Microsoft has been seen as slow in reacting to the advent of the Internet
and mobile computing. But it’s not going to be caught napping where robots
are concerned.
In fact, the company is determined to lead in this area, not follow.
The company today unveiled the community technology preview (CTP) of
Microsoft Robotics Studio (MRS), which it is billing as a development
toolkit for commercial developers and academics to create robotic
applications.
Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft robotics group, sees this as
much more than a bunch of Robbie the Robots inadvertently crushing our toes
as they move from room to room, warning whenever danger approaches.
Trower told internetnews.com that robotics represents the next
logical leap in computing, going from a passive to a more proactive role in
people’s lives.
“Robotics is that dimension where the PC gets up off your desktop, it
interacts in the environment that you’re interacting with, and interacts
with you in some new and novel ways,” he said.
“So rather than being bound
to the top of your desktop, or being bound to the keyboard or being bound to
the mouse, it’s actually taking in inputs in richer ways and interpreting
them in richer ways and learning how to interact with you beyond being this
block of technology that sits there on your desk.”
Microsoft is not attempting to lock up the space, Trower added, but is
simply trying to act as a federator of good ideas.
“This is not about Microsoft trying to force-feed a particular development
approach. It’s about enabling the community to bring the best of what they
have together,” he said.
Illah Norubakhsh, director of the Carnegie Mellon University Center for
Robotics Innovation (established with funding provided by Microsoft), told
internetnews.com that having such a force will help the industry move
forward.
“You need to be able to integrate diverse sets of services onto a single
robot, and one person or one team won’t be able to do that.
So having a
foundation that allows sharing at a modular level is a necessary requirement
for that to succeed and it’s exactly that kind of undertaking that Microsoft
is making.”
Norubakhsh added that Microsoft specifically requested that any code
developed by CMU be made part of the public domain.
“That tells the story about what Microsoft’s interest in this is,” he said.
Although Microsoft plans to ship code later this year, Trower said that the
company has no particular revenue expectations for this solution, or even a
sense of the size of the market.
“While we’re seeing some interesting development ideas, the real potential
for the market may not be for another three to five years,” he said.
During a preview at the 2006 RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition today,
Microsoft showed working MRS demos from a number of companies in different
industries, including Fischertechnik and Lego Group, which appeal to
hobbyists, as well as robotics OEMs and component manufacturers such as
MobileRobots, Parallax and Phidgets.
Moreover, another half-dozen commercial companies have expressed an interest
in using MRS as a platform for robot products under development.
The Center for Robotics Innovation, set to open in late 2006, will operate a
Web site for hobbyists, academics and
commercial companies to share robotics ideas, technology and software.
