PR2

PR2's white plastic and metal torso holds three stacked sections, the bottom which says PR2 and the top of which has two eye cameras and a black bar with sensors. The robots arms, with gripper end effectors, are posed on it's hips. — Proud to be a PR2. Photo: Willow Garage

The PR2 is one of the most advanced research robots ever built. Its powerful hardware and software systems let it do things like clean up tables, fold towels, and fetch you drinks from the fridge.

Creator

Willow Garage

Year

2010

Country

United States 🇺🇸

Categories

Features

A rotating view of a PR2 mobile robot with a metallic torso, a head with cameras and sensors, two arms with gripper hands, and a mobile base. The robots arms are posed on it's hips. — See a 360° view of PR2. Photos: John Greenleigh

More interactives

Did you know?

Japanese researchers have taught their PR2 how to drive out of the lab, go to a Subway restaurant, and bring them sandwiches.

Close-up of the robots head showing off it's tech. It is labelled PR2. — PR2's head has wide-angle and narrow-angle stereo cameras. Photo: Willow Garage

Close up of the robots arm and gripper fingers show a camera visible on its inner arm. — The robot has a camera on its forearms as well. Photo: Willow Garage

PR2 learns how to fetch a beer. Video: Willow Garage

Audio

Eric Berger, one of the founders of the personal robotics program at Willow Garage, describes the PR2's cameras and sensors.

Photo: Willow Garage

Former Willow Garage CEO Steve Cousins explains his vision for ROS, the open-source robot operating system that his company is developing.

Photo: Willow Garage

History

Scott Hassan, an early Google architect, founded Willow Garage in late 2006. He envisioned an innovative research lab devoted to accelerating the development of robotics applications. At the time, two Stanford researchers, Keenan Wyrobek and Eric Berger, had built a robot called the PR1. The pair was fundraising to develop ROS, or Robot Operating System, an open-source robotics framework, as well as to build copies of PR1, to distribute to research labs around the world as the first common development platform for personal robotics. Hassan recruited Wyrobek and Berger to start and run a personal robotics program at Willow Garage. While Berger led software development, Wyrobek designed a new robot, the PR2. Willow completed the first PR2 prototypes in late 2008, and in February 2009 it made available the first stable release of ROS. The PR2 Beta Program was announced in 2010, awarding a PR2 to 11 institutions worldwide. In September 2010, the PR2 became available for purchase.

A circular motor is seen inside metal casing. — An inside view of PR2's wrist. Photo: Willow Garage

A view inside PR2's wrist shows it is packed full of electronics. — Another view of PR2's wrist. Photo: Willow Garage

More Images

A row of a dozen PR2s. Each holds a white box with a colored square on top, and carries a flag in one hand. The other hand on each robot is raised in unison. — PR2s go partying. Photo: Willow Garage

Specs

Overview: Equipped with ROS and other open software modules. Capable of navigating autonomously and manipulating a wide range of objects.
Status: Inactive
Year: 2010
Website: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Garage
Width: 66.8 cm
Height: 165 cm (telescoping spine extended)
Length: 66.8 cm
Weight: 226.8 kg
Speed: 3.6 km/h
Sensors: Head with wide-angle and narrow-angle stereo cameras, Microsoft Kinect, and 5-megapixel camera. Torso with tilting Hokuyo UTM-30LX laser scanner and Microstrain 3DM-GX2 IMU. Arms with Ethernet cameras, three-axis accelerometer, and fingertip pressure sensors. Mobile base with Hokuyo UTM-30LX laser scanner.
Actuators: 32 brushed DC motors
Degrees of Freedom (DoF): 20 (Arm: 4 DoF x 2; Wrist: 3 DoF x 2; Gripper: 1 DoF x 2; Head pan/tilt: 2 DoF; Head laser tilt: 1 DoF; Telescoping spine: 1 DoF; mobile base actuators not included)
Materials: Hard plastic and metal exterior with foam arm covers.
Compute: Two Intel i7 Xeon quad-core processors, 24 GB of memory, 500 GB internal hard drive, and 1.5 TB removable hard drive.
Software: ROS (Robot Operating System) and other open-source packages, including OpenCV vision libraries and PCL 3D point cloud processing libraries.
Power: 1.3-kWh lithium-ion battery pack, 2 hours of operation
Cost: $400,000 (One-armed version priced at $285,000.)