Microsoft Robotics Blog

The July Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 is now available for download. This is the 2nd CTP and like the first this one has a lot of new features and improvements. In addition to the list below you can see some of the features in the Welcome Letter and a complete list in the Whats New? document.

1.      New samples and tutorials: This CTP has many new samples and tutorials including:

1.      DSS Node Discovery using UPnP: A new UPnP sample illustrates how to use UPnP for discovering DSS nodes across a UPnP network.

2.      Transport Extensibility: PipeTransport and PipeTransportHost are two new tutorials on how to write your own transport and load it in your custom host. In addition you will also find the UdpTransport and UdpTransport as additional transport samples.

3.      LINQ: Service Tutorial 12 shows how to subscribe to the Directory Service using a LINQ Filter and how to receive filtered notifications.

4.      Silverlight: The XBox Controller Viewer sample shows support for use of interactive Silverlight-based UI

5.      Embedded Simulation Environment: The sample EmbeddedSim sample shows how to embed the Visual Simulation Environment in a custom Windows Forms user interface.

6.      Simulated Pursuit Camera: The PursuitCamera sample shows how to implement a camera entity that follows behind a target and avoids obstacles.

7.      Simulated 4x4-drive: The SimulatedFourByFourDrive sample shows how to implement an entity that behaves like a 4x4 off-road car.

2.      Global Assembly Cache: Core CCR and DSS assemblies are put into the Global Assembly Cache. means that they are a shared resource for all installations on a single machine.

3.      Simulation on 64-bit machines: Simulation now runs on 64-bit systems using the Microsoft Windows-32-on-Windows-64 (WOW64) subsystem. To use simulation on 64-bit machines, make sure you use dsshost32.exe which forces the WOW64 mode.

4.      Visual Studio Project Wizards: The Visual Studio Project Wizards have been rewritten to make it much simpler to create new service projects directly from Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. Project wizards are provided for VB.Net and C# targeting .NET Framework.

5.      Much Faster DSS Proxy Generation: The DssProxy tool has been completely rewritten to simplify the generation of service proxy assemblies and to make it much faster to compile services. In addition, the tool chain for writing services for .NET Compact Framework has been simplified to no longer need a companion service project targeting the desktop version of .NET Framework. This makes development for .NET Compact Framework much easier.

6.      DSS Log Analyzer: The DSS Log Analyzer is a preview of a powerful new debugging and monitoring tool that can visualize and analyze message exchanges between services sent within a DSS node or across nodes. In addition to showing the actual messages that have been sent it also provides message correlations, time lines, and illustrates how multiple message interactions are causally linked over time.

7.      Embedded Visual Simulation Environment: In addition to having a stand-alone UI, the Visual Simulation Environment can now be embedded in other applications. This enables other applications to show the Visual Simulation Environment as part of their application.

Please help us making this release better by trying it out and send your comments, suggestions, and bug reports to our MSDN forums.

Henrik

The Robocup 2008 Nao Simulation package is now available from Aldebaran Robotics.  This package is designed to work with the updated Soccer Competition package provided by Microsoft to provide a simulated soccer field with two teams of four Nao robots each for RoboCup 2008.

The Robocup 2008 Simulated Nao competition software is designed to work with version 1.5 of Microsoft Robotics Studio which can be downloaded from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=73092FF6-E37B-45C6-8E5E-C23D5D632B1E&displaylang=en

You will also need the Soccer Package for MSRS 1.5 that was updated in April.  It can be downloaded from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AFA19EE3-F959-4EBC-A25F-4A2F32FB8FB2&displaylang=en

Finally, you will need to download and install the Aldebaran Simulated Nao package for MSRS 1.5 from here:

Microsoft announces the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008. The preview contains a large number of new features and improvements including items such as:

1. Improved security model with support for Message Level Authorization using Role-based access control allowing to fine-grained control of who can access services and how.

2. Support for LINQ queries in DSSP subscriptions enabling applications to create complex queries that can be executed close to the data source instead of requiring moving data across the network 

3. Support for creating applications that run on multiple DSS nodes using Visual Programming Language and DSS Manifest Editor. This makes it much simpler to create applications that run across nodes, either on the same machine or across the network. When an application containing multiple nodes is to be started, VPL creates individual deploy packages for each node and fires them up across the network.

4. Support for record and playback functionality in Visual Simulation Environment enabling it to record the position and orientation of each entity and save that information to a file which later can be replayed.

5. Support for storing simulation media resources such as texture maps, bitmaps, and mesh files directly as part of the CLR assemblies in the form of embedded resources rather than as external files.

6. New Simulation floor plan editor which allows the user to put together walls, doors, windows, etc. to represent the interior of a room, house, or other building.

You can also check out our detailed description of changes from previous versions.

Please help us making this release better by trying it out and send your comments, suggestions, and bug reports to our MSDN forums.

