This is a weak article. First, it ignores the existence of commodity robots. Something like 4 million Roombas have been sold. They are easy to use commodity robots that sell in volume from Best Buy.
Second, many people, going back to the early 20th century, have imagined buying cheap general purpose robots, just as they have imagined buying jet packs and holidaying on space stations. Just because I imagine it doesn't make it feasible. The reason there aren't many autonomous-robot startups is that no one knows how to do the AI. It may make sense to you that you ought to be able to put together robots like you put together a spreadsheet, but that's not how it turned out to be. The article admits this, describing day to day tasks as "incredibly complex". Yet then asks us to imagine the cheap, capable robot.
Fourth, Microsoft has Robotics Studio, a package that competes with ROS in many respects. It is exactly a "robot operating system" on top of Windows. Researchers pretty much ignore Robot Studio, but why does this journalist do so when he says that "what we need Microsoft [...] to do is build an operating system....". It has been trying for years. Thanks for the advice, though.
A low-quality piece for Spectrum, picked up from a blog.
Second, many people, going back to the early 20th century, have imagined buying cheap general purpose robots, just as they have imagined buying jet packs and holidaying on space stations. Just because I imagine it doesn't make it feasible. The reason there aren't many autonomous-robot startups is that no one knows how to do the AI. It may make sense to you that you ought to be able to put together robots like you put together a spreadsheet, but that's not how it turned out to be. The article admits this, describing day to day tasks as "incredibly complex". Yet then asks us to imagine the cheap, capable robot.
Third, the "mysterious" capital behind Willow Garage is Scott Hassan, an early and thus very rich Googler. It says so on the WG web page [http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-us/history].
Fourth, Microsoft has Robotics Studio, a package that competes with ROS in many respects. It is exactly a "robot operating system" on top of Windows. Researchers pretty much ignore Robot Studio, but why does this journalist do so when he says that "what we need Microsoft [...] to do is build an operating system....". It has been trying for years. Thanks for the advice, though.
A low-quality piece for Spectrum, picked up from a blog.