Here is a assembling 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 at no cost. [...]
Here is a assembling of 15 free online videos on MRDS. The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation.
You need to click on this website to Get Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.
You need to click on this link to view a list of webcasts: Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio
Note: If you want to really understand robotics concepts and theories, you should check out Stanford’s Introduction to Robotics.
Four Components of MRDS:
* CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) – makes asynchronous programming simple. The CCR makes it simple to compose 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 definitely convenient in handling concurrency and partial failure. CCR has a failure handling mechanism called Causalities. This is essentially 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 that can be used by any .net language.
* DSS (Decentralized Software Services) Is the services architecture, and it is a companion to CCR. This is based on Service Oriented Architecture. This makes it possible to create applications distributed and modular. This makes it possible for you to execute your code in the processing work horses and use anywhere in the distributed environment. The DSS makes it simple to access, and respond to, a robot’s state using a Web browser or Windows-based application. This provides for real-time monitoring of robotics sensors and real-time response to motors and actuators.
* 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.
* 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.
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 can be on the same machine or distributed across different machines connected through any means. 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 essence, how Microsoft is able to promise low coupling across services. The Runtime supports from 8-bit to 32-bit robots. These robots may range from Toy Robots to Industrial Robots.
Microsoft VPL Robotics programs with ease. Just 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 implies that it is not based on Control flow but on data flow which allows 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 can also be accelerated using AGEIA hardware. These simulations can be recorded and saved as XML files and played back over and over again.
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Key Features of MRDS:
* 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 may be used to develop applications on single or multi-core processors.
Sample Applications:
* In 2008 Microsoft launched a simulated robotics competition named RoboChamps using MRDS, 4 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.
* Princeton University’s DARPA Urban Grand Challenge autonomous car entry was programmed completely with MRDS.
