Amazing stuff from the makers of Kinetic-
Operating systems of Robots may be the future cash cow of Microsoft , while the pirates of Silicon Valley fight fascinating cloudy wars! 🙂
http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/#Product
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 beta (RDS4 beta) provides a wide range of support to help make it easy to develop robot applications. RDS4 beta includes a programming model that helps make it easy to develop asynchronous, state-driven applications. RDS4 beta provides a common programming framework that can be applied to support a wide variety of robots, enabling code and skill transfer.
RDS4 beta includes a lightweight asynchronous services-oriented runtime, a set of visual authoring and simulation tools, as well as templates, tutorials, and sample code to help you get started.
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 beta Datasheet – English (PDF Format)
View the product video on Channel 9!
This release has extensive support for the Kinect sensor hardware throug the Kinect for Windows SDK allowing developers to create Kinect-enabled robots in the Visual Simulation Environment and in real life. Along with this release comes a standardized reference spec for building a Kinect-based robot.
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Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) helps make it easier to handle asynchronous input and output by eliminating the conventional complexities of manual threading, locks, and semaphores. Lightweight state-oriented Decentralized Software Services (DSS) framework enables you to create program modules that can interoperate on a robot and connected PCs by using a relatively simple, open protocol.
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Visual Programming Language (VPL) provides a relatively simple drag-and-drop visual programming language tool that helps make it easy to create robotics applications. VPL also provides the ability to take a collection of connected blocks and reuse them as a single block elsewhere in your program. VPL is also capable of generating human-readable C#.
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DSS Manifest Editor (DSSME) provides a relatively simple creation of application configuration and distribution scenarios.
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The DSS Log Analyzer tool allows you to view message flows across multiple DSS services. DSS Log Analyzer also allows you to inspect message details.
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Visual Simulation Environment (VSE) provides the ability to simulate and test robotic applications using a 3D physics-based simulation tool. This allows developers to create robotics applications without the hardware. Sample simulation models and environments enable you to test your application in a variety of 3D virtual environments.
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