Microsoft Robotics Blog

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

I am pleased to announce that SRI International, a Microsoft Robotics Studio partner, has now released its Karto SDK that is designed to work with Microsoft Robotics Studio.  The Karto SDK provides developers with the ability to easily add autonomous navigation for their robotics applications. Included in this release are the following services:

• Mapping: use sensor input to create a precise virtual model in real time of the robot’s environment while the robot is moving
• Path Planning: compute the optimal path to take from the robot’s current position to a specified target position
• Exploration: determine the sequence of moves the robot will make in order to completely cover an area so that all reachable locations have been traversed
• Obstacle Avoidance: detect previously unknown objects or environmental features and modify the robot’s path accordingly while maintaining a viable path to its target destination

By using all of the modules of the Karto SDK in conjunction with each other, developers can create fully autonomous, self-exploring robots for indoor applications.

Karto supports Sick or Hokuyo laser rangefinders for mapping.

Here are some cool pictures illustrating the use/operation:

Picture1: Exploration points generated by Karto in a partially explored map.

Picture 2: Path generated by Karto to one of the exploration points.

In this demo you can see an autonomous, self exploring robot: Movie 1

The software can be downloaded by requesting a 30 day evaluation license from: http://www.kartorobotics.com/products/licensing.php

thanks

Joseph Fernando

The Robotics Research Group (RRG) at University of Texas at Austin is dedicated to the advancement of open architecture intelligent machine technology with a primary focus on robotics.

In this lab  Dr. Chetan Kapoor, Director/Chief Scientist and Andrew Spencer have been using Microsoft Robotics Studio to develop and demonstrate a Win XP and Win CE based robot arm controller that implements real-time trajectory generation, kinematic control, redundancy resolution and tele-operation with input scaling to guide an operator.

The heart of the controller is the motion planner, which is built from the generalized robot control libraries developed at the RRG, called OSCAR (Operational Software Components for Advanced Robotics).   

The system consists of sensing, actuation, simulation, motion planning, input device and safety monitoring modules which are implemented as MSRS Services.  The hardware used is the Schunk LWA3 seven degree of freedom manipulator, being controlled through a CAN-Bus interface through either PCI or USB. 

More details on individual services, controller architecture and the manipulator hardware and be found here.

The video shows the system under real-time control, performing point to point joint interpolated and Cartesian moves. It also shows under teleoperation using the Xbox controller. The teleoperation is implemented using the jogging capability provided in the motion planner service.

Thanks

Joseph Fernando