Robotics Services Overview

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Robotics Services Overview

The Robotics Services provide abstractions for a variety of robotics-oriented hardware and services including:

  • Contact sensors
  • Differential drives
  • Motors
  • Articulated arms
  • and more.

Note that the services in this section are called Generic services. They are designed to make programs independent of the actual hardware devices. You should use a generic service rather than a real service (for a physical robot) whenever possible. Then you can set the configuration of the generic service to use a real service before running the program (either by using a manifest or specifying the actual service to use in the configuration). This allows you to easily change the underlying hardware without changing your program and is one of the powerful features of RDS.

Kinect Sensor

Using a Kinect sensor in VPL is difficult. VPL support for arrays is limited, so processing depth or RGB images is not feasible. If you have a requirement to use a Kinect in VPL it is recommended that you write a C# service to do the processing and then have VPL call this new service.

Additional information is available under the following topics:

Note that the Webcam Sensor and the Webcam are different contracts. Although they are both designed to deliver RGB video data, they do not have the same interface.

 

 

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