Microsoft reveals multi-platform Robotics Studio

It seems that Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Academy isn't the only organization working on multi-platform robotics software these days, as Microsoft has just revealed its own so-called Robotics Studio, which is intended to be a rich, scalable programming environment that can control anything from the simplest Lego Mindstorms creation to a highly-complex, car-assembling industrial bot. Unveiled at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exhibition in Pittsburgh, PA, the new software development kit will let users employ a visual programming tool for building command sets or debugging their applications, and also utilizes technology from PhysX manufacturer Aegia to enable realistic 3D simulations for determining how programs will execute in the real world. Not only does the platform support interaction with properly-formatted third-party languages, it will also allow outside developers to build their own commercial applications in the same way that software manufacturers create programs to run on Windows or Windows Mobile today. You can download a preview of the new toolkit-- which also enables web-based bot control -- by following the Read link, or if you just want to know a little more about its history and capabilities, Channel 9 has a great video featuring demos and interviews with the development team.

[Via Information Week]

[bob @ Jun 21st 2006 2:30PM]

another garanteed money bleeder

[Nihls @ Jun 21st 2006 2:49PM]

STOP!!! The machines will take over. I have seen the future and it is bleak. "The M.E.E.K. shall inherit the earth" M.icrosoft E.ngineered E.lectric K.illbots

[DT @ Jun 21st 2006 2:54PM]

A MS robotics team? Why do I have visions of the Robocop-esque robotic hallway enforcer from Family Guy?

Heavily-armed Robot:"Halt! Present hall pass!"

Little girl, showing hall pass: "Right here"

Robot: "Second request! Present hall pass!

Little girl, nervously: "Right here!"

Robot opens fire as girl runs away in horror.

[Todd @ Jun 21st 2006 3:04PM]

"Order 66" comes built-in to the Microsoft Robotics Studio SDK, at no additional cost!

[David @ Jun 21st 2006 3:05PM]

I like the picture - an obvious play on Michelangelo's Creation of Adam (I only know because of Arrested Development... it shall be missed dearly). It, interestingly, raises unsettling moral implications about creation of pseudo-life while at the same time conveying a certain megalomaniacal narcissism. Good stuff, really.

[aleandro @ Jun 21st 2006 3:13PM]

MS keeps on amazing me. One day they are the bloated tech giant that takes decade to get with the time, the next day they reveal new stuff out of nowhere that just blow your mind away...
Hopefully this product will go the way of the xbox division and other new succesful MS ventures...

[iceatcs @ Jun 21st 2006 3:30PM]

BEWARE the microsoft's robot when it got BSOD.
Surely it will kill everyone.

I think microsoft should have stick with software only, cos they never been very good on hardware.

[Robert @ Jun 21st 2006 3:48PM]

Does anyboduy here remember Atari's Andro Bot. Atari got really full of it's self in the mid-eighties after huge success in the game console market. Then it thought it could make personal robots and sell them too. It nearly bankrupted Atari and ruined peoples careers. No wonder Gates is bailing-out now.

[Casey Tuggle @ Jun 21st 2006 6:24PM]

"I like the picture - an obvious play on Michelangelo's Creation of Adam...[which interestingly] raises unsettling moral implications about creation of pseudo-life while at the same time conveying a certain megalomaniacal narcissism. Good stuff, really. "

I couldn't agree more.

[Ken @ Jun 22nd 2006 8:04AM]

At least Windows-based ATMs never killed anyone. I can see it now with the MS-bots:
"Stack Overflow. Entering default mode: kill, maim, destroy."