Abstract: Willow Garage is a new, privately-funded research lab focused on developing the next generation of autonomous devices. We are interested in applications that take computers out of the server room, and enable them to more directly impact the world as robots. Our initial projects include an autonomous car, an unmanned solar-powered boat designed to sail around the world, and a personal robot that can do household chores (in collaboration with the STAIR project at Stanford). We actively seek collaborations with universities, and are working with Professor Mark Yim of Penn in addition to the Stanford collaboration. This talk will give an overview of the projects at Willow Garage, and discuss how the research model compares to those at universities, corporate research labs, and other research institutions.