PhysiCar Community License 1.0¶
This is the license for the software that AI Castle Inc. publishes in source form for the PhysiCar robot and simulator, including the physicar-ros and physicar-sim repositories. You may read, run, modify and share the software to learn, teach and build with PhysiCar robots and the PhysiCar platform, including in paid classes. Running the software on other robot hardware, offering it as a service, or using it to build a competing product requires a commercial license.
- The PhysiCar AI online service is governed by the Terms of Use; the real robot by the Real Robot Terms; the PhysiCar extension for VS Code by its own license agreement shipped with the extension.
- Related pages: Genuine PhysiCar Products · Trademark Policy · Third-Party Notices.
- Commercial licensing: [email protected].
The English text below is the only legally effective version.
PhysiCar Community License
Version 1.0
Copyright (c) 2026 AICASTLE Inc. All rights reserved.
1. DEFINITIONS
"Licensor" means AICASTLE Inc.
"Software" means the software made available by Licensor under this
License, in source or object form, excluding Third-Party Components.
"Modified Software" means any modification of, or work based on, the
Software that You make. References in this License to the Software include
Modified Software, but never include Third-Party Components themselves,
even when combined with the Software.
"Third-Party Components" means the specific files identified by path in
the NOTICE file, or bearing a notice in the file itself, as licensed under
terms other than this License, in each case only to the extent of the work
of the third-party author. A directory-level or package-level entry in the
NOTICE file identifies only files that originate from the named
third-party work. All other files made available by Licensor, including
model, world, mesh, image and asset files authored by Licensor, are
Software even if they are located in the same directory or package as a
Third-Party Component.
"Your Works" means applications, tools, models, worlds, curricula,
notebooks, scripts and similar works that You create for use with Genuine
PhysiCar Products or the PhysiCar Platform, even if they use the Software's
interfaces, templates or examples or include incidental portions of the
Software that Licensor provides for that purpose. Your Works are not
Software.
"Genuine PhysiCar Product" means a physical robot, vehicle, controller
board or other hardware device that is manufactured by or for Licensor and
is sold or supplied as a PhysiCar product by Licensor or by a distributor
authorized in writing by Licensor, as identified by a serial number,
purchase record, the list of Genuine PhysiCar Products published at
physicar.ai/legal, or other means Licensor uses to identify genuine units.
A Genuine PhysiCar Product does not cease to be genuine because its owner
repairs it or replaces failed or worn parts with equivalent parts.
Authorization of a distributor does not by itself make any product a
Genuine PhysiCar Product. Software images, factory-reset or recovery
images, installers, containers, virtual machines and development
environments (including hosted or cloud development environments), and the
PhysiCar Platform, are not Genuine PhysiCar Products; to the extent they
contain the Software they are Software and are subject to this License.
"Non-Genuine Hardware" means any robot, vehicle, drone, controller board,
single-board computer or other device that runs the Software to operate or
control physical motors, actuators or sensors, or that is intended or
advertised to do so, and that is not a Genuine PhysiCar Product. A
general-purpose computer, virtual machine, container or cloud environment
that runs the Software only for simulation, development, testing, study or
teaching, and that does not control a physical robot other than a Genuine
PhysiCar Product, is not Non-Genuine Hardware.
"PhysiCar Platform" means the PhysiCar AI online services operated by
Licensor at physicar.ai and its subdomains, or any successor services.
"Permitted Purpose" means each of the following:
(a) use, study, research, evaluation and experimentation, by an
individual or by a school, university or other non-profit
institution, that is not for direct or indirect commercial
advantage, on any computer or server under Your control. Receiving
a public research grant, or publishing results, is not by itself a
commercial advantage;
(b) education, instruction, training and competitions, whether or not a
fee is charged to participants, in which each participant uses the
Software on a Genuine PhysiCar Product or through the PhysiCar
Platform. In connection with such an activity the Software
(including any simulator) may also be installed and run on
computers and servers under the control of the organizer, the
instructors and the participants, for preparation, for the activity
itself and for follow-up work, where that running is ancillary to
the use of Genuine PhysiCar Products or the PhysiCar Platform and
not a substitute for it;
(c) installing, running, modifying, extending, repairing and operating
the Software on a Genuine PhysiCar Product that You own or lawfully
control, on the PhysiCar Platform, or on any computer or server
under Your control for a purpose described in (a), (b), (d) or (e);
(d) developing, testing and sharing Your Works and Modified Software
that are designed for use with Genuine PhysiCar Products or the
PhysiCar Platform and not for operating, controlling or simulating
Non-Genuine Hardware;
(e) evaluation by any person or entity, on computers under its control,
for the purpose of deciding whether to acquire Genuine PhysiCar
Products or PhysiCar Platform services; and
(f) submitting Contributions to Licensor.
