Microsoft enters the robotics relm
 

Check out this aricle in robot magazine!

http://www.botmag.com/issue3/microso...review_3.shtml

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

Microsoft has released the first version of the software. You can download it free of charge for non-commercial use.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

There isn't really anything that I can use... but I played around with it :)

I was lost.

Re: Microsoft does Robotics
 

Well that shouldn't be a problem considering the fact that Parallax is on that list. I wonder how extendable it is.

Re: Microsoft does Robotics
 

Parallax hasn't been used since 2003. InnovationFIRST released the Microchip PIC18F-based controller in 2004.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

If I remember correctly, this platform brings the idea of a PC base station into play. The robot has standard driver software running on its local hardware, and is connected to a PC (via LAN, Bluetooth, Serial, etc..) An app running on the PC reads and writes data to the robot based on user input and pre coded "stuff". The robot speaks the same language as the app and knows how to move accordingly.

I'm not sure how far the robot feedback is abstracted. If it gets processed on the PC, we would be able to do some pretty neat stuff with this. I'm definitely going to give it a try.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

I don't think it will be usefull for FIRST, but that won't stop me from looking.:D

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

My Linux loving friend once told me "Computers are like air conditioners. They break when you open Windows".

One thing that I'm not so keen about Windows making a standard is, who is going to conform to it? besides, Windows makes software.... and robots are hardware. I just don't see this working out.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

Yeah, Im not sure completly who they are targetting. Not like your gonna run windows on you PIC16 or PIC18 chips.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

Thats not the point. Embedded devices are much harder to code for than applications on a PC. The whole point of this is you can develop intricate programs on the PC that have access to all the processing power and memory available to them. You can write code that accesses SQL databases, gets data off the internet, or runs algorithms that are way too complex and intensive to run on the PIC... You get the point? They've included a Visual programming language (looks a bit like the easyC we've come to know, except WAY more powerful), or you can code in any visual studio editor. (C++, C#, VB.. etc..)

This also gives you a full suite of simulation capabilities. I dont know one FIRST team out there who has had enough time to fully program their robot in the build season. Theoretically, this simulation system will stop that problem.

I'll be working on getting this to interact with FIRST hardware. Even if its only good for prototyping and tuning individual system, it beats having to hard code everything.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

I understand the simulation part. But I am confused as to the actual hardware they expect this to be running on.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

Thats what I'm trying to figure out. There's alot of documentation and none of it is telling me what I want to know.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

First of all, I wanted to say hi to everyone here! This is my "official" first post. Yes, I'm a newbie/freshman, haha! A friend of my company (Trossen Robotics) had asked me and some of my coworkers to share some of our knowledge on these forums. We'll be sharing knowledge in more robotic development related areas, but I couldn't hesitate to post in this forum after I saw it:)

After reading everyone's posts in this forum, Tom, I believe is pretty much right on the money. From what I understand about it, the possibilities of Microsoft Robotics Studio (we did a little bit of beta testing) are near endless.

In a nutshell, companies create 3rd party tools which basically expose their hardware and software as web services. This allows you to control your Robot remotely via Web Services and Messages, thus putting all of the processing on a separate computer. Your robot transmits data back to the computer, and using your own high-level programming language, you decide what you want to do with that data. As Tom had said, it provides a way to allow many different hardware devices to talk to each other that previously could not do so. Additionally, with the new Express languages being free, there is no more cost for Microsoft languages and their IDE's either.

In regards to the question about what companies will/have partnered up with Microsoft with Robotics Studio, you can check out their partner page to get an idea of how large this is getting (make sure to look at the companies you never heard of):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/P...s/default.aspx


The major benefit of this level of PC based robotics is that enables developers to eliminate the need to reinvent the wheel, ie. build a robot basically from scratch, each and every time they decide to develop a robot. Sure, this may be fun for some, but for a lot of people and companies, this is a really hard, if not unattainable goal. This is one of the reasons why commercial robotics is only at the point it is now, and why you don't see robots at every street corner. As I'm sure all of you above anyone else can appreciate; a lot of time, effort, and money go into building a robot.

Fast forward to the future, and see what benefits this will give all of us: bigger, faster, stronger, speedier development, and most of all, more intelligent robots! Everyone can now build off of each others ideas, find out what succeeds and what fails.

In essence, it's not really any different than what FIRST does now, btw, I am a HUGE fan of you guys:) I can't wait to check out some competitions myself! I like to look at Robotics Studio as taking robotics to the next level. Could you imagine... life-size humanoid competitions?

BTW, for anyone who is interested, we are developing a Robotic System that we hope to someday expose it as web services to plug into Robotics Studio. Although the beta version to the public won't be available for quite some time, you can read what it's all about here:

http://www.trossenrobotics.com/trs/trs.aspx

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

Do you know where I can find the documentation on how these services work? Is there standardization between them? The only easy way to talk to the Innovation FIRST controllers is through the serial port. I know the Lego RCX bricks work in a similar way, so maybe I can salvage some code from that service on the PC end.

What I'm hoping to do is either find a defined protocol or come up with my own to communicate with the FIRST controller. From there it will be easy to write a robot side driver which simply takes all of the incoming motor and relay values, and writes them to their corresponding output.

Re: Microsoft Robotics Studio
 

Sure do Tom! Unfortunately, I can't help much with the development, because I just know the overall jist of how Robotics Studio works, not how to work with it. BUT, I do know where to go to get all the info you need:

Probably the first place (if you haven't gone there already) is the Getting Started section on Robotics Studio's site:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/g...d/default.aspx

I highly recommend taking the time to go through all of the sections in Getting Started, because Robotics Studio uses some pretty advanced level concepts.

Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime - An Introduction has, IMO, the "beefy" information.

Once you go through all of the Getting Started sections, you should be ready to start with the tutorials:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/learn/default.aspx

There are a ton of code examples/downloads on the tutorials page as well.


Hope this helps you out a bit:)