Google Opens Up Industrial Robotics Platform with Open-Sourced Intrinsic Core

Google has open-sourced Intrinsic Core, a foundation for industrial robotics platforms. This move aims to provide developers with a standardized framework for building and deploying robots in industries such as manufacturing.

The platform includes control, motion planning, grasp planning, simulation, pose estimation, and camera calibration software, which were previously proprietary. It is now available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license and is ROS-compatible by design.

Intrinsic Core is designed to work with existing robot hardware from manufacturers like FANUC and Universal Robots, allowing developers to focus on building unique applications rather than rebuilding infrastructure.

The company's CEO, Wendy Tan White, has stated that the goal of open-sourcing Intrinsic Core is to encourage innovation in robotics development and create an ecosystem around the platform. However, it remains unclear what interface exists between Intrinsic Core and Google's other robotics projects from DeepMind.