Microsoft has the muscle to push into any market, but can it make a profit once it gets there? (Insert joke about software bugs and killer robots here.)
Maybe it’s the robotic dog resting in the corner or the R2-D2 “Star Wars” droid on the floor, but Tandy Trower’s office is not a typical workstation found on the Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT – news) campus.
Trower heads the Microsoft Robotics Group, a nine-person operation with the modest trappings of a start-up company but grand ambitions befitting a $44 billion software giant.
Microsoft aims to bring robotics technology to the masses with programming software to ease the development of new applications, replicating an approach it adopted in the early days of the personal computer industry.
A month ago, the company unveiled Microsoft Robotics Studio, a preview of a software designed to make it easier to program robots by eliminating some of the grunt work and creating standards for a variety of hardware types.
It will be interesting to see how this develops.
“(Insert joke about software bugs and killer robots here.)”
certainly:
the “blue screen of death” finally acquires the ability to actually kill you.
Ooh! Nice one.
I’ve always been fascinated with Robots. Not the “lost in space” kind with rotating antennas and flashing thinga-ma-bobs… No, I liked those assembly line robot arms kind of stuff. But they are expensive machines built for a puropose.
Now, with Lego and, hopefully, Microsoft (and toyota and honda…) we are reaching the point of commoditising the “Robot” (in quotes because the word encompasses such a lot of stuff…).
If the “robot” starts to be marketed and produced like the camcorder, there is bound to appear someone with a different way of thinking that finds a newer way of using it. This, like the camcorder and youtube, will give a momentum to the technology, pushing the mass apeal and consequently the commercial factor. This will bear some strange but fantastic fruits.
PS.
(John, hope you read this before TWIT, because it’s a very nice subject too….)
Frankly, I think the Microbots will crash too often to enslave us.
That, or we’d have lots of breaks. “Zarquon is re-booting again; let’s go get something to eat!”
Microsoft’s 3 Laws of Robotics:
1)A robot may not harm Microsoft, or through allowing open source or third party software, harm Microsoft through inaction
2) a robot must follow commands given it by its owner, unless such orders violate the First Law
3) A robot must protect the security of its operating system, unless such violates the First Law.
J/P=?
So you could still order it to bypass its operating system security as long as the result is not harmful to Microsoft?
2015 – highways all over the United States are jammed as Microsoft Genuine Advantage robots all start walking to Redmond for their annual inspection …
The older I get the more attractive the concept of a computer operated Hoverround becomes. I’d build one with a self contained toilet, then ride around the ‘hood wearing naught but a toga, thereby eliminating the need for those damned diapers. Make all the old broads swoon.
Bills Solution to stem cell research…
Bill Gates robots, LOVE IT!
Next Jobs will make colorful Robots.
Then they can fight.
So you could still order it to bypass its operating system security as long as the result is not harmful to Microsoft?
Exactly.
J/P=?
I am a mechanical Engineer.
I love robotics.