Windows 10 Brings You: Robot Operating System
Today the world is a different place than it was 50 or even 10 years back. Now we have come to depend highly on robots for our day to day activities. It may not all be in the form of a machine that you seen as a kid on Disney with arms moving about, but can be as simple as the Roomba or smart vacuum cleaner in your room to more complex surgical machinery used in hospitals. Whatever it is, we see robots becoming an integral part of lives and to better control these devices Windows is bringing us a Robot Operating System.
There were operating systems for phones and desktops, now you’ll get one for the robot cleaning your living room. This robot operating system will be seen as a way to easier control and help the robot to better complete our jobs.
What Do Developers get with Windows Robot Operating Systems?
Developers will be allowed to use the familiar and helpful Visual Studio Toolset with AI and Cloud control features on the robot operating system.
What’s more is that developers will even get more advanced features too like hardware accelerated Windows machine learning capabilities, Azure Cognitive services, computer vision, Azure IoT cloud services and various other Microsoft tech to support the home, education and commercial front.
What to do Developers want and expect from a OS?
Manufacturers who use robots in their factories, want robots to understand their surroundings, be safer to have around and to be easier to program.
Many institutions and governments around the world are looking for the latest in robots and its operating systems and thus have even started investing in the next generation of manufacturing coming to be known as “Industry 4.0”.
Microsoft too is jumping onto the Industry 4.0 bandwagon by working closely with Open robotics and the OS Consortium to bring you a robot operating system for Windows.
This robot operating systems Consortium is all about enhancing the capabilities of robots through a OS to manufacturing and various other fields, thereby improving productivity and a person’s return on investment.
What is Microsoft doing at ROSCon in Spain with a OS?
Microsoft is in demonstration mode in Spain to show off its ROBOTIS Turtlebot 3 robot that runs on Microsoft’s very own Melodic Morenia robot operating systems. This allows the robot to steer to the closest person to the robot.
The robot will be running Windows 10 IoT Enterprise using a new robot-operating system node that has advanced machine learning capabilities by your very own Windows.
But that is not all that Microsoft has for you In Spain. Microsoft will also be showcasing a robot operating system simulation environment running on Azure. What this does is that it shows you a swarm of robots running in a virtual world which is connected to an orchestration system controlled via the Azure IoT hub. Windows will be shortly bringing out robot operating system 1 and ROS 2.
