Christian,

Since you are making the assumption that you have a Linux PC running on the robot and network access to that robot, would it make sense to use a web interface (like the still in development http://www.ros.org/wiki/web_interface) for visualization and control?

For example, there is http://www.ros.org/wiki/navigation_application that (and I'm only guessing based on name and some of the source files) looks to be the start of a web-based version of nav_view (or something close). Seems to me that gets around the cross-platform problems as, with the server running on Linux, there is no special cross-compiling; it also helps with the commercial app user base because all your customers need is a supported web browser (hopefully a recent version of Firefox or Chrome would suffice), which may be easier to support than Windows XP up to Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux in all its flavors.

Not saying that ROS support for Windows wouldn't be a good thing, just that, in this case, perhaps a web interface would be better/easier than getting all of ros, navigation and visualization to run on Windows natively.

- Eric
Dear Eric,

A web interface would only do have the job. Our customers expect native Windows apps with the known look and feel. There is also the need to integrate ROS functionality into existing Windows applications.

Christian