Henrik

Vincent Dupourque, CEO of Robosoft, says " ...  the most interesting thing is that it demonstrates how powerful is MSRS for roboticians : to go faster, we went to the site in December to get GPS coordinates of the trajectories (using a GPS in a car). Back to ROBOSOFT, we reconstructed the road and built a model of the vehicle in a simulator. With this simulator, we were able to develop and validate the new control algorithms in our robuBOX-CTS. We even found out that in some conditions the vehicle was not able to stay on the road. When the real vehicle was ready, it took about 1 week to install and tune the software. Almost magic!"

The link to the video is here.  

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

At the Ground Robotics Capabilities Conference held earlier this month, Braintech demonstrated the power of its MSRS-based VOLTS-IQ software development kit for concurrently performing high-performance visual awareness across several cameras.  The SDK adds sophisticated vision capabilities to Microsoft Robotics Studio in the form of high-level and precise services that implement advanced vision algorithms.  In this demonstration, the Braintech technology team coupled its proprietary VOLTS-IQ Motion Detector with four cameras, and extracted events of interest.  These were then analyzed to determine where to point a pan-tilt unit.  The aim of the project was to implement a 'situational awareness' vision system, enabling a user to be aware of events of interest from multiple sources without incurring information-overload and delay.  The demonstration nicely illustrates the concurrency capabilities of MSRS, allowing Braintech to implement real-time vision across many sensors. 

The demo could be viewed here.

Information on VOLTS-IQ SDK is available here.   

Thansk

Joseph Fernando

At the Pierre-Gilles de Gennesʼs scientific exhibition opening,  ROBOSOFT, a Microsoft Robotics Studio Partner, demonstrated the use of robotized machines that were powered by its robuBOX™, the generic robotic middleware based on Microsoft® Robotics Studio.

Further information could be found here.

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

Well then, we may have an opportunity for you!  We are looking for highly creative, innovative, and energetic contributors in the areas of human-robot-interaction and program management.   Specific opportunities are now advertized through our careers website under the job posting codes: 

214443 –  Human-Robot-Interaction /  User Interface Designer

You will be responsible for designing the human-robot interaction experiences involving a wide range of techniques including context aware engagements, multi-mode UIs and remote access that address robotics scenarios ranging from tele-presence, home assistance, industrial automation, healthcare, education, etc.

219496 – Program manager

You will be responsible for defining user application experiences for tele-presence, home assistance, industrial automation, healthcare, education, and many more scenarios that leverage technologies such as vision, speech, sound, localization, navigation, …

If you are interested, please submit your resume through our Microsoft® Careers home page. 

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

If you are interested in an introduction to Microsoft Robotics Studio you can find Vlad’s talk here. 

With this talk you will learn:

In 1999 northwestern Turkey was struck by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake which resulted in the deaths of over 45,000  people and leaving millions homeless.  The disaster was compounded by a five-day communication breakdown among the local authorities making it difficult to assess ground conditions and to coordinate relief efforts.   Motivated to assist these types of rescue efforts, Oguz Bayrakdar (project leader) and Omer Celik  both from Turkey, worked with the Istanbul Municipality and Microsoft to develop RobotTurk - a Disaster Emergency Video System.

RoboTurk employs Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) equipped with cameras that are capable of steaming live video of disaster struck areas  to any number of ground  command stations.   The helicopter carries onboard an eBox compute-unit that runs Microsoft Robotics Studio, allowing the robot to execute specific command issued by ground statation or to auto-fly or safely land.   The ground stations utilizes Windows Server 2008 Media Services that capture, process and streams video.   The disaster coordination users utilizes Microsoft Virtual Earth as a mapping tool and Silverlight streaming to show the overlaid video on the maps, as illustrated on the picture below:

The high-level architecture of the system is as follows:

The RoboTurk team plans to post further information here.

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

Herey is a hexapod robot intended to be utilize by hobbyists as well as academia/Students.  Utilizing the services provided by Microrobot, Herey is programmable through Microsoft Robotics Studio’s Visual Programming Language.  More information on the robot can be found here.

Joseph Fernando

Robosoft, has now developed and demonstrated a home centric service robot to assist people.  The prototype robot was based on ‘robuLab10’ - mobile platform and ‘robuBox’ – robotic middleware based on Microsoft Robotics Studio.   The prototype was demonstrated at Microsoft®'s Innovation Day at Brussels.   More information on the prototype and demonstrations can be found here:

Advanced Robotics Solutions

ROBOSOFT Introduces a New Robuter Aiming at Assisting People at Home

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

Skilligent, an MSRS partner, has announced the release 1.0 of its Skilligent Robot Learning and Behavior Control System for service robots.  The software includes a behavior control and coordination system, task and skill learning functions, computer vision system, a social human-to-robot interface, a database for storing knowledge and other integrated robotic components. The control system is designed for applications in various domains including the defense, industry, agriculture, museums, food processing and households.

The Skilligent software enables solution providers to create robots which can be trained by end users - vs. programmed by a software engineer. The software analyzes the user's gestures, looks at the objects presented by the user, listens to the sounds and learns what the robot is supposed to do. Watch the robot learning videos demonstrating the capabilities of the product.

Skilligent is now integrating the product with MSRS in order to provide and flexible environment for development and research. Per Skilligent the integrated environment will be available in the first quarter of 2008.

-Joseph Fernando