[mdda]

Willow Garage somehow pulling the rug from under Unbounded Robotics is a backwards move for this industry, which has always struggled to get decent forward momentum (being innovative electro-mechanical hardware, looking for early adopters, etc)

On a possibly related/speculative note, it seemed to me (when looking over the list of robotics companies acquired by Google at the end of 2013) that Google has been organizing a 'getting the band back together' thing. Obvious connections included Redwood Robotics and Industrial Perception, both also Willow Garage spin-offs. That, and one of the original founders of Willow Garage (Scott Hassan) was ex-early-Googler himself.

[beambot]

As far as I can tell, Scott was the founder and sole benefactor for Willow Garage. He's also the CEO/founder/funder of Suitable (another WG spinout) that was alluded to in the IEEE article. If there were legal issues with Unbounded... then they probably start and end w/ Scott.

Very weird, indeed.