Willow Garage reveals the 11 recipients of the PR2

Willow Garage, whose progress we cover on this blog, just announced the eleven recipients of its PR2 robot. The PR2 robot is an open source robot which is characterized by a hardware platform (Personal Robot 2) with an ROS (Robot Operating System) open source software application. Willow Garage received 78 applications but only 11 were chosen. These 11 will each receive a PR2 for free. The total value of the endowment is around 4.4 millions de dollars (or a value of about 400 000 dollars per robotic platform). The majority of the recipients are research departments in universities in the United States and around the world. See the full list here with information about the projects. This club of 11 will now work together with the aim of improving the PR2 overall. The purpose of this whole project is commendable because it will allow for faster progress in robotics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljm_AwaWMh8