Willow Garage

37°27′08″N 122°09′58″W / 37.45224167°N 122.16618889°W / 37.45224167; -122.16618889

Willow Garage
IndustryRobotics
Founded2006; 18 years ago (2006)
HeadquartersMenlo Park, California
Key people
Scott Hassan (Founder)
Steve Cousins (CEO)
Eric Berger (Co-Director, Personal Robotics Program)
Keenan Wyrobek (Co-Director, Personal Robotics Program)
Brian Gerkey (Director, Open Source Development)[1]
Websitewww.willowgarage.com

Willow Garage was a robotics research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications.[2] The company was best known for its open source software suite Robot Operating System (ROS), which rapidly became a common, standard tool among robotics researchers upon its initial release in 2010.[3] It was begun in late 2006 by Scott Hassan, who had worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to develop the technology that became the Google Search engine.[4] Steve Cousins was the president and CEO. Willow Garage was located in Menlo Park, California.[5]

Willow Garage shut down in early 2014. Most employees were retained by Suitable Technologies, Inc, while the support and services responsibilities were transferred to Clearpath Robotics.[6][7] Willow Garage's website, however, remained open until April 20th, 2021.

  1. ^ "Willow Garage Leadership Team".
  2. ^ "About Willow Garage".
  3. ^ "boxturtle". ROS Wiki. Retrieved 15 April 2017.
  4. ^ "Willow Garage Founder Scott Hassan Aims To Build A Startup Village". IEEE Spectrum. 5 September 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2019.
  5. ^ "Contact Willow Garage".
  6. ^ "Willow Garage's Last Days". Bloomberg.com. 21 February 2014 – via www.bloomberg.com.
  7. ^ "Willow Garage selects Clearpath robotics to service and support the PR2 robot Through 2016". Archived from the original on 2019-08-29. Retrieved 2023-10-11.