BEIJING, April 23 (Xinhuanet) -- Microsoft -- the company that brought us standarized computer softwre -- is poised to take the worldwide lead a long predicted, long awaited robotics revolution.

    "Unfortunately, robotics was forecast to take off 20 years ago," cautioned Joe Pinto, robotics industry observer and angel investor who backs startup companies. "Will it take off this time? Who knows?"

    Pinto said Microsoft is the only company in the world in a position to give the industry the boost it needs. The software maker has posted its Microsoft Robotics Studio (MRS) online where anyone willing to undertake a 54-megabyte download can have it free of charge. The latest version, posted this month, is 1.5. The beta version appeared last June and version 1.0 was posted in December.

    MRS may someday standardize a fragmented industry, Pinto said. Currently, software written for a specific robot cannot run on any other robot, but if MRS is widely adopted a third-party robotics software market could emerge.

    "We don't know where things are going to go, but we have the early PC market as a model," Pinto told LiveScience. In the early 1980s, every microcomputer had its own software, but then the PCs standardized on Microsoft DOS software.

    "Microsoft's dream is that the robot market will explode like the PC market did, that people will jump on it and do the DOS thing," Pinto said. "But it will not be as easy." Robots need brains (the software), brawn (the motors) and bone (the linkages), Pinto said, yet MRS only standardizes the brains.

    Still, the first hint of standardization can be found in MRS 1.5, since it includes support for the Create system from iRobot Corp. Famous for its Roomba robot floor vacuum cleaner and various military and bomb disposal robots, iRobot brought out Create in January for the tinkerer market by removing the vacuum cleaner from a Roomba while adding a programmable command module with additional interfaces. The full-up development package, with battery and charger, costs about 300 U.S. dollars.

    But you don't need a Create to build a robot because MRS includes a simulation environment, with a simulated Create (plus other machines and assemblages).

    As for what you can do with it, you can teach it to push other Creates out of a ring (MRS has a downloadable module for this purpose) and then enter it in the Robot Sumo competition at the Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon (MEDC) 2007, held in Las Vegas April 30 through May 3.

    (Agencies)