Technology Lab / Information Technology

Roll your own Robot Jones with Microsoft’s robotics kit

This week Microsoft released a set of tools that will allow developers to …

Microsoft's robotic toolkit is finally out! In case you missed it, the Microsoft Robotics Studio is a Windows-based development platform that lets software engineers and hobbyists create applications for, you guessed it, robots. Those that know how to code can use languages such as C#, VB.NET, and IronPython to create robotic software. Hobbyists who aren't acquainted with programming languages will find the studio's visual drag-and-drop environment very easy to use and well-documented as well.

Tandy Trower, General Manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group, believes that Microsoft released the robotics studio at just the right time. Right now, Trower says, the robotics industry is fragmented because there is a lack of consistency in development tools. He compares it to the PC industry of 30 years ago.

In the late 1970s, you had all of these architectures based on different processors and operating software, so there was no consistency and the programming tools were very crude. That made it hard to write applications and typically required rewriting code to move applications from, say, an Apple machine to one from Atari or RadioShack or Commodore. That was the first time that Microsoft provided a common ground for an emerging industry. By developing a version of BASIC and porting it to almost every hardware platform on the market, Bill Gates and Paul Allen provided a common lingua franca across different kinds of hardware, which helped get the software industry up and running.

Robots, although a large part of pop culture, have struggled to find a place in the mainstream hobby market because of their cost and difficult learning curves for development. "Sensors like laser range finders for measuring distance can cost about US$10,000. By the time you include sensors, actuators and processors, it can put the cost of building a robot beyond most people's means," said Trower. He continues, "Probably even more important is the thing I talked about earlier: that fact that software development has just been too hard. So it becomes a world of haves and have-nots. The haves are like the people in the early PC days who had the expertise to build the hardware and the software. Then there is a vast majority of people who would like to use this technology but can't because of the technical challenges."

Today, there are several affordable robots available that will work with the Microsoft Robotic Studio including:

If you don't want to dish out the cash for a robot, the studio comes with a simulation runtime that relies on DirectX for rendering and AGEIA PhysX Technology for physics simulation.

It should be interesting to see how this project takes off with the public. Because the Visual Programming Language environment doesn't require users to write any code, it could appeal to varying levels of hobbyists. In terms of languages, the Robotics Studio isn't just limited to a Microsoft umbrella, either. As long as the language supports the Microsoft Robotics Studio services-based architecture, it can be used.

The non-commercial release of the Microsoft Robotics Studio can be downloaded from the company's website for free. A commercial license for the studio costs US$399.

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