Microsoft Robotics Blog : Fun things

robuRide-28, a fully autonomous GPS based passenger vehicle

JosephFernando — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:49:00 GMT

The video posting below captures a run of the robuRIDE-28 a passenger car developed by Robosoft. The car, later renamed as VolvanBUL, is designed to carry 28 passengers, 12 km/h and will be deployed in Vulcania, a French theme park in April. robuRIDE-28/VolvanBUL is fully autonomous vehicle controlled via robuBox-CTS, developed over the Microsoft Robotics Studio infrastructure. The vehicle has an 2cm accuracy over a 1km circuit.

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

Situational Awareness Vision System

JosephFernando — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:56:00 GMT

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

RobotTurK: Disaster Emergency Video system

JosephFernando — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:29:00 GMT

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

Use of VOTLS-IQ SDK with Lego Mindstorm NXT

JosephFernando — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:21:00 GMT

As indicated in one of my prior blog posts Braintech's VOLTS-IQ SDK provides high-performance vision functionally as MSRS services. One of the new additions to the VOLTS-IQ SDK is a multi-view object detector, Vi_MultiViewObjectDetector, which enables one to train a robot (with vision) to recognize a variety of objects from arbitrary viewpoints. In this video, Braintech Robotic Vision Scientist Robert Sim demonstrates the performance of the detector in a fetch-and-deliver robot application using Lego Mindstorms. The robot uses vision to locate objects of interest, approach and grasp the object. Then it uses vision to locate a 'recycling bin' to deposits the object. The system not only highlights the benefits of adding vision to robotic applications, but also the ease in which MSRS can be leveraged. In this scenario MSRS enables off-board processing to enhance the capabilities of the Lego NXT as well. Version 1.6 of the VOLTS-IQ SDK can be downloaded from here.

Joseph Fernando

HEREY from Microrobot

JosephFernando — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:09:00 GMT

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

Home-centric robot to assist people

JosephFernando — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:27:00 GMT

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

Robot Learning and Behavior Control

JosephFernando — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:41:00 GMT

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

MSDN Seminar on Microsoft Robotic Studio (and XNA)

JosephFernando — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:49:00 GMT

Our MSDN Developer Evangelist team will be hosting a technology day that includes Microsoft Robotics Studio in its morning session. There will be two talks, the first - An Introduction to MSRS. This talk will provide an overview, the application model and Visual Programming Language. And the Second talk will peek under the hood at the MSRS technologies- Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR), and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) and will emphasis application development.

The sessions will be held in Malvern, Pennsylvania (Dec 15^th). There is no cost to attend.

Registration: (Seminar is free to attend)

December 15, 2007 - 8:30AM – onwards

Microsoft Office - Malvern

Franklin
Great Valley Corporate Center - 45 Liberty Blvd
Malvern Pennsylvania 19355

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032362690&Culture=en-US

The full schedule for the day is as follows:

8:30–9:30 AM Breakfast and Registration

9:30–10:30 AM Introduction to Microsoft Robotic Studio

10:30–11:30 AM Robotic Studio Essentials

11:30 AM–12:30 PM Lunch

12:30–1:30 PM Introduction to Microsoft XNA Game Studio

1:30–2:30 PM XNA Essentials

2:30–2:45 PM Break

2:45–3:45 PM Building 3D Games with XNA Game Studio and C# Part 1

3:45–4:45 PM Building 3D Games with XNA Game Studio and C# Part 2

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

Micro/Meso-scale manipulation

JosephFernando — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:55:00 GMT

The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab is an inter-disciplinary research center at the University of Pennsylvania. In this lab Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) is used to develop a distributed remote micro/meso-scale manipulation system to assembly parts ranging in size from microns to a few millimeters. The system supports both the real-world experimentation and virtual-world simulation.

The system consists of sensing, actuation, simulation, control, and planning modules which are implemented as MSRS Services and can be distributed on any computer on the internet. The true nature of the distribution becomes apparent when the micro/meso-scale manipulation system located in Philadelphia, PA was successfully controlled using a MSRS services located at both Cherry Hill, NJ (13 miles) and Atlanta, GA (722 miles).

Further Microsoft Robotics Studio facilitated the integration and leverage of existing subsystems such as the dynamics engine for the quasi-static simulation is implemented in Matlab. The other non-MSRS modules, e.g. vision and controller modules, are integrated through the WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) communication.

For more details, please see the following links:

System Architecture: http://grasp.upenn.edu/~chpeng/msrs.manipulation.swf
Manipulation Hardware Setup and Algorithms: http://www.grasp.upenn.edu/~dcappell/GRASPMicromanipulation.htm

The following two pictures show the remote manipulation from Atlanta, GA to Philadelphia, PA.

