The coolest robotics company on the planet stops doing research;(

Their tech has been really good, both software and and hardware wise...

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/511196/willow-garage-wont-do-research-anymore-but-itll-sell-you-a-robot/

But building robots is expensive, and apparently their backer wasn't quite as rich as hoped...

They weren't doing AGI, but they were building the right sorts of robots and robot interface software for AGI...

Their software will live on in the open source domain (e.g. the Robot Operating System, ROS. One thing I'd like to get done in the next year is to make ROS drivers for Hanson's robots...)

i/
ben

Ben Goertzel, PhD
http://goertzel.org

"My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche