Ten years ago, when the author worked hard to achieve the "robot version Linux", I have also been discouraged because of difficulties, but the story of other brave people inspire me to continue. Below, I will share some secrets of the robot operating system (ROS), I hope that these two years of more years can also motivate you to try to pursue new ideas themselves.
Super just need
At the beginning of this story, I was working with my seven years old Eric Berger, just started to study our Ph.D. in Stanford University.
In fact, it is also an accident that is also in the case, at the time, in order to get a doctoral degree, we are looking for a leading project. We asked many industry insiders, but we found that everyone did almost, they all spend hard in the robot software, almost 90% of time spend the code and build prototype experiment platforms. Therefore, there is only 10% of the time left to innovation.
ROS and PR1 are solutions we have changed in the whole industry. At that time, we plan to find the big gold owners, and take out the funds to support 10 universities to build 10 exact robots, then set up a software engineer team to develop universal pipe software and development tools, let the robotic software industry's innovator Standing on the shoulders of giants.
After thinking about the plan, we contacted the Professor of Ken Salisbury and Wu Enda, hoping that they can carry our vision.
Step by step to establish a credibility
In order to raise money to this plan for Stanford's personal robot project, we have broken all the thresholds of interest in investors. The goal at the time was to raise $ 4 million, which would help us recruit excellent software engineers to maintain ROS. In addition, these money also covered 10 robots manufacturing costs. In the process of financing, we tasted "human suffering", and we didn't have any public credibility at the time. However, Kung Fu pays off, and finally there are investors to open a ticket worth 50,000 US dollars.
This check comes from Joanna Hoffman and Alain Rossmann, they tell me to use these money to step by step to establish my own credibility. At the same time, these money has also become our startup fund.
Subsequently, we used the $ 50,000 dollars in your hand and the money from Stanford's dean, creating PR1. Then PR1 became our business card, which helped our team to support the world's top robot software R & D team support. In addition, we also contributed PR1 to the study of Stanford AI robot team, which made us highlight the ceiling of the robot software development platform.
However, I am afraid that more importantly, we actually take PR1 to a friend's home, then the remote control it took a lot of great video. After that, we embarked on the way of fundraising.
Don't be defeated by anyone
However, after countless good words, we have also got a similar reply: what you said "Robot Linux" is too advanced. In addition, the word "crazy" in all kinds of replies also occurred frequently.
When I am still in the moment, I am fortunate to I haven't moved it.
Subsequently, we met the true Bole Scott Hassan, he was impressed by the "robot version Linux", and we have money to build ROS. Hassan is a famous god in the science and technology. He used open source software to write Google's first line of code, EGroups also came from his hand. Hassan is willing to invest in us is also because it is because I want the robotic industry to be open source into my own foundation. In the end, in the development of ROS, we spent more than 4 million US dollars.
After graduation, I came to Scott Research Laboratory Willow Garage here, where we have to turn your personal robot project into reality. At that time, we were the third project of Willow, in addition to this project, which automatically drive cars and automatic ships (these two projects were cut off).
Ros 1.0
Willow Garage witnessed a lot of ups and downs, but these stories let ROS finally become robotic version of Linux.
First of all, I have to thank our team, here to gather world-class leaders, engineers and researchers.
The entire team put 100% of the energy in the construction of ROS, and we are still trying to make ROS simple and easy to use and rich. At the same time, ROS has also received the help of the industry giant Bosch.
When creating a ROS community, we invited the leadership leaders who have had extensive experience in the open source robot project. In addition, in marketing, we also abandoned the "education concessions", those who would like to open the company's projects to purchase a lot of rewards when purchasing PR2.
On the way to drive ROS move, we have made a lot of means in order to make full use of resources in your hand, the following is two more typical strategies.
Two-day seminar
When we just started, there was already more than 10 open source software frameworks in the entire industry, so we decided to ask the head of these projects to Willow "common events". Of course, we also attached our commitment in the invitation: We will form a software engineer team to create the robot's open source software architecture in your dreams.
This seminar was preparatory by Brain, Ken and ERIC. In the two-day conference, the parties to meetings were consistent in multiple views. For example, in order to ensure a clean license like Linux, we need to enable new code. Library. In addition, participants have reached a consensus on the functional and design guidelines contained in the new system framework.
In addition to the above grades, two-day seminars also made the heads of these projects become ROS investors, and they also contributed a lot of strength in the rapid growth of ROS in the following years.
Interns
For the management method of the product design team, I think two. One is from the top, a very visionary supervisor leads everyone to go forward; the other is from bottom to, determines the direction of the team by two critical attributes.
1. Everyone in the team has its own right to speak on product design;
2. There is only one layer of yarn between the distance between each team member and the customer.
In the end, ROS chose its own way, each member of the team is standing with the customer's shoulder, and the intern plan is also an important factor in the success of the entire project.
From the 18th month of the project start to ROS 1.0, more than 100 interns were helped in Willow, and each of them "burned" three months of youth. In the most public fire in the intern project, there are many intern in the Willow building. They not only made a lot of innovations on ROS, but also helped ROS to pick a lot of problems.
In addition to the strength of ROS, these interns also leaving Ros's ideas to their research institutes and companies, enhances the influence of ROS brand in the world.
Unbeatable ten years
In the next decade, it is definitely more likely to be a color than the most daring imagination, and entrepreneurs may create the best products and business, and complex plants will also have ROS system. In addition, the Open Source Robot Foundation will also become a big manager of ROS, and the ROS community will usher in great development.
At the same time, the power of ROS as research, innovation and entrepreneurial promoters will gradually appear.
From "crazy" to reality
Ros started at first, the people who were in the heart of the heart, but through the continuous efforts, we will have become a reality of "madness".
For other entrepreneurs, I also hope that they can think of the most important thing from "crazy" into reality.
Original address: https://www.eeboard.com/news/linuxros/
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