[A snapshot of the MSRS visual simulation environment in Atlanta, GA, in which the positions and orientations of the part and probe were passed from the actual vision program (shown in the top right corner) in Philadelphia, PA]

[Prof. Vijay Kumar (project leader) and Duruhan Ozcelik beside the vision capture in Philadelphia, PA; Peng Cheng and Dave Cappelleri holding up RSS conference T-shirt in Atlanta, GA.]

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

A growing list of Microsoft Robotics Studio Partners

JosephFernando — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:40:00 GMT

Microsoft Robotics Studio offers a Partner Program, commonly referred to as MSRSPP that features companies that endorsers and utilizes Microsoft Robotics Studio in their product offerings.

The featured companies fall into the categories of:

Robot Manufacturers: manufactures and markets robots that support MSRS-based services/applications.
Hardware Component Vendors: manufactures and markets hardware devices that support MSRS-based services or MSRS-based robotics scenarios.
Solution Providers: develops commercial software solution using MSRS technologies. May act as a consultant or solution provider to other 3^rd parties.
ISV: develops software or software development tools for MSRS-based robots.

More information on the program, the highlights and requirements can be found here.

I would like to welcome the new partners who’ve joined the program since mid October.

Barrett Technology, Inc.

Barrett Technology is a spun-off from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. Since then it has focused on machine intelligence and flexibility with robotic manipulators. Today Barrett designs and markets highly-dexterous robotic manipulators to a wide array of industries as well as to research institutions. These manipulators are utilized in complex environments operating near and around people.

HanoolRobotics

Hanool Robotics was established in 1998 and focuses on the development of intelligent robotics. Currently, the company manufactures and distributes mobile and educational platforms to the consumer, military and research sectors.

KMC Robotics Co.,Ltd

KMC Robotics develops and manufactures educational platforms that helps students study technologies centric to intelligent robot control. The company plans to make these electrical, electronic and mechatronics educational platforms programmable through Microsoft Robotics Studio.

TRI Technosolutions Pvt. Ltd.

TRI Technosolutions Pvt. Ltd. is focused in the fields of robotics & embedded systems with and emphasis on educational robotics. TRI facilitates scientific and technical education by providing resources through wide variety of kits, software based programming tools, basic & advanced level workshops and web based learning. Tri's iBOT kit is self-sufficient for performing various experiments which enhances the learning of concepts in robotics, automation, embedded systems, micro-controller programming, sensors feedback driven systems, and motor control. TRI has developed new services for controlling iBot and iBoard 8051 using Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS).

Visual Components

Visual Components focuses on 3D simulation and visualization; offering machine builders, system integrators and companies a simple, quick and highly cost effective way to build and simulate their total process solutions in manufacturing. Visual Components has merged several research areas into a single "Unified Infrastructure for Simulation, Communication and Execution of Robotic Systems" using Microsoft Robotic Studio together with 3DCreate as foundation elements to enable the modeling, simulation, programming and execution of robotic applications.

Wany Robotics

With an emphasis on mass-market consumer needs Wany Robotics develops robotic technologies in the area of intelligent mobile robots for the homes as well as for consumer good manufacturers. When integrated into next-generation devices and home appliances its solutions provide autonomous and intelligent behavior to common consumer goods at a lower production cost. This company was the first to develop and manufacturer educational robots in France, with its Pekee robot aimed at high schools, community colleges, and universities.

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

3rd Grand Challenge comes to a closure...

JosephFernando — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:42:00 GMT

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge is the third in a series of competitions held by this agency to foster the development of autonomous robotic ground vehicle technology. This weekend the Urban challenge came to a closure when the vehicles of Stanford Racing Team, Tartan Racing, VictorTango , Ben Franklin Racing Team, MIT and Team Cornell drove without any human intervention and obeying California traffic laws, performed maneuvers such as merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles and avoiding obstacles.

We would like to express our congratulations to winners

1st Place - Tartan Racing, Pittsburgh, PA

Tartan Racing – Carnegie Mellon University

2nd Place - Stanford Racing Team, Stanford, CA

Stanford Racing Team – Stanford University

3rd Place - Victor Tango, Blacksburg, VA

Victor Tango – Virginia Tech

And are sincere thanks to all the teams who participated and contributed to this phenomenal event; helping advance the technologies forward.

We also like to express our appreciation and thanks to Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering Team (PAVE), who used Microsoft Robotics Studio as one of their enabling technologies.

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

Request For Proposals: Human-Robot Interaction 2007-2008: “Robots Among Us”

JosephFernando — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:24:00 GMT

If you are an academic or non-profit robotics researcher, then you may be interested in the following news announced last week.

