Robotics in 2007

The folks over at Technology Review are giving a glimpse of what to expect in 2007: a far more challenging grand challenge dubbed the Urban Challenge, novel nanotube artificial muscles, more domestic robots and interestingly predict Microsoft's push into robotics software. They seem to be basing this on the fact that Ballmer and Co. just released a developer's kit for simple robots. However, Microsoft has in the past started projects with so much zeal only to let them subsequently die slow, painful deaths (remember Smart Personal Objects Technology, Tablet PC's and more recently UMPC's and PlaysForSure?). We can only wait to see if MSFT does things right with the robotics software but the outlook doesn't look as bright to me.

Related :
Stanford Urban Challenge Team
HAL at University of Tsukuba
Biomechatroncs Group at MIT
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