Our Brief History

The ROS-Industrial Open Source project began as the collaborative endeavor of Yaskawa Motoman Robotics, Southwest Research Institute, and Willow Garage to support the use of ROS for manufacturing automation. The software repository, hosted on GitHub, was founded by Shaun Edwards (SwRI) in January 2012. Led by SwRI, the ROS-Industrial Consortium Americas launched in March 2013. As you might have guessed from the name, there is also a ROS-I Consortium Europe, led by Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart, Germany, and a ROS-Industrial Consortium Asia Pacific, led by ARTC and NTU in Singapore. The Consortia exists to support the ROS-Industrial community by providing training, technical support, and setting the roadmap for ROS-I. The Consortia also conduct pre-competitive joint industry projects to develop new capabilities for ROS-I.