Open Robotics for profit arms joins Intrinsic - and what it means for robot cybersecurity.

Open Robotics for profit subsidiary Open Source Robotics Corporation has joined Intrinsic in an acquisition that is foreseen to take the Robot Operating System (ROS) to the next level, in an unpredecented movement by Google's subsidiary- part of Alphabet.

The acquisition, that was disclosed 15th of December 2022, encompasses Intrinsic buying Open Source Robotics Corporation (OSRC), the for-profit arm of Open Robotics, and Open Source Robotics Corporation Singapore (OSRC-SG), which created Open-RMF, a standard for interoperability between robotic fleets robots and physical assets and infrastructures (e.g. doors and lifts) in customer facilities. The activity of the non-for-profit Open Source Robotics Foundation will remain the same, with some new managers now in charge of open source intellectual property, project governance and growing the ROS, Gazebo and Open-RMF communities.

Several articles have analysed the operation and its downstream implications for the robotics community. Find some very good instances and references that we particularly reccommend below:

• The Robot Report, general info and some quotes.
• Techcrunch, digestion of information and context.
• Acceleration Robotics, some context and some opinions from "ROS insider" Victor Mayoral, Founder at Alias Robotics.

From our part Alias Robotics, we'd like first to send our massive congratulations to Open Robotics and its team. We believe this is a milestone in next generation robotics, with ROS likely being part of more than 50% commercial robots in two years time. We believe it is a sign of maturity of the robotics industry which now will be further powered by a MNC as Google, which has a long track record in providing state of the art cybersecurity practices, methods and tools. Indeed, us at Alias Robotics partially adhered to and reworked their Responsible Disclosure policy when disclosing vulnerabilities to third parties, as wrapped up in Robot Vulnerability Database (RVD). We do not question that this acquisition is overall fantastic news for improving the overall robot cybersecurity position of the industry.

Security will be a key driver for ROS and overall any development for modern robotics. With many work yet to be done we believe that this acquisition is a game changer in the fate of ROS. From Alias Robotics we are extremely happy to keep on supporting best in class cybersecurity for (ROS) robot systems and helping our customers stay ahead from malicious actors, while holding to our continuous support to the ROS community, robotics community and ecosystem.