Southwest Research Institute

Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) is a premier, independent, applied research and development (R&D) organization implementing advanced applications, creating unique integrations, and solving the most difficult challenges for government and commercial clients worldwide. The staff of more than 3,100 specializes in the creation and transfer of technology in engineering and the physical sciences. Over decades, SwRI has grown from a single building to more than 2 million square feet of laboratories, workshops, test facilities, and offices, occupying more than 1,500 acres. For more than four decades, SwRI has provided expert robotics R&D support across the full spectrum of robot types, markets, and applications, including manipulator integration and application development, custom robot and end effector design and fabrication, human-machine cooperation, and autonomous mobile robots. SwRI curates the Robot Operating System-Industrial (ROS-I) open-source project, which is a global robotics research initiative steered by a consortium. The project creates software capabilities and applications for the industry based on open-source building blocks. Operating as a nonprofit since its foundation in 1947, SwRI works in the public’s best interest and toward the betterment of humanity.