An Introduction to Robotics/Simulation with Microsoft Robotics Studio
Microsoft have no of tools that are helpfull for the users including developers,designer. Among all the ms robotics studio is one of the power full simulation and virtual robotic platform. Using robotic studio we can simulate our robot very easier. For the programming and logic developement in this area you have to know .net compatible labguage or VPL (Visual Programming Language).
Through this blog i will share those things that i had learned and learning till. I hope all of you will help me for this.
An Introduction to Programming Robots with Microsoft Robotics Studio
Have you ever wished you could program your very own robot but don't own a robot and don't know how to program? Microsoft Robotics Studio is just for you. It provides a Windows-based environment for you to visually program a variety of standard robots and test those robots in a 3D physics-based virtual environment.
Robotics Studio is made up of three main areas of software. They are as follows:
- Runtime This is the central core that allows you to run robots from toys to industrial size models.
- Concurrency Library (CCR) This simplifies managing concurrent processes, which is necessary because robots have several things going on at once.
- Decentralized System Services (DSS) This is a services-based architecture that lets you write and coordinate distributed applications.
Programming robots involves the monitoring and manipulation of multiple processes (or services, in Robotics Studio) that often occur at the same time. For example, a robot can be moving, (one process) and at the same time one of the robot's sensors can be collecting information about the environment (another process). These two processes need to occur concurrently. The Robotics SDK utilizes the Concurrency Library (CCR) to support this need for concurrent processing.
Services are core object in Robotics Studio. Each service lets you communicate between processes, and each process performs a specific function (such as moving a motors or retrieving data from a sensors). Your application may comprises a set of services that talk to each other at the same time.
The services send messages to each other through ports. The services know how to communicate with each other because they each have a contract. The contract contains all the information about how messages should be formatted and what the service supports. You specify all this in an XML schema definition file (.xsd file). The third core area, a Decentralized System Services (DSS) node, coordinates all this activity. DSS is one of the key software areas that makes up Robotics Studio.
Now the question may arise how and where to get the robotic studio?
- You can get easily from the microsoft web site. I am using 2008 experss edition.
Download it from : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=84c5b49f-0f9c-4182-a267-a951328d3fbd&displaylang=en you can download offline installation it is of size 354 MB.
- Academic institutions can obtain the Academic Edition (which has the same functionality as Standard Edition) through the MSDN Academic Alliance (MSDNAA) and provide it to their students. It will also be available to students directly through Dreamspark. you can contact MDP officers nepal.
Download and try it. I will come soon........
Happy Learning.
Rupak Raj Ghimire