Robots and Microsoft - will $ make success?

Microsoft knows where the action is - they don't always seem the best of playmates though.

Microsoft Robotics Studio Provides Common Ground for Robotics Innovation: Community technology preview of Windows-based robotics development platform garners broad industry support.

Microsoft’s support for advanced robotics was also in evidence at RoboBusiness when Carnegie Mellon University announced plans for a Center for Robotics Innovation. Established with funding and support from the Microsoft Robotics Group, the center will operate a Web site, http://www.cir.ri.cmu.edu, for hobbyists, academics and commercial companies to share robotics ideas, technology and software. The new center will open by late 2006.

Microsoft wants to drive Robot standard

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.

Asimov Who?

Despite the boring nature of the extract below, this is quite an interesting review of robot safety issues - industrial safety and social safety.

Trust me, I'm a robot | Economist.com

With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferences—an international group of scientists, academics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons—the new group of robo-ethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the European Robotics Symposium in Palermo, Sicily.