James is a PR2 robot by Willow Garage that was awarded to the IAS group as part of the PR2 Beta Program. The IAS group was selected among eleven universities to receive a PR2 robot for two years to support the implementation of the Cognitive Robot Abstract Machine framework in the ROS environment.
A detailed description of the PR2 robot can be found on the Willow Garage web site: http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/pr2/overview