Microsoft Robotics Community

News Articles and Reviews

• Transcription of the Bill Gates interview
  

  Full text of the interview between John Waples, Business Editor of the Sunday Times, and Bill Gates - February 5^th 2008

• IEEE Spectrum: Robots, Incorporated by Steven Cherry
  

  Steven Cherry talks about Microsoft Robotics Studio and the Microsoft Robotics Group.

• Scientific American: Bill Gates on Robotics
  

  Bill Gates predicts that the next hot field will be robotics.

• Robot Magazine: Microsoft Provides Common Ground for Robotics
  

  Tandy Trower discusses the announcement of the first Microsoft Robotics Studio Community Technical Preview (CTP) at RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition 2006.

• Vision Systems Design Magazine: Visual programming speeds robotics, vision growth by Andrew Wilson
  

  This article discusses the use of a common software environment which developers, as well as the wider industry, can leverage to simply development of applications that require concurrency and/or distribution across heterogeneous environments.

• Additional articles on Microsoft Robotics Studio
  

  Read what the media has to say about the new Microsoft Robotics Studio.

Microsoft Sponsored Competitions

• You Make IT Smart
  

  Microsoft in Switzerland is running a program called "You Make IT Smart" to introduce students to Robotics Developer Studio using LEGO NXT robots. It is open to students of Swiss educational institutions and is a lead-in to the Imagine Cup in 2009. So far the response has been very good. For more information visit the web site. Even if you cannot participate, you might find some of the materials useful.

• Microsoft RoboChamps
  

  The RoboChamps Urban Challenge is an opportunity to win a real car (supplied by KIA Motors). Competitors must program a simulated car to drive around a course, stopping at red traffic lights and staying on the road while avoiding other vehicles. The cars are fitted with a variety of simulated sensors which must be used for navigation. Participants are not allowed to control the car themselves, so it all comes down to the quality of the artificial intelligence written into the program.

• RoboDevelopment Conference and Expo 2008
  

  Microsoft sponsored the RoboDevelopment Conference and Expo in 2008 and also in 2007. These included technical sessions and in 2008 a keynote by Tandy Trower. These events were great opportunities for team members to meet customers and discuss Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.

• FIRST 2008- Seattle Regional Championship
  

  Microsoft is sponsoring a new FIRST Robotics Competition Seattle regional event for 2008.

• Robocup 2007
  

  Microsoft sponsored RoboCup 2007 in Atlanta and hosted competitive soccer matches using the Microsoft Robotics Studio. The matches were simulation-based and hosted within the Microsoft Robotics Studio physics-based 3D simulation environment which uses the licensed PhysX™ engine from AGEIA™ Technologies Inc.

• MEDC 2007
  

  Microsoft Robotics Studio powered the sumo robot competition at Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon (MEDC) 2007 in Las Vegas in May 2007 and in select cities around the world.

Scientific Papers

• High Performance Multi-Paradigm Messaging Runtime Integrating Grids and Multicore Systems
  

  Performance evaluation of CCR and DSS by Xiaohong Qiu and Geoffrey Fox from Indiana University Bloomington. Submitted to e-Science 2007.

• Connecting embedded sensors and robots by integrating Microsoft Robotics Studio and Microsoft Invisible Computing platform
  

  Evaluation of an independent implementation of DSSP on the Microsoft Invisible Computing platform and how it is used to connect Microsoft Robotics Studio with embedded sensors. In addition to the paper, source code is also available as part of the Microsoft Invisible Computing platform. Submitted to IADIS International Conference 2007.

Cool Robots

• uBot-5 from Lab for Perceptual Robotics at UMASS Amherst tele-operated by MSRS
  

  Check out these cool videos referenced in Patrick Deegan's forum post showing that they at the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics at UMASS Amherst recently ported their very cool uBot-5 teleoperator controls over to MSRS.

• Princeton University Urban Challenge Team makes it to the Semifinals
  

  At the recent DARPATech conference the Princeton University Urban Challenge Team was announced as one of the 36 teams that qualified for the National Qualification Event, October 26-31 in Victorville, CA. The Princeton entry uses Microsoft Robotics Studio as the software framework for the 2007 Urban Challenge.

• SubjuGator 6 from University of Florida wins submarine competition using Microsoft Robotics Studio
  

  From this blog by Jon Erickson: In a competition sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Office of Naval Research, the SubjuGator 6 from University of Florida uses a single-board Intel Core 2 Duo based computer running the Windows XP provides processing power necessary for monitoring and controlling all systems. The behavior of SubjuGator is controlled with Microsoft Robotics Studio framework communicating with a network of intelligent sensors.

• The Huggable Robot from MIT Media Lab uses Microsoft Robotics Studio
  

  The Huggable robot is intended as a robotics companion for long-term interactions in health, education, and social communication. The huggable uses MSRS for the "communication avatar" service. See the Huggable web page by Dan Stiehl, the lead developer on the project describing its features.

