support the development, distribution, and
adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education,
and product development. The organization is based in Menlo Park,
California. More information is available at
http://www.osrfoundation.organd by following the OSRF on Twitter
@OSRFoundation.
Best regards,

James Clement
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