Here is a aggregation of 15 free webcasts on MRDS. The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. You can download MRDS 2008 Express Edition without paying a cent. [...]
Here is a agglomeration of 15 free webcast tutorials on Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. You can Download Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Express Edition Without paying a cent.
You need to click on this website to look at a library of videos: Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio
The Albert Einstein robot in this video was not developed with MRDS, but it does help to provide you with some inspiration. (All the other videos in this article do deal with robots that are supported by Microsoft Robotics.)
Note: If you want to really understand robotics concepts and theories, you may want to check out Stanford’s Introduction to Robotics.
4 Components of MRDS:
* DSS (Decentralized Software Services) Is the services architecture, and it is a companion to CCR. This is based on Service Oriented Architecture. This allows one to write applications that can be distributed and modular. This means you can execute your code in the processing work horses and use anywhere in the distributed environment. The DSS makes it easy to access, and respond to, a robot’s state via a Web browser or Windows-based application. This provides for real-time monitoring of robotics sensors and real-time response to motors and actuators.
* CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) – makes asynchronous programming simple. The CCR makes it simple to write up programs to handle asynchronous input from multiple robotics sensors and output to motors and actuators. With the use of CCR, we don’t need to do any manual threads management. This may be outstandingly advantageous in handling concurrency and partial failure. CCR has a failure handling mechanism called Causalities. This is basically a generalization of Try / Catch for multiple threads. But this is for many machines and processes working in synchronous fashion. This is the base of Robotics architecture by Microsoft. You can even use this component for the applications running on a PC instead of a robot. CCR is available in the form of a dynamic link library which may be used by any .net language.
* VPL (Microsoft Visual Programming Language) Is a visual programming tool that is used for creating and debugging robot applications, web-based and windows-based interfaces.
* VSE (Visual Simulation Environment) Allows one to simulate the behavior of robots in a virtual world using NVIDIA PhysX technology (3D engine) that includes advanced physics.
The Runtime environment Has 2 important parts: the CCR and the DSS. The runtime is based on a lightweight REST-oriented services model. Making it REST based has made the services and applications to be independent of each other. They may be on the same machine or distributed across several machines connected through several methods. When we say REST based, This implies that the resources should be available by query strings. These services are available as resources to the other services, applications or User Interfaces. This is, in reality, how Microsoft is able to promise low coupling between services. The Runtime supports from 8-bit to 32-bit robots. These robots may range from Toy Robots to Industrial Robots.
Microsoft Visual Programming Language Makes it possible for one to write and debugrobotics programs very easily. All you need to do is drag and drop blocks that represent services, and connect them. It is also possible to take a collection of connected blocks and reuse them as a single block somewhere else in the program. VPL follows the Observer Pattern. This means that it is not based on Control flow but on data flow which enables some program elements to get executed when some data arrives. VPL provides a model-driven approach to develop and orchestrate services.
Easily Simulate Robotics applications using realistic 3D simulated models. Since testing with real robots is often expensive, it saves money to start out in a simulated environment first and then move to real robots once the concepts have been proven to work. Microsoft Visual Simulation Environment (VSE) is based on Microsofts XNA Framework and the rendering engine uses AGEIA PhysX Technology from AGEIA Technologies Inc.. AGEIA Technologies Inc. Is a pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics, enabling real-world physics simulation for robot models. PhysX simulations may also be accelerated using AGEIA hardware. These simulations may be recorded and saved as XML files and played back over and over again.
You need to click on this website to look at a related post: Robotics Programming Videos
Main Highlights of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio:
* Reuse Modular Services Using a Composable model
Put together high-level functions using simple parts, providing for reuse of code modules as well as better reliability and replaceability. For example, a lower-level sensor service may be integrated into a navigation service.
* Scalable and Extensible Platform
The RDS programming model can be applied to a variety of robot hardware platforms, enabling users to transfer their skills across multiple platforms. The programming interfaces can be used to develop applications on single or multi-core processors.
* Develop using a broad collection of programming languages
MRDS permits one to access the runtime services using these programming languages: C# and Visual Basic .NET, JScript, and IronPython
Sample Applications:
* Princeton University’s DARPA Urban Grand Challenge autonomous car entry was programmed entirely with MRDS.
* In 2008 Microsoft launched a simulated robotics competition named RoboChamps using MRDS, Four challenges were available : maze, sumo, urban, and mars rover. The simulated environment and robots used by the competition were created by SimplySim and the competition was sponsored by KIA Motors.