Yesterday’s Coding4Fun on MSDN was Introduction to Programming Lego Mindstorms, with .NET none the less.

Today Microsoft is showing off their new Robotics Studio at the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006.

PITTSBURGH— June 20, 2006 — Today at RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006, Microsoft Corp. showcased the community technology preview (CTP) of a new Windows®-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotic applications for a wide variety of computing platforms. In addition, early adopter companies, universities and research institutes offered demos and provided support for the new Microsoft® Robotics Studio development platform. The community technology preview of the Microsoft Robotics Studio is available for download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics.

Read the full announcement…

What’s really fascinating with this technology is they allow you to simulate a robot and to run code without having to invest in hardware.