Alphabet's Robotics Arm Intrinsic Consolidates Position With Latest Acquisition

Alphabet Inc's GOOG GOOGL Intrinsic division acquired several divisions within Open Robotics, famous for robotics software packages Gazebo and Robotic Operating System (ROS).
The financial terms of the deal remained undisclosed.
Intrinsic bought Open Source Robotics Corporation (OSRC), the for-profit arm of Open Robotics, and Open Source Robotics Corporation Singapore (OSRC-SG), known for efforts on Open-RMF for interoperability between fleets of robots and physical infrastructure, TechCrunch reports.
Open Robotics' nonprofit arm, Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), will remain in charge of the open source intellectual property, project governance, and growing the ROS, Gazebo, and Open-RMF communities.
"Together, we will give the robotics community great new features in ROS, Gazebo, and Open-RMF, while also building new products and services on top … You can expect ROS 2 Iron Irwini to be available in May 2023 on schedule," said Open Robotics co-founder and former CEO Brian Gerkey.
Gerkey will join Intrinsic as part of the OSRC team post-acquisition but will continue to serve on the board of OSRF.
OSRF was founded in 2012 to support "the development, distribution, and adoption of open-source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development."
OSRC launched in September 2016 and, together with OSRF, became known as Open Robotics.
Intrinsic spun out of Alphabet's X R&D lab and led by Wendy Tan White, the former VP of Moonshots at Alphabet, focused primarily on developing control software for industrial robots.
Intrinsic plans to launch a software layer in 2023 capable of interfacing with automotive assembly, electronics manufacturing, and logistics robots.
Just a few months back, Intrinsic scooped fellow robotic software firm Vicarious.
Google held $116.3 billion in cash and equivalents as of September 30.
Price Action: GOOG shares traded lower by 0.99% at $90.30 in the premarket on the last check Friday.
Photo via Company

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