Welcome to This Week at Open Robotics Headquarters! This is a new and (hopefully) regular update on what’s happening behind the scenes of Open Robotics. These updates are to give folks some insight into what we do, as well as basic information about what we have in the works. Because I hope to keep them short, I’ll only list some of the highlights from the week. As always, questions/comments/feedback welcome!
This first edition will be a little longer though, as I share a quick refresher on the foundation and why we do what we do. Open Robotics is a US-registered, mission-driven, non-profit organization. Our mission is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development. In practice, we provide the financial, legal, technological, and community structures required to build, sustain, and grow a healthy open source robotics ecosystem. It may sound dry and boring, but it’s a huge amount of work that occurs largely (and ideally) invisibly. It’s also work that we’re proud to do, because we believe in the mission of Open Robotics. 
This week we’re continuing the IRS-mandated work on the yearly audit, which is a necessary evil for all non-profits over a certain size. This work is going to continue for weeks to come, only to confirm what we already know: everything is financially in order. 
Since it’s only seven weeks away (
), ROSCon Global 2026 work is ramping up to a fever pitch. There are so many details that go into putting this event together for the community (seriously, it’s just mind boggling). We’re excited to have so many companies want to sponsor the event this year and are starting to have a hard time finding space for all of them to exhibit. Good problems to have are still problems! If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, you may want to do it soon because at this rate it’s going to sell out early this year.
We’ve launched two new Technical Committees in the OSRA Technical Governance Committee (TGC). One to create a security policy for OSRF and OSRA, including the projects, and another to produce the Open Robotics Technology Strategy for 2027. We’re also reviewing a lot of pull requests from the technical writing firm we hired with the 2025 projects grants. They’re redoing all of the ROS documentation to make it easier to find what you need and to use once you find it.
There are some larger initiatives that we’re starting to sketch out. One of them is an Open Robotics Ambassadors program, intended to recognize, support, and cultivate community members who are doing great work in their regions and industries. Another is an overhaul of the events calendar. We want to make it easier for people to find what they need and for project and community group organizers to maintain their events.
These are some of the highlights from this past week for your Open Robotics leadership team.