On Sept. 6th, OSRF officially received a contract from DARPA for the
simulation component of the Robotics Challenge, as reported here. The contract amounts to $6.44 million over the next 2.5 years, during which time we’ll take a major leap forward in simulation. We are also working with two research groups led by Dr. Karen Liu from Georgia Tech and Dr. Scott Delp from Stanford. Karen and Michael will conduct long-term research and development along the lines of deformable contact modeling, object manipulation, and constraint-based contact modeling.

Our efforts are now in full swing as we approach the DRC kickoff in late October of this year. Keep a look out for new tutorials, documentation, and features. This is also a great time to get involved by experimenting with
Gazebo and ROS, creating new and interesting applications, and getting your voice heard through our mailing list.