An act described in Section 3 is not a Permitted Purpose. No Permitted
Purpose includes installing or running the Software on, or using it to
operate or control, Non-Genuine Hardware.
"Competing Offering" means a product or service that is marketed, offered
or provided as an alternative to, or that performs substantially the same
function as, a Genuine PhysiCar Product or the PhysiCar Platform, including
an educational or hobby robot, a robot kit or board, a robot software image
for Non-Genuine Hardware, a robotics simulator, or a hosted robotics or AI
simulation, training or education platform. A Competing Offering does not
include (i) education, instruction, training or competitions that You
provide within Permitted Purpose (b), whether or not a fee is charged,
merely because participants could obtain similar instruction or tools from
the PhysiCar Platform; (ii) hosting permitted by Section 3(b); or (iii)
Your Works and Modified Software that You Distribute in compliance with
Section 2 solely for use on Genuine PhysiCar Products or with the PhysiCar
Platform. These exclusions do not extend to any robot, kit, board, software
image, simulator or online platform that You provide as a substitute for a
Genuine PhysiCar Product or the PhysiCar Platform, even if it is used in
education.
"Distribute" means to make the Software available to any third party, in
source or object form, by any means, including sale, gift, lease,
download, network transfer or pre-installation on hardware. Providing
access to a running instance of the Software over a network is not
Distribution; it is governed by Section 3(b).
"Contribution" means any work of authorship that You intentionally submit
to Licensor for inclusion in the Software.
"You" means the individual or legal entity exercising rights under this
License. If You are a legal entity, You are responsible for ensuring that
entities You control comply with this License with respect to Software
they receive through You, and an act by such an entity in connection with
that Software is treated as Your act.
2. LICENSE GRANT
By using, reproducing, modifying or Distributing the Software You accept
this License. The license granted in this Section is limited to the
Permitted Purposes and is conditioned on Your compliance with Section 3;
any use outside the Permitted Purposes or in breach of Section 3 is
outside the scope of the license granted.
Subject to the terms of this License, Licensor grants You a worldwide,
non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license, for the term of the
applicable copyright, to:
(a) use, reproduce and modify the Software, and create Modified
Software, for any Permitted Purpose;
(b) Distribute the Software, including Modified Software, in source form
to others, who receive it under this License, provided that each
copy is accompanied by this License, the NOTICE file and the license
texts of any Third-Party Components included in the copy, and that
Your modifications are identified as modifications together with
their dates. Making the source publicly available under this
License, for example in a public repository, is a permitted
Distribution. You are not in breach of this License merely because a
recipient uses the Software outside the Permitted Purposes, unless
You Distribute or promote the Software for such a use. A
version-control history or changelog that accompanies the copy and
identifies Your changes and their dates satisfies the marking
requirement in this paragraph; and
(c) Distribute the Software, including Modified Software, in object form
(including as a disk image, container image, package or other build
artifact) only:
(i) pre-installed on, or for installation on, a Genuine PhysiCar
Product; a transfer of a Genuine PhysiCar Product together
with the Software installed on it is permitted without the
conditions of Section 2(b);
(ii) as part of Your Works designed for use with a Genuine
PhysiCar Product or the PhysiCar Platform, where Your Works
do not use the Software to operate, control or simulate
Non-Genuine Hardware;
(iii) as an unmodified copy of a software image published by
Licensor, supplied to a recipient solely for installation on
a Genuine PhysiCar Product that the recipient owns or
lawfully controls; or
(iv) for installation on general-purpose computers, virtual
machines or containers for the recipients' Permitted
Purposes;
in each case accompanied by this License and the NOTICE file, and,
under (ii) and (iv), by the source code of the Software as included
(including Your modifications marked as required by Section 2(b)) or
by a URL from which that source code can be obtained free of charge
for as long as the object form is Distributed. This obligation does
not extend to Your Works that only interface with the Software.
Your Works are not Software, and You may use, license and share Your Works
under any terms You choose.
Each person to whom the Software or a Genuine PhysiCar Product is
Distributed in compliance with this License receives a license directly
from Licensor on the terms of this License. "Non-transferable" means that
You may not assign Your own license; it does not prevent a subsequent
owner or lawful controller of a Genuine PhysiCar Product from receiving
their own license under this Section.
