Microsoft has clearly come a long way on the robotics front, and proved the point by demonstrating a functional robot at the TechEd 2008 Developers conference that was developed using the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.
The robot was dubbed the BallmerBot, and made its appearance during the Bill Gates keynote. This Hobbit-sized device sported an LCD monitor (displaying Microsoft President Steve Ballmer’s smiling visage) and recited Ballmer’s well-known “Developers, Developers, Developers!” chant as it made its stage entrance.
Developed at the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics (LPR) at UMASS Amherst, the BallmerBot robot design is based on what the LPR team refers to as the “uBot-5″.
According to a hot-off-the-press article by Todd Bishop over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft will be launching Microsoft Robotics Studio today. Microsoft has been hard at work on developing software for robotics applications for at least the last few years — we’ve posted about their efforts here and here — and this seems to be the culmination of their efforts towards creating a common robotics software platform.
Bishop’s article includes a few quotes from Tandy Trower, the General Manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group:
“That’s really what we’re trying to do with this,” Trower said of Microsoft’s robotics initiative. “We want to make development of robotic applications available to a wider audience.”
Microsoft Windows helped unify all those disparate PC efforts in the early years of personal computerdom — anyone remember DR-DOS, GeoWorks, GemOS or CP/M? Regardless of personal opinions about Microsoft Windows that may be all over the map, one can’t deny that the growth of Microsoft Windows has made the PC platform the most widely-used personal computing environment in the world today. Could Microsoft’s new robotics initiatives do the same thing for the robotics industry?
As a follow-up to a recent post concerning Microsoft’s activity in the educational robotics arena, we’ve learned (by way of Windowsfordevices.com) that Microsoft has added some Mindstorms related content to the “Coding4Fun” section of the MSDN developer website.
The resources include an introduction to programming Mindstorms with Visual Studio Express (by Sharplogic Software), while another article penned by John Wingfield offers additional tips and tricks on Mindstorms programming. Both articles feature code sample downloads for C#, C++, Visual Basic and J#.
Check out the original source article here, or visit the Mindstorms MSDN pages here. – [Jeff James]
Over the past few years, Microsoft has shown an increasing interest in using personal robotics to drive awareness of computer programming among high school and college students. Microsoft’s Dr. Stewart Tansley gave a presentation here at the Maker Faire yesterday that detailed Microsoft’s efforts towards using personal and educational robotics to drive that interest among students. Tansley’s demonstration (humorously dubbed “World Domination with Robots: A How-To Guide”) touched on a number of educational robotics initiatives that Microsoft was supportive of, including robotics for .NET, the CoroBot reference platform, .NET for LEGO Mindstorms and other programs.
Microsoft also has been encouraging use of Windows embedded systems and off-the-shelf PC technology in educational robotics projects, as well as highlighting modular systems (such as USB Phidgets) that make using the PC as a robotics platform a more attractive option. The stated goal is to inspire the next generation of computer science students, and Microsoft seems to be putting more resources toward their activities in this area.
See our previous post on White Box Robotics for additional PC-related activities in robotics as well.
Check out an earlier version of Tansley’s presentation (PDF) here, or check out his web site here.- [Jeff James]
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