“The car you own right now was put together by expensive, proprietary robots run by professional operators.” This, he says, is like the computing industry in the 1970s.
Trower then took a moment-a number of them, really-to flesh out the analogy: “Here are the similarities,” says Trower, between robotics and the PC. Robotics are just moving beyond their fledgling, supercomputer stage, and are ready to become personal computers in, oh, ten years.
He, obviously, gives credence to Bill Gates' analogy between the robotics industry and the early PC industry. But today, Trower is focusing on where he sees the robotics industry in the next few years namely answering the question: Are people ready for this technology, and if so, how will it develop? People are most certainly ready, he thinks, and the market is emerging slowly, but will soon have an explosion in products at home and elsewhere. On the surface their vision is a humble one, “Microsoft is not going to bring robotics to the world by itself,” says Trower, “We are providing a catalyst for the industry to jump-start itself.” So far, so good there have been 150,000 downloads of this software, which is free for non-commercial users and a fairly affordable $399 for commercial licenses. Tandy Trower, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Robotic Group is here at CES to speak about Microsoft’s vision of the robotics industry. Microsoft has been trying to bring this idea to the fore with their software, Microsoft Robotics Studio, released a little over a year ago, which, Microsoft has hoped, would give the robotics industry a common language to be used by developers across the industry and at home. If so, industry insiders hope, robotics could move to ubiquity, making for a future where a robot lives in every home. Sure, such projected growth is quite optimistic and based on hopes that the brewing consumer-robotics storm will hit its stride with affordable price-points, friendly user-interface, and crash-proof robots.
The International Federation of Robotics says that 2005 sales of robotics reached $8.4 billion and are projected to expand annually by 40 percent.
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