Nothing in this Section 2, and no Permitted Purpose, authorizes any act
described in Section 3. In particular, the right to Distribute under
Section 2(b) or 2(c) does not permit Distribution for use on or with
Non-Genuine Hardware.
3. RESTRICTIONS
The license granted in Section 2 is subject to the following
restrictions. These restrictions apply notwithstanding Section 2 and
regardless of whether an act would otherwise fall within a Permitted
Purpose. Unless You hold a separate written commercial license from
Licensor, You may not:
(a) Distribute, sell, lease or otherwise provide the Software, or any
product, kit, board, software image, container or environment
containing the Software, for use on or with Non-Genuine Hardware, or
install or run the Software on Non-Genuine Hardware;
(b) provide the Software, or any of its functionality, to third parties
as a hosted, managed, cloud or network service, or as
software-as-a-service; except that You may run the Software on
infrastructure You control and make it available over a network to
persons taking part in an activity that You conduct within a
Permitted Purpose (including Your students, employees, members,
trainees, competition or hackathon participants, and visitors to an
event), provided that (i) access is limited to those persons and is
not offered to the general public, (ii) the hosted Software is not
offered, marketed or priced as a separate product or service
(tuition, course, event or participation fees are not fees for the
Software), and (iii) You do not host the Software for, or on behalf
of, another organization's business;
(c) copy, adapt or incorporate the Software, in whole or in part, into a
Competing Offering; use the Software to design, develop, operate or
provide a Competing Offering; or use the Software or its outputs to
train a machine-learning model for a Competing Offering;
(d) remove, alter or obscure any copyright, license, trademark or
attribution notice contained in the Software;
(e) sublicense the Software, or Distribute the Software under any terms
other than this License (this does not apply to Your Works);
(f) use the Software to (i) gain unauthorized access to the PhysiCar
Platform, or to a Genuine PhysiCar Product that You do not own or
lawfully control; (ii) evade, falsify or interfere with the fees,
credits, quotas, license verification or genuine-product
verification of the PhysiCar Platform; (iii) cause a device that is
not a Genuine PhysiCar Product to identify itself to the PhysiCar
Platform as a Genuine PhysiCar Product; or (iv) access the PhysiCar
Platform other than through its documented interfaces or through the
Software as provided by Licensor; or
(g) make, market, sell, supply or Distribute any hardware, kit, board,
disk image, installer, script, configuration or instructions that
are designed, adapted or advertised for installing or running the
Software on Non-Genuine Hardware, or knowingly induce, encourage or
assist any other person to do anything described in Section 3(a) or
this Section 3(g).
Section 3(c) does not prohibit (i) evaluating, reviewing, testing or
comparing the Software or Genuine PhysiCar Products with other products or
services, and publishing or reporting the results, where this is done for
a Permitted Purpose and not for the purpose of designing, developing,
training or improving a Competing Offering; or (ii) using the general
knowledge, skills and experience that You gain from using the Software,
provided that the Software's source code, architecture or specific
implementation is not used, reproduced or adapted for a Competing
Offering.
The following are not breaches of Section 3(f) when done to a Genuine
PhysiCar Product that You own or lawfully control, for a Permitted
Purpose: configuring, pinning, delaying, disabling or redirecting its
update mechanism (including to a mirror You operate); changing or
resetting its local passwords or access controls; and modifying its
parameters or software. You remain responsible for safe operation as
stated in Section 10.
4. THIRD-PARTY COMPONENTS
Third-Party Components are licensed under their own terms, which are
identified by path in the NOTICE file or in the relevant files. Nothing in
this License limits Your rights under those terms with respect to those
components. This License, not the third-party terms, applies to
Licensor-authored files that are not Third-Party Components. This License
applies to the Software and, to the extent permitted by the applicable
third-party licenses, to the combination of the Software with Third-Party
Components. Nothing in this License, or in the terms of sale of any
Genuine PhysiCar Product, prohibits any act that the license of a
Third-Party Component requires to be permitted, including modification
and reverse engineering of that component to the extent so required.
5. CONTRIBUTIONS
(a) Inbound license. By submitting a Contribution, You agree that the
Contribution is licensed to Licensor and to every recipient of the
Software under this License, and You additionally grant Licensor a
perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable
license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, sublicense and
relicense the Contribution under any terms, including commercial
terms. Licensor accepts Contributions only on the terms of this
Section 5. A Contribution offered subject to any other license,
notice or condition is not accepted and will not be included in the
Software unless Licensor expressly agrees to those terms in a signed
writing. If You are unable or unwilling to agree to this Section, do
not submit the Contribution.
