About a year ago, I got to play with a UBR-1 prototype. It seemed to be very well-designed. It was smaller and lighter and the PR2 and had some design improvements. For example, the base was more maneuverable, and the torso and grippers were much faster. The main appeal of the UBR-1 was its low cost -- 50k for the UBR1 vs 400k for the PR2, or thereabouts.

Some of the most technically innovative robotics startups were acquired by Google last summer. Unbounded seemed like the only company left in the realm of mobile manipulator robots, who could continue Willow Garage's legacy of providing technology that runs on open-source software (ROS), is open to tinkering, and benefits robotics researchers. (And plenty more research is required before robots are intelligent enough for the vast majority of menial tasks.) I hope that Google will give back to the research community, but I won't get my hopes up, since they've been extremely secretive so far.

So I'm quite sad to hear the recent news that Unbounded is shutting down, and I'm hoping that the excellent work of Melanie et al. won't be buried due to the legal issues they're facing. (I have no inside info about what is going on.)