You can see more formal announcements from us here and from Toyota Research Institute here, but we are very pleased to announce our new relationship with TRI. TRI is the R&D arm of Toyota. TRI has contracted with us to help develop and grow ROS and Gazebo. In addition, TRI has made a $1 million donation to OSRF.

The CEO of TRI, Gill Pratt, is very familiar with us and our work, including our contributions to the DARPA Robotics Challenge, for which he was the program manager.

As Gill says in our release:

I’ve witnessed first-hand the value of the Open Source Robotics Foundation. Of the twenty-three teams that competed in the DARPA Robotics Challenge eighteen used ROS and fourteen used Gazebo. Through this charitable contribution, TRI will support efforts to grow the capabilities of ROS and Gazebo, not only for TRI, but also for the hundreds of thousands of members of the open source robotics community.

Part of today’s announcement also includes the news that we have created the Open Source Robotics Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary of OSRF. We will continue to create and distribute open source and free-of-charge applications for the robotics community, including ROS and Gazebo. If you have specific questions about our reorganization, please let us know.