(b) Patent license. You grant Licensor and every recipient of the
Software a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free patent
license under any patent claims owned or controlled by You or
entities You control that are necessarily infringed by Your
Contribution alone or by the combination of Your Contribution with
the Software to which it was submitted, to make, have made, use,
sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise exploit the Software.
(c) Moral rights. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, You
agree not to assert or exercise moral rights in the Contribution
(including the rights of disclosure, attribution and integrity)
against Licensor, its sublicensees or any recipient with respect to
the modification, publication, distribution, attribution or
non-attribution of the Contribution. Licensor may attribute You in
the NOTICE file or in the version history.
(d) Representations. You represent that (i) You authored the
Contribution or otherwise have the right to grant the licenses in
this Section; (ii) the Contribution contains no code, model, data or
other material licensed under terms other than this License, except
material that You clearly identify, together with its license, in
the submission; and (iii) if Your employer or another party holds
rights in the Contribution, You have that party's permission to
submit it on these terms.
(e) You retain all of Your rights in the Contribution, including the
right to use it for any purpose. Licensor is under no obligation to
accept, merge or retain any Contribution.
6. TRADEMARKS
This License does not grant any right to use the names, logos or
trademarks of Licensor, including "PhysiCar", "PHYSICAR AI" and "AI
CASTLE" and their transliterations, except for truthful references that
are necessary to identify the Software or Licensor's products and that do
not use those marks in the name of any product, service, repository
organization or domain of Yours, and are not used to market Non-Genuine
Hardware or to present Non-Genuine Hardware as compatible with, or
intended to run, the Software. Use of Licensor's trademarks is further
governed by any trademark policy that Licensor publishes at physicar.ai;
until such a policy is published, this Section governs.
For clarity, each of the following is a truthful reference permitted by
this Section: (i) keeping the original repository, package, module or
file names of the Software in a fork or modified copy that is identifiable
as Yours (for example, by a hosting service's fork attribution or by the
modification notice required by Section 2(b)); and (ii) naming a course,
class, curriculum, event, competition or project to truthfully state that
it uses Genuine PhysiCar Products or the PhysiCar Platform (for example,
"PhysiCar robotics class"). In each case You must not state or imply that
Licensor makes, endorses, certifies, sponsors or authorizes Your modified
version, course or project. Renaming Your modified version to avoid such
an implication does not violate Section 3(d).
7. PATENTS
(a) Patent license. Subject to this License and to Your continued
compliance with it, Licensor grants You a non-exclusive, worldwide,
royalty-free, non-transferable license under Licensed Patent Claims
to make, use, modify and Distribute the Software, including Modified
Software, for Permitted Purposes only. "Licensed Patent Claims"
means patent claims owned by Licensor, or licensable by Licensor
without payment to a third party, now or in the future, that are
necessarily infringed by the Software as provided by Licensor, alone
or in combination with a Genuine PhysiCar Product or the PhysiCar
Platform.
(b) Non-assertion. In addition, Licensor will not assert any patent
claim owned by or licensable by Licensor against You on the basis of
(i) Your use of a Genuine PhysiCar Product that You own or lawfully
control, or of the PhysiCar Platform through its documented
interfaces, in accordance with this License and the applicable
terms of sale or service; (ii) Your development, use and sharing of
Your Works and Modified Software for a Permitted Purpose; or (iii)
Your hosting of the Software as permitted by Section 3(b). This
commitment is personal to You, does not extend to any Competing
Offering, to Non-Genuine Hardware, or to any provision of the
Software as a service beyond Section 3(b), and ends when Your rights
under this License end.
(c) Limits. No patent license or other patent right is granted, by
implication, estoppel or otherwise, except as stated in this
Section. This Section does not extend any right to any person other
than You.
(d) Defensive termination. If You, or an entity that controls, is
controlled by, or is under common control with You, institutes
patent litigation against any person or entity (including a
cross-claim or counterclaim) alleging that the Software, a Genuine
PhysiCar Product or the PhysiCar Platform, or any part of them,
infringes a patent, all licenses and commitments granted to You
under this License terminate as of the date such litigation is
filed. Such termination is not subject to reinstatement under
Section 9.
