Willow Garage
| Industry | Robotics |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Menlo 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) |
| Website | www |
Willow Garage was a robotics research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The company was best known for its open source software suite Robot Operating System (ROS), which rapidly become a common, standard tool among robotics researchers upon its initial release in 2010. 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. Steve Cousins was the president and CEO. Willow Garage was located in Menlo Park, California.
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. Willow Garage's website, however, remained open until April 20th, 2021.