From a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms, there will soon be a universal interface so that 3rd parties can add platforms and modules to robotic systems.
There won’t be a commercial version of Willow Garage’s ROS nor any other universal robotic operating system, but within academia and the emerging service robotics sector, there will be greater dependence and use of ROS.
More industrial robot manufacturers will announce plans to migrate to and provide service robots.
Read more about these projections and trends.