diff --git a/resource_retriever/src/resource_retriever/__init__.py b/resource_retriever/src/resource_retriever/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29
diff --git a/resource_retriever/src/resource_retriever/retriever.py b/resource_retriever/src/resource_retriever/retriever.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6edbac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/resource_retriever/src/resource_retriever/retriever.py
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+import roslib; roslib.load_manifest('resource_retriever2')
+import rospy
+import subprocess
+import urlgrabber, string
+
+PACKAGE_PREFIX = 'package://'
+
+def rospack_find(package):
+    process = subprocess.Popen(['rospack', 'find', package], shell=False, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
+    (stdout, stderr) = process.communicate()
+    if len(stderr) > 0:
+        raise Exception(stderr)
+    else:
+        return string.strip(stdout)
+
+def get(url):
+    mod_url = url
+    if url.find(PACKAGE_PREFIX) == 0:
+        mod_url = url[len(PACKAGE_PREFIX):]
+        pos = mod_url.find('/')
+        if pos == -1:
+            raise Exception("Could not parse package:// format into file:// format for "+url)
+
+        package = mod_url[0:pos]
+        mod_url = mod_url[pos:]
+        package_path = rospack_find(package)
+
+        mod_url = "file://" + package_path + mod_url;
+
+    return urlgrabber.urlopen(mod_url)	
+
diff --git a/stack.xml b/stack.xml
index 1be1022..76b1e65 100644
--- a/stack.xml
+++ b/stack.xml
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
     is <a href="http://ros.org/wiki/urdf">urdf</a>, which parses URDF files, and constructs an
     object model (C++) of the robot.
   </description>
-  <author>Maintained by Wim Meeussen, wim@willowgarage.com</author>
+  <author>Wim Meeussen, John Hsu, David Lu</author>
   <license>GPL,BSD,MIT</license>  
   <review status="Doc reviewed" notes="2009-10-02"/>
   <url>http://ros.org/wiki/robot_model</url>