8. COMMERCIAL LICENSING
Any use outside the Permitted Purposes, including bundling the Software
with other hardware, providing it as a service beyond Section 3(b), or
developing a Competing Offering, requires a separate written commercial
license from Licensor. Contact: [email protected].
9. TERMINATION
(a) This License terminates automatically as to any person or legal
entity that breaches any of its terms (the "Breaching Party"). Where
more than one legal entity is comprised in "You", termination
applies only to the legal entity that committed the breach and to
persons acting on its behalf; the rights of the other entities are
not terminated unless they knowingly participated in, directed or
benefited from the breach.
(b) If the Breaching Party ceases the breach and cures it, its rights
under this License are reinstated (i) provisionally, unless and
until Licensor expressly and finally terminates them by written
notice, and (ii) permanently, if Licensor does not notify the
Breaching Party of the breach by reasonable means within 60 days
after the breach has been cured. To cure a breach the Breaching
Party must cease it, remedy its effects to the extent reasonably
practicable (including withdrawing any copies Distributed in breach
that remain under its control), and confirm the cure to Licensor in
writing on request.
(c) The Breaching Party's rights are also reinstated permanently if
Licensor notifies it of the breach, the Breaching Party cures the
breach within 30 days after receiving that notice, and it has not
received any earlier notice of breach of this License from Licensor
within the preceding 12 months.
(d) Paragraphs (b) and (c) do not apply to a wilful breach of Section
3(a), (b), (c), (f) or (g), to a repeated breach of the same kind,
or to a termination under Section 7(d).
(e) Termination does not affect the right of a consumer to continue
running, on a Genuine PhysiCar Product that the consumer owns, the
Software as installed on it by Licensor, except in the case of a
wilful and uncured breach of Section 3(a), (b) or (c).
(f) Sections 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7(d), 9, 10, 11 and 12 survive termination.
After termination, Section 3 continues to apply to every copy,
modification, model, benchmark result and other material that the
Breaching Party obtained or made from the Software under this
License. Termination does not limit any other right or remedy of
Licensor, including damages and injunctive relief. Termination of
the Breaching Party's rights does not terminate the rights of others
who received the Software from it in compliance with this License.
10. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. Robots and
simulators may behave unexpectedly; You are responsible for their safe
use. Warranty for Genuine PhysiCar Products is governed separately by the
terms of sale of those products (see Section 12(e)). Where You received
the Software as part of a Genuine PhysiCar Product that You purchased as a
consumer, Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected by this
Section.
11. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, LICENSOR SHALL NOT BE
LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE
DAMAGES, OR FOR LOSS OF DATA, PROFITS OR USE, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING
TO THE SOFTWARE OR THIS LICENSE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGES. Nothing in this License excludes or limits liability that
cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including liability
for death or personal injury, liability under product liability law, and
liability for wilful misconduct or gross negligence.
12. GENERAL
(a) Governing law and venue. This License is governed by the laws of the
Republic of Korea, without regard to its choice-of-law rules. If You
are a consumer, jurisdiction is determined by the applicable rules
of civil procedure and consumer-protection law. Otherwise the courts
of the Republic of Korea have exclusive jurisdiction, and the Seoul
Central District Court is the court of first instance, to the extent
permitted by mandatory law.
(b) Versions. Licensor may publish revised versions
of this License. Each release of the Software identifies the
applicable version of this License in its LICENSE file. Software
that You received under a given version remains licensed under that
version. This License applies only to Software that Licensor makes
available under this License. If a revised version of this License
would impose
additional restrictions, Licensor will announce it in the release
notes at least 30 days before it is delivered through automatic
updates, and You may decline that update and continue using the
version You have.
(c) Severability; no waiver. If any provision of this License is held
unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect. A failure
to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.
(d) Language. This License is written in English. Any translation is
provided for convenience only and has no legal effect; the English
text governs.
(e) Relationship to product and platform terms. The Software may be
pre-installed on or delivered with a Genuine PhysiCar Product that
is sold under separate terms of sale, warranty terms or
documentation, and the PhysiCar Platform is provided under its own
terms of service. Those documents continue to govern the hardware,
its warranty and safe use, Platform accounts and services, and any
software that is not the Software (including software provided
under a separate end-user license agreement). With respect to the
Software only, Licensor agrees that this License governs and that
Licensor will not rely on any provision of its terms of sale,
warranty terms or documentation, in any version and whenever issued,
to prohibit or restrict an act that this License permits. This
Section 12(e) does not enlarge the rights granted in Section 2 and
does not affect Section 3(f) or Section 10.
END OF LICENSE
