Misty Enables Developers to Realize the Opportunity of Personal Robots for Business and Home

Microsoft Build Conference - Misty Robotics, the creators of the Misty robot developer platform, announced today its selection of Microsoft's .NET Core for use with both its robot platform and related tools. Misty is focused on enabling developers to build skills for its robots that offer value and utility for personal and business use.

Today, Misty Robotics is successfully leveraging the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) as its central platform for developing functionality for the Misty II robot. The future movement to .NET Core will offer the robot maker the latest tooling from Microsoft as well as cross-platform compatibility including support of Windows, macOS, and Linux. The open-source, general-purpose development platform maintained by Microsoft and the .NET community on GitHub can be used to build device, cloud, and IoT applications.

According to Morgan Bell, Head of Engineering for Misty Robotics, "UWP has been a great platform for us. It has given us the ability to really focus on what the robot should do, rather than focusing on how to simply get the platform to work correctly. Since UWP is using .NET Core, we have the advantage of utilizing most of our existing IP as we look to the future of the robot."

Developers will have two development tool options when building skills for Misty II. They can get access to high-level capabilities using Misty's on-robot JavaScript API or her REST API. Developers will also be able to build using a Native SDK for C#, C++ and Visual Basic. The Native SDK provides deeper access into Misty's sensor data, commands, debugging and hardware resources for a more robust way to build a skill. It is being developed on UWP and will migrate to .NET Core. The .NET Core implementation opens the door to more programming languages.

On selecting Microsoft as a technology partner, Bell noted, "Microsoft has been a strong, innovative technology company for many years. That experience is providing us guidance and insight that we'd otherwise have to acquire the hard way. While Microsoft has been in industrial robotics for years, we see Misty II as an opportunity for the largest developer tools company in the world to have a strong presence in the personal robotics space."

About Misty Robotics

Misty Robotics is the company behind Misty, a robot platform purpose-built for developers. Misty is focused on enabling developers to build skills for its robots that offer value and utility for personal and business use. Misty Robotics is a spin-out of connected toy company, Sphero. Based in Boulder, Colorado, the company is financially backed by Venrock, Foundry Group and others.