Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute announced today the creation of a Center for Innovative Robotics, with Microsoft Corp. providing funding and other support.  Charmed Labs will provide the robot controllers that will be the common platform for this effort.

The center, under the direction of Carnegie Mellon associate professor of robotics Illah Nourbakhsh, will work to spread the robotics message to a wider group of people and businesses. Microsoft is contributing an amount in the six-figure range.

"Illah is creating an affordable, capable hardware platform to support the (robotics) community, with a goal of enabling the industry to support itself," said Tandy Trower, Microsoft general manager. "Microsoft has given some money for the center. We find what Illah is doing very exciting."

Just how important robotics has become was evident when Trower took the RoboBusiness stage before a packed room at the Sheraton Station Square to introduce Microsoft Robotics Studio, which will be available commercially by the end of the year.

The Windows-based Robotics Studio is software designed for academic, hobbyist and commercial users to create robotics applications for a variety of computing platforms.

"Microsoft Robotics Studio is a simple programming model that scales (stretches) across users, hardware types and applications," Trower said.

Among the software's features is a visual programming tool that makes it easy to create and debug applications, interact with robots through Web-based or Windows-based interfaces and simulate robotic applications using three-dimensional models.

"Microsoft getting involved with robotics tells me that robotics is maturing, it's no longer just long-term research," Nourbakhsh said.