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Microsoft's New Attempt To Dominate Robotics
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that Microsoft's Robotics Group is announcing new world domination plans — at least for the robotics world. The company is making its Robotics Developer Studio (RDS), which includes Microsoft's CCR and DSS runtime toolkit, available to anyone for free. Why make it a freebie? Because the company wants to expand its RDS base and get a grip on the robotics development space, hoping big things will come out of it."
Sounds like a plan to me.
When the robot uprising starts, there'll be a million ways to crash the fuckers.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
In addition to creating a single RDS release, the robotics group is also making the source code of selected program samples and other modules available online, hoping to improve collaboration among users. In particular, Microsoft wants to entice the growing community of hobbyists, do-it-yourselfers, and weekend robot builders.
They are releasing code. Which is worth mentioning in the summary, since we are talking about Microsoft. Obviously they are not opening the whole thing, because after they extend, they want to make money, but still it is interesting.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
"Does Microsoft make anything that isn't slow, bloated, and fully integrated into skyne--I mean .NET?"
Notepad.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I will have to second the AC's opinion here...
We call this Business 101. Same reason Oracle kept java free...in the "goal" that its services would be desired later. (Keep Java popular and mainstream)
Why don't we just say we hate Apple, Microsoft, and all other corporations to be fair...or we can legitimately point out where corporations are unethical and not tolerate those acts and support good business practices (There are examples for Microsoft, Apple, etc. Every silver lining has a touch of gray). Plus why start complaining about free software, do you wish they charged for it?
Sorry for that rant...but this isn't front page new format, more flame-bait. As for creating software for robotics, I did find that interesting, thanks.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
DUDE: Robot, grab me a beer.
iROBOT: I'm sorry, Steve says those are bad for you.
DUDE: What the fuck?
iROBOT: Would you like some water with a splash of lemon instead?
DUDE: No, I just want have a beer and play a little... where is my Halo 5?
iROBOT: There was a cutscene that showed a nipple, so it has been discarded. I have replaced it with "Yoga For Everyone." Would you like me to show you some poses? We can...
DUDE: No, please, go ahead and get started with out me. I'm just going to go find this receipt I've been looking for...
Robotics studio was made a paid product 2 years ago.
Looks like they did not get enough buyers and its being offered for free now!
And looks like it hasn't been updated in last few years.
Regarding CCR, .Net 4.0 has made vast improvements in multi-core API. .Net and ConCRT for C++
I don't see how much relevant CCR will be given the release of Task Parallel Library (TPL) for
An email program that's easy to setup the first 50 users, but a nightmare for large corporations.
Really? Every Exchange implementation I've been on in the last 15 years (starting at 1000, 5000, 9000 & my current job @ 15,000 users) has been just as "install and forget" as the first @ 200 users. Perhaps you're just doing it wrong?
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
By the summary's logic, Linus Torvalds must be the next Dr. Evil, because he's been giving away Linux for over a decade.
Honestly people, there are more than enough valid reasons to dislike MS without adding imaginary ones. TFS takes the free release of what's probably at least nifty and interesting software and turns it into an irrelevant blurb about "world domination". As far as I can tell, MS dominates two (closely related) industries: home/office desktop and laptop OSes and utilities, and office software. They have also entered into many other markets, sometimes producing good products, sometimes bad, but never really getting the necessary leverage to "dominate" other, often better competitors for long. (e.g. Xbox, Zune, hotmail, Silverlight, Windows Mobile, Windows Server, even IE at this point.) I'm sure there is no shortage of asshats who go with MS simply because of an easy contract, but I'd like to think that robotics engineers and researchers aren't among them. If the tools are solid, great. If not, no one will care.
Seriously. Hate on MS because of sleazy monopoly abuse. Hate on them for releasing disappointing public-beta style software. But the sort of hyperbolic nonsense on the frontpage makes *NIXers look like unbalanced zealots.
Great, so where can I get a cheap compatible robot and what kind of stuff can I program it to do?
These are MSDN sites.
So be prepared for information overload.
Microsoft Robotics: 3rd Party Hardware
Microsoft Robotics Developer Center
This page is an introduction to robotic simulation, with some nice screen shots of the VSE sample environments: Simulation Overview
Clearly you are a troll. Your anecdotal, uncited evidence was obviously inferior to the parent's anecdotal, uncited evidence. ;)
Microsoft has a LONG LONG LONG history of doing all things legal and illegal to win market share. So dah, blindly thinking they are giving out the SDK free, as in beer, has a high probability it will not feel free or really be free if they win much market share. Look at how they handled the browser for a good example of how they work. They even tried making MS IE free but that wasn't working very well so they had to tie it to the OS, spread its bits all over the OS to fight orders to keep it separate, and even buy up Netscape contracts and pay companies for every unit shipped. And then they shipped a browser with many tied directly to proprietary features of only their platform.
So, dah, who would trust Microsoft to actually compete by making better products? Not too many who've seen them operate over the past 20+ years. If they are so good, let them sell API's which run on top of Linux. Oh wait, they die without the ties to Windows. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
This looks more like Microsoft giving up than going for world domination. A few years ago, Microsoft had a presence at robotics conventions, pushing the thing. That shrank, then disappeared.
A basic problem is that Microsoft Robotics Studio is built on Microsoft Web Services, which is not exactly the tool you want for real-time operation. It has a simple-minded visual programming environment. There's little (any?) vision support. There's little, if any, machine learning. It's really only about two notches above Lego Mindstorms, and way below stuff like DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles or Boston Dynamics' robots.
If you want to see more cutting edge stuff, download Willow Robotics code. They're working hard on vision and making real progress.
Hobbyist robotics needs a major quality upgrade. People are still building '80s type robots. By now, any serious robot should have a vision system and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). Any robot with a laptop, or one of the fancier cell phones, on board has enough compute power for that. But Microsoft Robotics Studio won't take you there.