If you’ve been reading my blog for the last year or so, you probably know that I quite like robotics. Actually, it was almost exactly a year ago (June 24th) that the Podbot was launched. Basically the Podbot was a podcasting robot – we could control it wirelessly with a laptop, and it had an onboard microphone and webcam. Very cool stuff, but unfortuntely, now out of commission. Andrew, Ashish, Dickson and I all had a blast with the project, though it was quite a bit of work.
Looks like the next robot we build might be a little easier! Earlier today at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006, Microsoft introduced a community technology preview of Robotics Studio:
“Microsoft sees great potential in robotics, and we are excited to deliver our first CTP of Robotics Studio, making it easier to create robotic applications across a wide variety of hardware, users and scenarios”, said Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group at Microsoft. “We’ve reached out to a broad range of leading robotics companies and academics early on in the development process and are thrilled with the positive response from the community.”
Microsoft also featured a bunch of third party demos at the event. This is pretty exciting stuff for a hobbyist like myself! I’m going to install the CTP and check it out. You find out more on the project at MSDN, and at the official team blog.
Read: Microsoft PressPass
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