The Shadow Hand software system is based on Robot Operating System, through which configuration, calibration, simulation and control of the hand is implemented.
Robot Operating System is an open-source set of programs being developed at Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Munich, Germany, among others.
It was developed as part of the research effort of project ONEIROS ( Open-ended Neuro-Electronic Intelligent Robot Operating System ), and its primary author and maintainer is Fran鏾is Chollet.
He is currently CEO of robotics startup Savioke and previously was president and CEO of robotics think-tank Willow Garage, where he oversaw the creation of the robot operating system ( ROS ), an open source software suite that has become the standard tool among robotics researchers.
Much research software for autonomous robots is Free Software or Open Source Software, including : Robot Operating System, Carmen from Carnegie Mellon, Player / Stage / Gazebo from the University of Southern California and the ARIA APIs from MobileRobots Inc . URBI with a Free Software SDK, is used in many universities.
Each PR2 was to include two arms, a " rich sensor suite ", a mobile base, 16 CPU cores, and the company's free, open-source Robot Operating System ( ROS ) framework, which controls the PR2 and comes with software libraries for perception, navigation, and manipulation.