Wow..what a pleasent surprise..Microsoft finally jump starts its activities in the robotics community with the
Robotics Studio. The
launch of the August CTP ..the community technology preview as it
is called now not only a community preview of the Microsoft enthusiasts
but also an cradle of the new robotics revolution...
The
RedmondMag.com has well given a detailed insight of Microsoft vision
behind the whole project...a few glimpses of the september issue
retailiates the same views...
'What persuaded the Microsoft
power elite, which had just shunned a grid-computing initiative, to
back Trower's robotics play? Two words: The future. Trower believes
that robots are the natural successor to PCs, and he's convinced his
bosses to adopt his view, or so it would appear.
To make it
happen, Trower knows that robots must evolve beyond the limited
capabilities they possess today. The new programming framework coming
out of the Robotics effort is intended to do just that.
"It goes beyond robotics. There are implications for other areas," he says.
The
framework could help Microsoft and others develop "remote presence"
kinds of applications that could, for instance, help monitor aging
adults who need around-the-clock care, Trower says, via some kind of
"telepresence devices." Robotics programmers could develop new kinds of
security sensors or maintenance applications for mundane chores, such
as cutting lawns and cleaning pools.
While the Robotics Design
Studio is Microsoft-developed code, the company is taking pains to make
it work with non-Microsoft languages including JavaScript, Carnegie
Mellon's Alice language and others, Trower says.
"The perception
is that Microsoft focuses only on our core businesses," Trower notes.
"Robotics is still five to 10 years away from realizing its full
potential, but Microsoft's executives understand this. This is an
investment in the future."
So far as the perception behind the
innovation and the inception of the technology goes...the ulility and
the application of the same reigns supreme.
What is Robotics Studio..???
he
Microsoft Robotics Studio is a Windows-based environment for academic,
hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotics
applications across a wide variety of hardware. The Microsoft Robotics
Studio Runtime is a lightweight runtime written for CLR 2.0 that
provides support for creating, hosting, and managing such applications.
The overall goal of robotics applications is to consume
sensory input from a variety of sources and orchestrate a set of
actuators to respond to the sensory input in a manner that achieves the
purpose of the application. An example of a simple robotics application
is shown in Figure 1.
It contains a simple bumper (sensor) that reports when it is hit, a
message box (actuator) that controls the display, and an orchestrator
that connects the pieces together.
Figure 1
The "Hello World" application equivalent in the robotics world. The
orchestrator listens for input from the bumper (sensor) and controls
the message box (actuator).
In Figure 1 the orchestration is
simple but as applications grow, there may be any number of sensors,
actuators, and orchestrators communicating with each other to perform
complex operations. An example of a more advanced robotics application
is illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Slight more advanced robotics application with three sensors and three actuators.
While each of the sensors and actuators are similar to the ones in Figure 1,
the orchestrator now has to manage six components. In addition, there
are several things that distinguishes the application flows illustrated
in Figure 1 and Figure 2 from many other "Hello world" applications:
- Handling
of sensory input and controlling actuators must be dealt with
concurrently as otherwise actuators can get starved and sensors ignored.
- Orchestration
is a critical part of the application, especially as the number of
sensors and actuators grow and the orchestration becomes more complex.
- Autonomous and collaborative orchestration requires that components can be distributed and made accessed over the network.
Given
these requirements, the purpose of Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime is
to facilitate building, monitoring, deploying, and running robotics
applications by providing the following:
- Concurrency and
Coordination Runtime (CCR) enabling coordination of messages without
the use of manual threading, locks, semaphores, etc. The CCR is based
on asynchronous message passing and provides an execution context for
services including a set of high-level primitives for synchronizing
messages.
- Decentralized System Services (DSS) providing a
service hosting environment and a set of basic services facilitating
tasks such as debugging, logging, monitoring, security, discovery, and
data persistence.
The Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime
has been designed to support a wide range of robotics applications
ranging from in sophistication from simply observing sensory input, to
drive-by-wire, to autonomous operation, and even to cooperation between
multiple autonomous robots.
Furthermore, the runtime can be
used in scenarios ranging from robots connected directly to a PC (using
the serial port, Bluetooth, USB, etc.) to robots that has an onboard
PC, to simulated robots that can be manipulated as they operate in a
simulated world.
Dont believe in words ..see the real robo in action....!!!
Robotics Connection
Robotics Connection featured a tracked Windows XP-based robot utilizing
one of their Serializer .NET Robot Controller boards, using Robotics
Studio-based services. anyways..are you really bored of
the junk and scrap i scribbled down in my blog?? then its time for some
action...dont miss out the action at channel9.msdn...
Channel 9 Interviews the Microsoft Robotics Studio Team See Microsoft Robotics Studio demos first hand and listen in as Channel9 interviews the Robotics team
Finally a word of cautions and yup..its a secret..huh..sush..dont honk..!!..
Unlike
PCs, however, robots are calling on the ingenuity of people from wildly
diverse backgrounds: biologists are teaching robots to move,
entertainers are teaching them how to amuse us, statisticians are
teaching them when to ignore data, computer scientists are teaching
them how to think, and materials scientists are inventing new
composites that make them light on their feet.
Robots are about
to be unshackled from forced labor. Expect them everywhere.And once
freed from the shackles of ignorence and control they may overtake the
masters to take on to the human race....are you heading towards the
matrix???
Then how would the be the next generation of coders..the new channel niners...will it be something like>>>>
am skeptical ...but stopping the technological development..no way..let the race continue!!!