Oh, my goodness!  How cool is this!    I just found out about the Microsoft Robotics Studio, and had to blog it...  Here's the background, from the site (which you can find here).

The goal of the Microsoft Robotics Studio is to supply a software platform for the robotics community that can be used across a wide variety of hardware, applicable to a wide audience of users, and development of a wide variety of applications.

The Microsoft Robotics Studio delivers three areas of software:

1. A scalable, extensible runtime architecture that can span a wide variety of hardware and devices. The programming interface can be used to address robots using 8-bit or 16-bit processors as well as 32-bit systems with multi-core processors and devices from simple touch sensors to laser distance finding devices.
2. A set of useful tools that make programming and debugging robot applications scenarios easier. These include a high quality visual simulation environment that uses the Ageia Technologies™ PhysX™ engine.
3. A set of useful technology libraries services samples to help developers get started with writing robot applications.

I haven't used it yet.  (Too busy with paying work.)  But I'll let you know how it goes when I can get my hands on it more completely!