posted
INRA has a CD with Cornell (not good usually) but the conversion prices are fix in $ .25 - 1.00 range - So any apparent dead spiral
Good news
As part of its ongoing leadership in the creation of new robotic development applications, CoroWare Technologies, an Innova Robotics & Automation (INRA) company, today announced the launch of CoroWare PlusPack(TM) for Microsoft Robotics Studio(R), a collection of applications, services, tools, assets and utility classes that complement and extend the capabilities of Microsoft Robotics Studio. The PlusPack is CoroWare's first product developed to support Microsoft Robotics Studio, a new Windows-based environment that allows academics, hobbyists and developers in the industrial and service robot market segments to easily create robotic applications for the PC and other computing platforms.
The CoroWare PlusPack for Microsoft Robotics Studio is available for community technology preview (CTP) beginning December 12. The CTP can be downloaded by visiting http://www.coroware.com/pluspack. Details on pricing and availability for the product will be announced in early 2007.
"We believe that the combination of CoroWare PlusPack and Microsoft Robotics Studio provides robotics application developers with powerful productivity tools that will enable them to demonstrate results more rapidly," said Lloyd Spencer, president of CoroWare. "We are thrilled to be partnering with Microsoft in the development of applications that we anticipate will help accelerate the growth of the robotics industry and potentially enable new business opportunities in this exciting field."
Specifically, the PlusPack toolkit enables complex 3D graphical simulations that can then be directly downloaded to a robot. The product also offers a powerful Global Directory Service that tracks robotic systems and services locally and across a network. To enable rapid development of objects in the simulator, the product provides utility applications that include a BOS exporter and previewer for 3DStudioMax and Blender, and an Asset Librarian.
Finally, the toolkit is replete with features that allow users to save time and generate results faster. These include: robot libraries and other simulation assets including vehicles, office furniture, and human actors; key robotics animation components; and application services, including a virtual Sumo arena and virtual soccer arena.
"We welcome CoroWare to the Microsoft Robotics Studio Partner Program as an independent software vendor and solution provider that is supporting our efforts," said Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group at Microsoft. "We believe that CoroWare's support for Microsoft Robotics Studio advances our vision of bringing together leading innovators to drive this industry by creating new robotics applications for a wide variety of users and scenarios."
Microsoft Robotics Studio is an end-to-end, scalable and extensible robotics development platform that supports a wide variety of hardware. The development environment supports a wide range of programming languages, and includes a new visual programming language, which enables non-programmers to create and debug robotics programs very easily. Microsoft Robotics Studio includes a powerful physics-based simulation environment that lets developers simulate robotics applications in realistic 3D virtual environments. The lightweight services-oriented runtime version supports the execution of concurrent and distributed robotic applications.
posted