Microsoft has recently made available for download the Robotics Developer Studio 2008 CTP. This release is version 2.0 of the product and contains many improvements over the previous Robotics Studio 1.5.
First of all, what is Robotics Developer Studio? According to Microsoft:
The goal of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 is to supply a software platform for the robotics community that can be used across a wide variety of hardware, applicable to a wide audience of users, and development of a wide variety of applications.
Microsoft says that Robotics Developer Studio 2008 offers 3 main components:
- A scalable, extensible runtime architecture that can span a wide variety of hardware and devices. The programming interface can be used to address robots using 8-bit or 16-bit processors as well as 32-bit systems with multi-core processors and devices from simple touch sensors to laser distance finding devices.
- A set of useful tools that make programming and debugging robot applications scenarios easier. These include a high quality visual simulation environment that uses the AGEIA Technologies™ PhysX™ engine.
- A set of useful technology libraries services and samples to help developers get started with writing robot applications.
Robotics Developer Studio 2008 contains many new elements in areas like:
- Samples. The collection of samples has been expanded, and it has been converted to Visual Studio 2008.
- Concurrency and Coordination Runtime and Decentralized Software Services contain new features and bug fixes.
- DSS Security Model supports Message Level Authorization.
- Visual Programming Language contains improvements for Error Checking, Distributed Applications, and Code Generation.
- Visual Simulation Environment has new features and bug fixes like Record and Playback Capability, Embedded Media Resources, and others.
The supported OSes are: Windows CE, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Vista, Windows XP. Robotics Developer Studio 2008 is recommended to be used with Visual Studio 2008, either the Express, the Standard, the Professional or the Team edition. Any edition of Visual Studio 2005 can be used, but it is not recommended. Robotics Developer Studio 2008 can be used on 64-bit Windows with the exception of the Simulation Engine which uses the XNA Framework which is not yet supported on 64-bit Windows.