Our colleagues in Microsoft Research (External Research & Programs department) launched a new worldwide robotics research Request For Proposals (RFP) for such researchers. For full details, guidelines, eligibility and submission instructions, please visit:

http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/rfps/HRI_RFP.aspx

As noted in the RFP usage of MSRS is encouraged as it eases the sharing of the resulting software with the whole academic community and beyond.

SUMMARY

HRI is a large field with many active research projects in universities and other labs around the world. But much of the research to date has been focused on the robot and human somewhat in isolation from the broader computing environment around them. Our intention in this RFP is to focus attention on the general paradigm shift from “robots as tools” to “social robots”, and consider HRI in the context of the existence of a plethora of other computing devices deployed in the modern human environment, including PCs, Smartphones and the World-Wide Web.

The specific details and objectives of the RFP are detailed in the document linked above.

AWARDS

The total amount available under the RFP is US$500,000. Microsoft Research anticipates making approximately 7-10 awards averaging US$50,000, with a maximum of US$70,000 for any single award. Awards are for 1 year.

DEADLINE

Thursday, December 13, 2007, 12:00 Noon PST (PST is -8 UTC/GMT)

QUESTIONS

Please see the full RFP at:

http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/rfps/HRI_RFP.aspx

thanks

Joseph Fernando

Robo-Development Conference and Exposition

JosephFernando — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 23:29:00 GMT

The inaugural Robo-Development Conference and Exposition was held in San Jose October 25th and 26th where Microsoft was the founding sponsor. This multifaceted educational forum and trade show's primary focus was on design and development of commercially viable personal, service and intelligent robotics products. The keynotes and general sessions were specifically engineered to impart information needed to develop the next generation of robotics. At this event the session tracks emphasized on:

o Design, Development and Standards

o Tools and Platforms

o Enabling Technology

Contributing to this conference Tandy Trower, General Manager delivered a keynote. Beyond this, under a bonus track, technical presentations were delivered by the development team. Click here for the slide decks used by our team.

To the interested reader, here are some recent press publications on the event:

Robots for all occasions, CNET News , by Corinne Schulze
Robot builders hunt for a killer application, The Register, by Austin Modine
Robo Development Conference in Pictures, The Register, by Austin Modine
Top Minds in Robotics Meet in San Jose, KCBS

and pictures from our booth and talks.

Tandy Trower, General Manager, discussing the state of the robotics industry at the keynote:

Patrick Deegan and Bryan Thibodeau demonstrating Ubot-5 at the keynote:

The booth, conference attendees crowding to get a hand-on experience with Visual Programming Language, Simulation and to get a closer look at U-bot5:

And here's Andreas explaining the code he's written:

Another closer look at u-Bot5:

And here's Paul, talking about how to write simulation services.

U-Bo5 meets a Segway platform controlled via MSRS services:

And reaches for the key board to program it….

thanks

Joseph Fernando

On-Demand Video Tutorials for Microsoft Robotics Studio

JosephFernando — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:14:00 GMT

Microsoft Robotics team has now released a collection of on-demand video tutorials that supplement those included with MSRS V1.0 release. This training material is now available from http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/learn/On_Demand/default.aspx

Here’s a summary of what’s included:

Architecture Overview

This session covers in depth the underlying Microsoft Robotics Studio services-oriented runtime architecture.

Visual Programming Language (VPL) 1

This session covers the Microsoft Visual Programming Language, an application development environment designed on a graphical dataflow-based programming model rather than control flow typically found in conventional programming.

Visual Programming Language (VPL) 2

This session builds on VPL1 and features more advanced examples of using VPL.

Microsoft Robotics Studio- Simulation

This session provides an introduction to the simulation runtime, a 3-D tool that simulates robotics applications in physics-based virtual environments, using the licensed PhysX™ engine from AGEIA™ Technologies Inc.

Microsoft Robotics Studio- Robotics Tutorials

This session, based on the robotics tutorials included with Microsoft Robotics Studio, will show how to create a service and coordinate between services. It will also provide an overview of manifests, contracts used to specify robotics hardware.

Microsoft Robotics Studio- Services Tutorials

This session, based on the services tutorials included with Microsoft Robotic Studio, will provide an overview of how to create a service, update the state of a service and persist the state of a service.

Microsoft Robotics Studio- Controlling Simulated Robots Using VB.NET

This session will provide an overview on working with Microsoft Robotics Studio using Visual Basic .NET.

Microsoft Robotics Studio- Controlling Simulated Robots Using Iron Python

This session will provide an overview on working with Microsoft Robotics Studio using Iron Python.

Thanks

Joseph Fernando

Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) September 2006 Community Technical Preview is now available

JosephFernando — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:00:00 GMT

Microsoft Robotics team has now released its third Community Technical Preview (CTP).

Here’s what’s new: http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/getstarted/ctp3/default.aspx

You can download release from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/downloads/default.aspx

Joseph