There's been all sorts of news from Robo Business.
Besides agitating for robotics standards, Paolo is one of the “Rivals Skeptical of Microsoft's New Robot Software”:
The third annual Robo Business event opened Tuesday morning in Pittsburgh's Station Square with a whiff of controversy, as one established robotics expert dismissed Microsoft's recent foray into the field.
Just hours after Microsoft announced the beta rollout of its DirectX, Aegia-based Microsoft Robotics Studio (MRS), Evolution Robotics president and chief technical officer Paolo Pirjanian called the concept of building a software robotics standard, without heeding demands and costs of hardware, "a nice academic exercise." Although Pirjanian did not mention Microsoft by name, the implication was clear to the 750 or so attendees.
Of course, there's a reason he's aware of the danger of developing a robotics software platform without a clear picture of what your customers want and what kind of hardware they use.
The Register really didn't like Red Whittaker's talk:
For the last twenty years, the same robotics story has been written time and again. It goes something like, “The future is here. Robotics has moved from promise to reality and is set to explode as a major money-making field.”
Local robotics legend William “Red” Whittaker trotted out that tired line today here at the Robo Business conference. Never afraid to pat himself on the back, the Carnegie Mellon University professor promised a future full of autonomous vehicles, automated farming equipment and devices that can crawl through sewers and mines and do so for a serious profit
Also note that the Microsoft Robotics Studio has a blog. There's a link to an MSDN Channel 9 feature on the robotics group that gives a decent overview of some parts of the platform, I think.
Posted by jjwiseman at June 22, 2006 02:03 AM