Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

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Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio
Developer(s) Microsoft in association with the community
Stable release Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R2 / June 17, 2009
Operating system Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista 32/64, Windows XP Embedded, Windows CE 5.0, Windows CE 6.0
Type Robotics suite
License Various
Website Official Webpage

The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (Microsoft RDS, MRDS) is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. It is aimed at academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers and handles a wide variety of robot hardware.

RDS is based on CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime), a .NET-based concurrent library implementation, for managing asynchronous, parallel tasks using message-passing and DSS (Decentralized Software Services), a lightweight services-oriented runtime, which allows the orchestration of multiple services to achieve complex behaviors.

Features include: a visual programming tool, Microsoft Visual Programming Language, for creating and debugging robot applications, web-based and windows-based interfaces, 3D simulation (including hardware acceleration), easy access to a robot's sensors and actuators and support for a number of languages including C# and Visual Basic .NET, JScript, and IronPython.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio includes support for packages to add other services to the suite. Those currently available include Soccer Simulation and Sumo Competition by Microsoft, and a community-developed Maze Simulator, a program to create worlds with walls that can be explored by a virtual robot.

Contents

[edit] Components

There are four main components in RDS:

  • CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime)
  • DSS (Decentralized Software Services)
  • VPL (Visual Programming Language)
  • VSE (Visual Simulation Environment)

CCR and DSS are also available separately for use in commercial applications that require a high level of concurrency and/or must be distributed across multiple nodes in a network.

[edit] Tools

MarsRoverSimulation
Simulated robot and environment in MRDS

The tools that allow to develop a MRDS application contain a graphical environment (Microsoft Visual Programming Language : VPL), command line tools allow to deal with Visual Studio projects (VS Express version is enough) in C#, C++ or VB.NET), support for script languages such as IronPython and 3D simulation tools.

  • Visual Programming Language is a graphical development environment that allow a service and activity catalog.
    • They can interact graphically, a service or an activity is represented by a block that has inputs and outputs that just need to be dragged from the catalog to the diagram.
    • Linking can be done with the mouse, it allows to define if signals are simultaneous or not, permits to perform operations on transmitted values...
    • VPL also allow to generate the code of new "macro" services from diagrams created by users.
    • It is possible in VPL to easily customize services for different hardware elements.


  • MRDS 3D simulation environment allows to simulate the behavior of robots in a virtual world using NVIDIA PhysX technology (3D engine) that includes advanced physics.
  • Many examples and tutorials are available for the different tools, which permits a fast understanding of MRDS. Several applications have been added to the suite, such as Maze Simulator, or Soccer Simulation which is developed by Microsoft.
MRDS Urban Environment
urban environment in MRDS
  • There are 3 small simulation environments in the standard and academic edition of MRDS, these environments are limited versions of the larger generic simulation environments developed by SimplySim
    • Apartment (also available in the express edition)
    • Outdoor
    • Urban

[edit] Notable applications

[edit] Versions and Licensing

  • Robotics Studio 1.0 (Commercial and Non-Commercial Use Licenses)
  • Robotics Studio 1.5 (Commercial and Non-Commercial Use Licenses)
  • Robotics Studio 1.5 'Refresh' (Commercial and Non-Commercial Use Licenses)
  • Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Standard Edition (Commercial Use), Academic Edition (Academic use) and Express Edition † (Commercial and Non-Commercial Use)
  • Updated to 2008 R2

† The Express Edition does not have edit mode in the simulation, lacks the floor plan editor, it is limited to 64 entities, and there is no support for COLLADA models.

[edit] Supported robots

An iRobot Create robot inside Microsoft Robotic Studio's Visual Simulation Environment

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering
  2. ^ a b SDTimes On The Web, Microsoft's shift to parallel computing, By David Worthington, August 1, 2008
  3. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Project

[edit] External links

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