Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

NEW: Information for the upcoming Virtual Robotics Challenge 2013 at OTSC can be found here

New! Microsoft RDS 4 is now officially released and to be used under Windows 7 or Windows 8 for programming the Fischertechnik ROBO TX-C Controller with VPL for the upcoming Virtual Robotics Challenge tasks.

The Microsoft^(r) Robotics Developer Studio 4 (Microsoft RDS) is a Windows^(r)-based environment for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware.

Microsoft RDS includes a lightweight asynchronous services-oriented runtime (CCR & DSS), a set of visual authoring and simulation tools (VPL), as well as templates, tutorials, and sample code to help you get started.

Product Information - To understand more about the benefits of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, start here with background on the product. View Product Features.

More information on setting up your fischertechnik ROBO-TX Maze Bot hardware is available from Bob Tone's  TechOneh! Channel -Get it now.

Microsoft RDS and fischertechnik: the 2011 Ontario Skills fischertechnik Virtual Robotics Challenge

Here are some photos and video from the Ontario Skills 3rd Annual Virtual Robotics Challenge.  This year participating teams were required to use the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio and VPL (Virtual Programming Language), and the Simulation Environment. The challenge included navigating the robot partially through a maze section, and then detect and follow the line path. This year we had 10 teams participate in the challenge.

We worked with fischertechnik’s Robo-TX Robot where the students had build the robot from scratch, then work in MRDS using VPL first to prove their algorithm for the challenge, and then attempt to run it with the hardware services using Bluetooth on the physical court. Once students were able to demonstrate the robot’s ability to go through the small maze portion, the robot had to find the start of the trail and follow it to the end and return. 

More information on the Virtual Robotics Challenge 2011 material can be found here