Today we're delighted to announce the general availability of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 (RDS 4) which can be downloaded for free from the Microsoft Robotics website. It was just over five months ago that we announced the availability of RDS 4 Beta and since then, the Microsoft Robotics team has been hard at work putting the final touches on RDS 4 to give developers access to the software they need to build robotics applications.

Since the Beta, our number one focus has been on improving the overall quality and stability of RDS 4. With your feedback, we've fixed a number of important issues in the product as well as made improvements to existing samples. Additionally, we updated RDS 4 to work with the release version of the Kinect for Windows SDK.

It is our goal to deliver a great product that meets the needs of the developer and hobbyist communities. We are already seeing RDS 4 being utilized to develop some interesting applications. Speaking of which, last Fall, we announced the Robotics @ Home competition, and are thrilled with the submissions we've received. Today, we're excited to reveal the competition's 10 finalists. Visit the Robotics @ Home Finalists page to read more about the finalists, including how they think robotics will change the world and what they would do with the prize winnings. We look forward to announcing the grand prize winner in May of this year.

Also, our own team has been using RDS 4 for a while now and we've come up with a few cool and unique applications. Check out the video of the Follow Me robot, created by our team.

From all of us on the Microsoft Robotics team, we'd like to thank you for your continued support and your feedback on RDS 4, which helped get us to where we are today. As always, you can use the Robotics Forums to send us any additional questions and suggestions.

In my July blog post, we announced the Kinect Services for Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (RDS) and I promised that we would have some exciting announcements this fall. It is my pleasure to announce the release of RDS 4 Beta available as a free of charge download at Microsoft.com/robotics.

It's inspiring to see the tremendous excitement with Microsoft Kinect within the robotics space signaling the energy and potential opportunities that exist in essentially transforming robots to low-cost mainstream consumer devices. This beta release is one of our early steps towards realizing our long term strategy of accelerating the consumer robotics industry. There are many new capabilities that we are bringing to the latest release of RDS, but I will focus on three major additions I?m particularly excited about.

Unlike computers that primarily implement a single computational model, which means that when I write a sorting algorithm that runs on one computer, the same algorithm will work on another computer even if it uses a different processor technology, has different component configuration, and runs a different software stack. This is not the case with robots that come in many shapes and configurations. For example a navigation algorithm is typically dependent on the sensor and other hardware configurations. This makes it difficult for people to share solutions.

For the first time we define a Kinect-based hardware reference platform that can help in the delivery of an affordable and capable robot that will be able to support technologies and scenarios for the consumer audience. Most everyone can build a robot using this specification, and we are working with robotic hardware vendors that will make kits and preassembled units available. The first such kit is called Eddie and it is available from Parallax for pre-order now. Eddie is intended to be a turnkey solution for using RDS with this platform and our aspiration is that there will be development and sharing of technology for this hardware platform. In addition, we made sure that there is an accurate representation of a robot that is based on the hardware platform in our simulation environment. You can start developing your applications in the simulator before you decide to buy and run them on a physical robot.

The second additional feature in RDS 4 is beta the availability of Kinect services that support the Kinect for Windows SDK capabilities shipped by Microsoft earlier this summer. You will be able to use the CCR/DSS programming model to access all of the Kinect for Windows SDK functionality. This unlocks a whole new world around Human Robot Interaction (HRI) with the use of skeleton tracking and speech. But we are also making available the raw sensor stream for your use in building additional capabilities such as navigation algorithms. As a matter of fact, we are shipping an obstacle avoidance service that fuses the Kinect input with the other proximity sensors to demonstrate how the sensor array can be used to intelligently perform directional based navigation.

In RDS 4 we make available for the first time the CCR programming model in Silverlight. Why is this important? Although this new capability might seem esoteric, it is manifesting a baby step towards engaging a broader community of developers who might not have previously been involved with Robotic scenarios. We feel that this is very important because we see that many of the experience and scenario innovations used today in the mobile device space can translate to new unique and exciting applications for Robotics.

In an effort to help spur continued creativity and new consumer robotics scenario within the community, we are also excited to announce our first Robots @ Home Contest. We are inviting developers of all stripes to innovate and create new software that can lead to more personal consumer robotics scenarios. You can submit idea proposals into one of the following categories:

1. Consumer usage scenarios;
2. Human Robot Interaction; and
3. Autonomous Navigation.

Please visit our Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Web site for more details.

