Getting Started with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware. Key features and benefits of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio environment include: End-to-end Robotics Development Platform, lightweight services-oriented runtime, and a scalable and extensible platform.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio targets seasoned programmers as well as newcomers and hobbyists. In addition to programming in traditional .Net languages you can use Microsoft Visual Programming Language to build your robotics application using a graphical data-flow-based programming model. VPL is targeted for beginner programmers with a basic understanding of concepts like variables and logic. However, VPL is not limited to novices. The compositional nature of the programming language may appeal to more advanced programmers for rapid prototyping or code development.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio targets a wide audience in an attempt to accelerate robotics development and adoption. An important part of the offering is the simulation runtime. It was immediately obvious that PC and Console gaming has paved the way when it comes to affordable, widely usable, robotics simulation. Games rely on photo-realistic visualizations with advanced physics simulation running within real time constraints. This was a perfect starting point for our effort.

Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) is a managed code library, a Dynamically Linked Library (DLL), accessible from any language targeting the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CCR addresses the need of service-oriented applications to manage asynchronous operations, deal with concurrency, exploit parallel hardware and deal with partial failure.

Decentralized Software Services (DSS) is a lightweight .NET-based runtime environment that sits on top of the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR). Decentralized Software Services (DSS) provides a lightweight, state-oriented service model that combines the notion of representational state transfer (REST) with a system-level approach for building high-performance, scalable applications.