MIT, Stanford and the Technical University of Munich are working together to develop the Robot Operating System, an open-source OS that could help robots and roboticists collaborate, according to New Scientist:

This desire has its roots in frustration, says Brian Gerkey of the robotics research firm Willow Garage in Menlo Park, California. “People reinvent the wheel over and over and over, doing things that are not at all central to what they’re trying to do.”

For example, if someone is studying object recognition, they want to design better object-recognition algorithms, not write code to control the robot’s wheels. “You know that those things have been done before, probably better,” says Gerkey. But without a common OS, sharing code is nearly impossible.

And from the comments, a possible down side:

Lets hope its 100% virus proof.

Hacked robots could be a problem well before the self aware ones decide to “KILL ALL HUMANS!”

The article is populated by a cast of characters from the New England robotics scene — MIT, UMass Amherst and DigitRobotics’ UBot, Brown researcher Chad Jenkins, and Barrett Technology CEO William Townsend and the company’s WAM arm. 

After the jump, watch video of the UBot at the UMass Amherst robotics lab last summer. (more…)