Microsoft has released a preview of the follow-up to their Robotics Studio 2006 - Robotics Developer Studio 2006.
The preview version was announced at the RoboBusiness conference in Pittsburgh and can be downloaded here.
The 2008 version is quoted as having large performance improvements in inter-process communications, better handling of distributed-computing environments and improvements to their Visual Programming Language.
Surprisingly enough, I am downloading it at the moment and, after having a bit of a play with it, will do a write-up on any applications it may have in small/hobby robotics development.
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