Partner Technology Releases

• SimplySim LEGO NXT Environment
  

  SimplySim, a Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio partner, has released an application that allows you to control either a simulated LEGO^® NXT Tribot in a rich 3D environment or a real Tribot. SimplySim created the simulation environments for the RoboChamps competitions and have considerable experience with the RDS Simulator. To download the package, which requires RDS 2008, visit the SimplySim news page.

• Braintech Releases New Vision Software for Service Robots
  

  The VOLTS-IQ SDK adds high-performance vision services to Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio including the Vi_Tracker service for real-time tracking as well as Vi_ObjectDetector (a service for simultaneously detecting the presence of multiple object types), Vi_WebCam (an augmented webcam service), and Vi_MissileLauncher (for controlling the DreamCheeky USB missile launcher).

• Robosoft simulated robuDOG package for Microsoft Robotics Studio (1.5)
  

  Robosoft's robuDOG, which was first presented at RoboCup 2007 in Atlanta, can now be programmed using Microsoft Robotics Studio (1.5) Simulation.

• Kuka Educational Framework for simulating articulated arms and more
  

  Enables students to exercise their robots using the Microsoft Robotics Studio simulator. The framework contains tutorials for manipulating stationary arms, mobile platforms including an arm (gripper), as well as tasks for dealing with kinematics and a variety of sensors such as a laser range finder.

• RoboticsConnection provides Serializer Services for Microsoft Robotics Studio
  

  RoboticsConnection releases Microsoft Robotics Studio services for their Serializer controller

• RoboRealm vision processing integration with Microsoft Robotics Studio
  

  RoboRealm provides a smart camera interface that allows you to include machine vision within the Microsoft Robotics Studio platform. The integration service can either provide the resulting processed image from RoboRealm and/or include any variables generated by RoboRealm for use in further processing.

• SRI KARTO Mapping Technology for Robot Developers
  

  The SRI KARTO package enables developers of mobile robot solutions to easily integrate navigation and mapping intelligence into their applications using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. KARTO uses a type of algorithm referred to in the field as SLAM - Simultaneous Localization and Mapping - to allow the robot to build a map of an unknown environment. A video on the web site shows how this works in the RDS simulator.

User Groups

• MSRS community in Turkey
  

  This Microsoft Robotics Studio community is working on unmanned aerial vehicles and other robot projects. Read more in this post by Oguz Bayrakdar, the Community Leader, to our forum.

• Norwegian .NET User Group
  

  The Norwegian .NET User Group has a lot of activities around Microsoft Robotics Studio. Check out their web site or contact Sondre Bjellås for details on news and upcoming events.

• Conscious-Robots.com pages for MSRS
  

  The Conscious-Robots.com research team is performing a number of experiments with autonomous mobile robots. These community pages include information, MSRS services, C# sample code, and resources for the programming of Pioneer 3 DX robots using MSRS.

• Seattle Robotics Society
  

  The Seattle Robotics Society is a non-profit corporation formed in 1982 to serve those interested in learning about and building robots. It is comprised of a diverse group of professionals and amateurs, high school students and college professors, engineers and tinkerers.

Community Articles and Downloads

• .NET Rocks! - Nick Landry on Robotics Studio
  

  Check out this .NET Rocks! Audio Talk Show where Nick Landry calls in to discuss his experiences with Microsoft Robotics Studio.

• Ben Axelrod Updates Microsoft Robotics Studio Extras to target version 1.5
  

  New features also include SimpleDashboard support for keyboard control of the robot.

• Microsoft Robotics Studio services to interface with the VEX Robots controller
  

  Download provided by Ed Harfmann for interfacing with the VEX Robots controller.

• Controlling LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT using C#, VB.Net, and VPL
  

  Brian Peek demonstrates how to use Microsoft Robotics Studio (1.5) to control LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT. A simple remote-controlled robot will be built and controlled using C#, VB.Net, and Microsoft Visual Programming Language.

• Concurrency and Coordination Runtime: No More Asynchronous Spaghetti
  

  A presentation by Igor Moochnick that discusses the usage of Concurrency and Coordination Runtime.  He provides examples as separate downloads to further illustrate the points made in the presentation.

• Importing 3D models into Microsoft Robotics Studio
  

  This posting discusses how you can import 3D robot models into Microsoft Robotics Studio's simulation environment from SolidWorks using Blender as a conversion tool.

• Basic CCR Examples
  

  Ruslan Trifonov provides samples to illustrate Concurrency and Coordination Runtime usage patterns.  You can get these samples from Ruslan's blog posting.  

• A simple WinForms Service
  

  This sample builds on Microsoft Robotics Studio Service Tutorial 2 to demonstrate how to update a Windows Form from a DSS service.