It?s been exciting to see how Microsoft?s Kinect sensor has already captured the imaginations of researchers, academics, and robotics enthusiasts around the world. Our motivation in releasing these tools is to extend and democratize access to robotics development, bringing value to the space through ease-of-use, accessibility, and a robust existing developer community.

As you can imagine, these are hard problems that we are trying to solve. And given the constraints and expectations of the market within the consumer robotics space, we believe that if we combine both Microsoft?s unique technology portfolio with the creativity and enthusiasm of the community, we can develop new experiences and scenarios that can revolutionize peoples? relationship with Robotics.

--Stathis Papaefstathiou, General Manager, Microsoft Robotics

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell Robotics Lab have used a Microsoft Surface as a way to command multiple robots to move around by drawing out the paths on the Surface. You can watch the video to see how easy it is.

Taking a look back at the recent past in the robotics industry reflects a period full of promise, excitement, anticipation, and rapid evolution. So much movement has happened in the right direction; we've watched closely as robotics technology has begun to transition along the path from a big, expensive, specialized, industrial level towards a future of a friendly, service-oriented, home and personal level, where everyone has the potential to use and benefit from this technology. But putting this positive progress aside for a moment, it's critical to the future sustainability and success of the industry that we keep working to expand the reach of our robotics community to a greater scale.

Just consider the huge potential of consumer robotics, for one example -- an area that's ripe for innovation and for building compelling new scenarios and businesses. In this consumer space, we've learned that best enabling these opportunities isn't really about sophisticated and expensive hardware, it's about the software stack and user experiences. We're building our business to focus first and foremost on positive user experiences -- and by exploring innovations such as Natural User Interfaces (NUI) and the cloud, we want to help you in the robotics community build the software stack that, with your imagination and ingenuity, will lead to the new and innovative robotics scenarios of the future.

But for the robotics market overall to reach a tipping point of sustainable scale, we're going to need more software that can help our community to create a broad and relevant range of scenarios for consumers. It doesn't matter if you're a hobbyist, academic or working in the commercial space -- you're going to need a common platform to build these new applications and scenarios.

Well, we heard the community demand for such a platform clearly, which is why we developed Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, which gives developers a common framework for development. It's already been behind the creation of scenarios like exploring "what's next" for in-car connectivity applications that will be on display at this year's Maker Faire, built by Ford and University of Michigan students as part of the "American Journey 2.0" project. We're so excited about the implications of this collaboration, both for the future of robotics development as well as for offering a window into how bright young developers are using our software in unexpected new ways.

And today, we're even more excited to announce the availability of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3 (Microsoft RDS). What's new?

• Microsoft RDS is now offered free of charge as a download at http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/.
• Microsoft RDS is now available as a single edition -- containing all of the functionality of the previous Standard Edition at no cost.
• New features in Microsoft RDS 2008 R3 include added support for Visual Studio 2010 and two additional simulation environments (Multi-level House and Factory).
• Additional samples have been made available on CodePlex, including Sumo and Soccer simulations. By making source code available on CodePlex, the community can modify and extend the Microsoft RDS platform.

Other new updates/changes include:

• The CCR & DSS Toolkit has been merged into RDS 2008 R3
  • CCR & DSS will remain a core component of RDS
  • CCR & DSS can be obtained by installing the full RDS package
• R3 is no longer compatible with Compact Framework (CF) development
• Samples for languages other than C# have been moved to CodePlex.

Whether you're a hobbyist, academic or commercial customer, or just curious about developing robotics applications, Microsoft RDS 2008 R3 gives you everything you need to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of different hardware.

By offering this software free of charge, we're hoping to help push the robotics market towards the sustainable scale I mentioned earlier -- putting Microsoft RDS in the hands of as many developers as possible to innovate and experiment with. We're enthusiastic to see what developers around the world, of all backgrounds and levels of knowledge, will bring to the table using Microsoft RDS in the months to come.

Robosoft has announced the Kompaï R&D Robot which is designed to assist elderly and handicapped people in their homes. It could also be used as a receptionist. Users can interact with the robot via speech recognition and synthesis or a touch screen. It also has a WiFi connection and can do autonomous navigation. The first version of the robot is intended for developers so that they can start creating robotics applications.

The robuBox software system is based on Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio and includes a 3D simulation of the robot in an apartment environment which allows developers to get started without a real robot.

• C# interface programming with SPL
• Java interface programming with SPL
• Python interface programming with SPL
• LabView interface programming with VPL and SPL
• MATLAB interface programming with VPL
• Flash interface programming with VPL and SPL
• VPL UI programming
• And a lot of robotics and creativity course samples